Martial Arts on the South-side
Looking back, I only thought of one man when it came to martial arts. That one man was a Chinese man named Bruce Lee. I did not know that martial arts would exist in the south-side in the seventy's. When I was a little girl watching Bruce Lee’s films, it seemed as if martial arts was just being introduced and getting started compared to today. I began to see African American actors like Jim Kelly and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in Bruce Lee’s films. Still, whenever I thought of martial arts, I thought of the Chinese more than any race because of Bruce Lee of course. He introduced Kung-Fu to America.
There is a documentary film titled South Side Warriors (2002) by Robert Wyrod. It talks about the South Side of Chicago which is the largest areas of urban poverty in America. According to the documentary, in the shadow of the massive housing projects, a vibrant martial arts tradition has been flourishing since the 1950s.
