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If you’re a New Yorker, you’re from a state that can claim connections to nationally known artists and athletes.
Not a New Yorker? You’ll soon come to appreciate the amazing talent linked to this state. In the words of a well-known song about New York City: “If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere.” Here are a few artists and athletes who did.
Artists
Georgia O’Keeffe
Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986) was a painter. She was born in Wisconsin and lived in New York City as an adult. O’Keeffe is known for her unique paintings of flowers. She is also known for her paintings of New York skyscrapers. Sometimes she painted these monumental buildings as seen from the sidewalk. Other times, she painted them as seen from her 30th-floor apartment. About her work, O’Keeffe said, “One can’t paint New York as it is, but rather as it is felt.”
Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes (1901–1967) was a poet, a novelist, an essay writer, and more. He was born in Missouri and moved to New York when he was a young man. During the 1920s, Hughes was one of many Black artists who were part of the Harlem Renaissance. His poetry joined his words with the rhythms of jazz. Here, he writes about a dream that’s been deferred (postponed):
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
Isaac Bashevis Singer
Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902–1991) was a novelist and short-story writer. He was born in Poland. But he lived in New York for most of his life. His work often showed Jewish life in Europe and the United States. Singer wrote many stories for kids. These, and others, were fables, or folktales. In 1978, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. One of his books, The Fools of Chelm and Their History, is about a make-believe town where wise but foolish people live.
Maurice Sendak
Maurice Sendak (1928–2012) was an author and illustrator. He created many award-winning books for kids. As a child, he was often sick and had to stay indoors. That’s when he started to use his imagination and draw. Some think Sendak’s book Where the Wild Things Are is one of the best of the 20th century. Sendak was awarded the Caldecott Medal for it. Here’s part of a letter Sendak received from an eight-year-old reader:
Dear Mr. Sendak, How much does it cost to get to where the wild things are? If it is not expensive, my sister and I would like to spend the summer there.
REFLECTION
Reflect on the eight-year-old’s reactions to Where the Wild Things Are. Have you ever had a similar reaction to a story, thinking it told of real events or places? If you like, share your experience with others.
Ezra Jack Keats
Ezra Jack Keats (1916–1983) was an author and illustrator of children’s books. Keats’s last name at birth was Katz. In 1947, after experiencing anti-Semitism, he changed his name. One of Keats’s most famous books is the Caldecott-award-winning story The Snowy Day. An editor had invited him to write the book. This is part of what Keats said about that invitation:
Then began an experience that turned my life around . . . working on a book with a Black kid as hero. None of the manuscripts I’d been illustrating featured any Black kids – except for token Blacks in the background. My book would have him there simply because he should have been there all along.
Jacob Lawrence
Jacob Lawrence (1917–2000) was a painter. He was born in New Jersey. When he was 13, he moved to New York with his mother and sister. During the Great Depression, Lawrence worked for the U.S. Coast Guard as part of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs. Some of Lawrence’s artwork shows the lives and difficulties of Black people. His best-known paintings are of the migration of Black people from the South to the North between 1910 and 1940. Here, Lawrence can be seen at an exhibition of his work.
Jean Craighead George
Author Jean Craighead George (1919–2012) was born in Washington, D.C. She lived most of her adult life in New York. If you appreciate the natural world, you may especially enjoy her novel My Side of the Mountain, which takes place in the Catskill Mountains. The story is about Sam, a boy from New York City, who leaves the city to take up life in the wilderness.
Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol (1928–1987) was a painter. He was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and later moved to New York. Warhol was part of an art style called Pop Art. Pop art was art that focused on popular media and products. Often, Warhol painted images of common objects, such as soup cans or boxes of steel wool soap pads. His point was to show that American culture was based on consumerism and branding.
Athletes
Babe Ruth
Babe Ruth (1895–1948) was born in Maryland. He moved to New York in 1920 when he started playing for the New York Yankees. Ruth became a famed baseball player known mostly for his home-run hitting. Ruth’s baseball career ended in 1934 with 714 home runs. His record stood until 1974.
Gertrude Ederle
Gertrude Ederle (1905–2003) was a swimmer with three Olympic gold medals. In 1925, she attempted to swim across the English Channel but was not successful. (The English Channel is the part of the Atlantic Ocean that separates England from France.) The next year, Ederle tried again. Many thought it was impossible for a female to achieve the goal, but Ederle proved them wrong. She became the first woman to swim across the English Channel.
Jackie Robinson
Jackie Robinson (1919–1972) was born in Georgia and moved to New York in 1947 when he joined the Brooklyn Dodgers. Robinson was the first Black person to play on a major league baseball team. In the 10 years Robinson played for the Dodgers, the team competed for six major league championships. Today, in Jackie Robinson Park in Manhattan, you can find a monument to Jackie Robinson that includes this message:
Life owes me nothing. Baseball owes me nothing. But I cannot, as an individual rejoice in the good things I have been permitted to work for and learn while the humblest of my brothers is down in a deep hole hollering for help and not being heard.
Sandy Koufax
Many would say Sandy Koufax (1935– ) was the best, or one of the best, pitchers in all of baseball. He received the Cy Young Award – given to the best pitchers – three times, in 1963, 1965, and 1966. In the same years he won the award, Koufax also won the Triple Crown for pitching. He also led the major league in wins, strikeouts, and earned run average. Ernie Banks, another baseball great, said this about Koufax:
It was frightening. He had that tremendous fastball that would rise, and a great curveball that started at the eyes and broke to the ankles. In the end you knew you were going to be embarrassed. You were either going to strike out or foul out.
