Harlem history and cultural significance

Social Times and the Culture of New York's: Harlem: From the 'Harlem Renaissance' Period to 1960

Few if any American cities or geographical areas have undergone as many demographic; economic or cultural changes; "reinventions" and metamorphoses as New York's Harlem. Starting in the mid-to-late 17th century, when Harlem acquired its first white Dutch-transplant European settlers, Harlem has changed almost continuously: demographically; economically, culturally, reputation-wise and otherwise. Still, not withstanding the white Dutch settler population of Harlem's earliest days; and then in the 19th century, a period when the name 'Harlem' was "a synonym for elegant living... " (Duberman, 1968). The issues, events, and personalities that have made Harlem one of America's most distinct communities spring from the late 19th-to-early-to-mid 20th century belief in advancement of black Americans through the efforts and actions of blacks themselves, i.e., excluding all white liberals. That exclusivity, combined especially with a distinct African-American nationalism, encouraged and supported key social, political, and cultural African-American voices of change (and changes) in the 20th century up to about 1960.

This essay shall discuss that period in Harlem in particular, then, and key events that occurred within it, as well as some that had earlier created conditions of possibility for that period in Harlem to unfold as it did.

Harlem has had few "constants" except for a largely African-American population; a great deal of poverty among citizens, and (ironically; given those constants) a milieu enormously rich in cultural expression, especially by, for, and about, American blacks and blacks worldwide. Much of the post-Harlem Renaissance period's (i.e., specifically, from around 1918 to about 1960) relatively new, Harlem-born African-American nationalism, which was considered quite radical for its day for its time but is more or less mainstream today, was expressed for the first time ever in writings and sermons of African-American "Harlemites [sic]," but most of all, on the streets of Harlem.

Moreover, while the 1960's was, obviously, the main decade in which the real flowering of the American Civil Rights Movement took place; much of what grew from those myriad Harlem street corner speeches and other Harlem-based efforts toward African-American equality actually began earlier, outside as well as inside Harlem. One such important event took place in 1946.

According to the article "United States Commission on Civil Rights," this committee, appointed by then-President Harry S. Truman:

was charged with: (1) examining the condition of civil rights in the United

States, (2) producing a written report of their findings, and (3) submitting recommendations on improving civil rights in the United States. In December

1947, the committee... proposed to improve the existing civil rights laws; to establish a permanent Civil Rights Commission, Joint Congressional

Committee on Civil Rights, and a Civil Rights Division... To develop federal protection from lynching; to create a Fair Employment Practices Commission

FEPC); to abolish poll taxes; and urged other measures. (Wikipedia, (February 3, 2007).

Further, in 1954, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka ("Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954)," (Wikipedia), school segregation of black children from white children was outlawed by the United States Supreme Court in 1952.

In addition, the African-American literary and other artistic output, within Harlem and often (especially in terms of various novels; poems, plays, and short stories set in Harlem) about Harlem and its effects, positive or negative, on humanity, offer a window today into the black American experience within Harlem in the 1940's and 1950's, especially. Several novels and short stories written by Harlem-dwelling black writers like James Baldwin; Ralph Ellison; Richard Wright; Jean Toomer; Langston Hughes, and Claude Brown, among others, may shed stark and vivid light, especially through the eyes of these authors' respective black male narrators, on the realities of Harlem, from which these authors' works spring.

One example is the body of work by black American author James Baldwin, whose cannon of works are consistently written and set within the Harlem(s) of the 1930's; 1940's, and 1950's. Much of James Baldwin's work, which includes three novels and numerous short stories and essays, describes conflicts, dilemmas, obstacles, and choices faced by African-Americans living in Harlem in modern-day white-dominated society, and the ways, good and bad, that African-Americans may either surmount or fall victim to racial prejudices, stereotypes, temptations and conflicts: inside as well as outside Harlem. In his now much-anthologized and analyzed short story "Sonny's Blues (1957), Harlem writer James Baldwin's narrator is an unnamed high school algebra teacher who lives in a 1950's vintage Harlem housing project (. Still, this narrator is of Harlem, even if not now in it.

The existence of such public housing projects for blacks outside Harlem, and the fact of Baldwin's unnamed narrator's living there, effectively underscores the 1950's-era (pre-EEO) efforts by the government, (springing themselves from conditions on the Harlem streets) to counteract prejudices against blacks in housing and other areas.

Baldwin's narrator, the guilt-laden older brother of the title character, Sonny, who is an accomplished blues pianist but also a heroin addict, keeps getting pulled back to Harlem himself, though, if not through his own actions and limitations, through those of Sonny. As the story opens, the narrator has learned earlier that morning, from the newspaper, that Sonny was arrested last night for possessing and selling heroin. The news causes the narrator, as he leaves school for the day, to begin to recall his and Sonny's childhoods, teenage years, and young adulthoods, and also vividly reminds him of his own strong feelings, inculcated in him by their late mother, of brotherly responsibility toward Sonny.

By the end of "Sonny's Blues" the narrator resolves, at least to an extent, his conflicts with Sonny when he goes, at Sonny's invitation, to hear Sonny and other musicians play at a Harlem bar, where Sonny himself is most at home but where the narrator himself, who has embraced more of the values of the dominant white society than his musician brother ever could, feels out-of-place and alienated. Clearly, Sonny the now-accomplished jazz pianist has not himself experienced the Harlem Renaissance of about 1918 through about 1930, but the lingering influence of that period, as Baldwin also implies, has helped to allow Sonny himself, with Sonny's having been inspired by older black jazz musician heroes like Charlie "Bird" Parker (Baldwin) to realize his own dream of becoming an accomplished jazz pianist.

Throughout the 1920s in particular and ending at around the time the Great Depression first began, Harlem enjoyed a unique cultural identity as the center of black art and culture, which also gained, at least in many instances, a newfound popularity during that period. This was the period of the Harlem Renaissance. According to the article "Harlem":

The Harlem Renaissance was a time of amazing artistic production, but ironically, blacks were sometimes excluded from viewing what their peers were creating. Some jazz venues, including most famously the Cotton Club, where Duke Ellington played, were restricted to whites only. Others, including the Renaissance Ballroom and the Savoy Ballroom, were integrated.

According to a magazine article written about Harlem conditions ten or so years subsequent to the end of the Harlem Renaissance, in 1940, although the Harlem Renaissance itself has been [and still is] much romanticized as a time of a unique flowering of and appreciation (by whites, especially) of black art, the same Harlem Renaissance period was also one in which Central harlem in particular became a slum ("244,000 Native Sons"). As that article further suggests, some of what occurred during (and in fact, romanticized) the Harlem Renaissance was simply the result of black poverty ("244,000 Native Sons").

One such later-romanticized Harlem phenomenon of that period, for instance, was the frequent giving of "rent parties": social occasions where, quite literally, the month's rent on the host's Harlem apartment was raised by charging an admission fee. In return for that, the host's friends and neighbors could hear music and drink (bootleg; this was also during Prohibition) alcohol ("244,000 Native Sons"). Another practice of the time was the taking in of additional lodgers to help pay the rent.

According to the article "244,000 Native Sons" up to nearly half of all the black families in Harlem, by the year 1940, were taking in lodgers based on financial necessity. As the article further suggests, the lodgers themselves often introduced their own bad habits (e.g., drugs; alcohol, crime) into otherwise respectable African-American households, even if [perhaps, like James Baldwin's young musician character Sonny, in his short story "Sonny's Blues") they also brought their artistry and talents there.

In respect to those same housing problems that typically plagued Harlem residents throughout the "Renaissance" years of the 1920's in particular, the article "Harlem" states:

In 1928, the first effort at housing reform was attempted in Harlem with the construction of the Paul Lawrence Dunbar Houses, backed by John D.

Rockefeller, Jr. These were intended to give people of modest means the opportunity to live in and, over time, purchase houses of their own. The Great Depression hit shortly after the buildings opened, and the experiment failed. They were followed in 1936 by the Harlem River Houses, a more modest experiment in housing projects. And by 1964, nine giant public housing projects had been constructed in the neighborhood, housing over 41,000 people [see also Tritter; Pinckney and Woock].

The roots of Harlem's various pre 1960's-era movements for African-American equality began growing years before the Harlem Renaissance itself, and were still alive long after the Harlem Renaissance ended. For example:

The NAACP became active in Harlem in 1910 and Marcus Garvey's Universal

Negro Improvement Organization in 1916. The NAACP chapter there soon grew to be the largest in the country. Activist a. Philip Randolph lived in Harlem and published the radical magazine the Messenger starting in 1917.

It was from Harlem that he organized the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car

Porters. W.E.B. DuBois lived and published in Harlem in the 1920s, as did

James Weldon Johnson and Marcus Garvey. ("Harlem")

Later, the lingering economic residue of the Great Depression gave black Harlem dwellers additional incentive for renewed activism, this time to change the dire post-Depression economic and working situation in Harlem with the "Don't Buy Where You Can't Work" movement" (Clarke). This new post-Depression Harlem movement was:

the ultimately successful campaign to force retail shops on 125th Street to hire black employees. Boycotts were originally organized by the Citizens'

League for Fair Play in June 1934 against Blumstein's Department Store on 125th Street. The store soon agreed to more fully integrate its staff. This success emboldened Harlem residents, and protests continued under other leadership, including that of preacher and later congressman Adam Clayton

Powell, Jr., seeking to change hiring practices at other stores, to effect the hiring of more black workers, or the hiring of members of particular protesting groups. ("Harlem")

In addition, in 1935 five separate riots broke out, on separate occasions, throughout Harlem (Clarke). According to the article "Harlem," one of these:

started with a (false) rumor that a boy caught stealing from a store on 125th Street had been killed by the police. By the time it was over, 600 stores had been looted and three men were dead. The same year saw internationalism in Harlem politics, as Harlemites responded to the Italian invasion of Ethiopia by holding giant rallies, signing petitions and sending an appeal to the League of Nations. Such internationalism continued intermittently, including broad demonstrations in favor of Egyptian president

Nasser after the Suez invasion of 1956.

Black Harlemites took positions in the elected political infrastructure of New York starting in 1941 with the election of Adam Clayton Powell Jr. To the City Council. He was easily elected to Congress when a congressional district was placed in Harlem in 1944, leaving his City Council seat to be won by another black Harlemite, Benjamin J. Davis. Ironically, Harlem's political strength soon deteriorated, as Clayton Powell, Jr. spent his time in Washington or his vacation home in Puerto Rico, and Davis was jailed in 1951 for violations of the Smith Act. [53]

1943 saw the second Harlem riot. A black soldier was shot and wounded by a white policeman, and the resulting riots saw hundreds of stores looted and six people killed.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Harlem was the scene of a series of rent strikes by neighborhood tenants, led by local activist Jesse Gray, together with the Congress of Racial Equality, Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited (HARYOU), and other groups. These groups wanted the city to force landlords to improve the quality of housing by bringing them up to code, to take action against rats and roaches, to provide heat during the winter, and to keep prices in line with already-existing rent control regulations. (According to the Metropolitan Council on Housing, in the mid-1960s, about 25% of the city's landlords charged more for rent than allowed by law.) [54]

Many groups mobilized in Harlem in the 1960s, fighting for better schools, jobs, and housing. Some were peaceful and others advocated violence. By the early 1960s, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) had offices on 125th street, and acted as negotiator for the community with the city, especially in times of racial unrest. They pressed for civilian review boards to hear complaints of police abuse, a demand that was ultimately met. Adam Clayton Powell Jr. had become chairman of the House Committee of Education and Labor at the start of the 1960s, and was able to use this position to direct federal funds to various development projects back home. [55]

The influence of the southern nonviolent protest movement was muted in Harlem. Martin Luther King, Jr. was the black leader most respected in Harlem, but at least two dozen groups of black nationalists also operated in New York. The most important of these by far was the Nation of Islam, whose Temple Number Seven was run by Malcolm X from 1952-1963. Malcolm was assassinated in the Audobon Ballroom in Washington Heights in 1965, and the neighborhood remains an important center for the Nation of Islam.

From the mid-20th century, the terrible quality of local schools has been a source of distress. In the 1960s, about 75% of Harlem students tested under the grade levels in reading skills, and 80% tested under grade level in math. In 1964, residents of Harlem staged two boycotts to call attention to the terrible quality of local schools. In central Harlem, 92% of students stayed home. In 1977, Isiah Robinson, president of the New York City Board of Education, was quoted as saying that "the quality of education in Harlem has degenerated to the level of a custodial service." As of May 2006, Harlem is the heart of the charter schools movement in Manhattan; of the 25 charter schools operating in Manhattan, 18 are in Harlem. [61]

The third in Harlem's series of riots took place in July 1964 after the fatal shooting of a 15-year-old black boy by a white police officer. One person was killed, more than 100 were injured, and hundreds more were arrested. Property damage and looting were extensive.

In the aftermath of the riots of July 1964, the federal government funded a pilot program called Project Uplift, in which thousands of young people in Harlem were given jobs during the summer of 1965. The project was inspired by a report generated by HARYOU called Youth in the Ghetto, and HARYOU was given a major role in organizing the project, along with the National Urban League and nearly 100 smaller community organizations. [63]

One particular additional literary work, by a key then-Harlem-dwelling black American novelist of the late 1940's-early 1950's, Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, captures the overall unrestive street atmosphere (and the major reasons for it) of certain pre-1960's; Harlem-based black equal rights movements. The core events of this novel take place upon an unnamed young narrator's (the "Invisible Man" of Ellison's title) arrival in New York, having now been expelled from college (for inadvertently showing a white benefactor of the school the true underside of African-American living).

Ellison's naive young "Invisible Man" has no job, no money, and (as he eventually learns, the hard way) no one to recommend him for a job, either. The letters inside the seven sealed envelopes given to him by the black President of his former college, Dr. Bledsoe provide him a false sense of security. Soon after this, he first encounters the Brotherhood, an organized Harlem street-corner black equality group. Here begins his real education. His eyes now opened, it is also around this time that his earlier dream of becoming an "educator" is replaced by one of wishing to make a positive difference for others through use of his public speaking skills on Harlem street corners.

But the Brotherhood of Central Harlem, as it turns out, is both extremely competitive and jealous within its self. Supposedly, it is also committed to putting out only an emotionally detached "scientific" message in its speeches to crowds. So when a listening crowd is moved by the narrator's first-ever organized public speech (following his spontaneous "eviction speech," that is, which caused him to be recruited by the Brotherhood in the first place), although Brother Jack likes the speech, he is criticized by other Brothers for making the speech too emotional. One member states, to the narrator's surprise, "It was a most unsatisfactory beginning" (p. 341). When pressed, this Brother continues (p. 342): "In my opinion, the speech was wild, hysterical, politically irresponsible, and dangerous... And worse than that, it was incorrect [emphasis Ellison's]!" And Brother Wrestrum chimes in with "I think the speech was backward and reactionary" (Ellison).

After more heated debate about the quality and appropriateness of the speech, t is decided, by the Brotherhood, finally, to retire the narrator from speechmaking for the time being, and to send him, for further training, instead, with a brother named Hambro. But despite this verdict, later that night, when finally alone, the narrator begins to show signs of understanding himself as a human being, with convictions and values of his own, despite the opinions of others. He reviews, quietly in his mind, various phrases he used in his speech. At one point, he recalls now he had described himself as being, "more human" than before.

Now Ellison's Invisible Man wonders to himself, "Did that mean that I had become less of what I was, less a Negro, or that I was less a being apart; less an exile from down home, the South" (p. 347)? or, perhaps, to feel "more human" is to feel less separate from all others: less detached, uncaring, or unemotional, as at least some members of the Brotherhood prefer for him to be.

Already, then, Ellison's narrator is fast developing a mind of his own, independent of peer pressure or other Brotherhood influences. Again, as in Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues," Ellison implies here that some of the Harlem-based black equality movements did not provide all answers for all blacks:, i.e., the Brotherhood in particular, as Ellison clearly implies, cannot truly capture for good his "Invisible" young narrator's heart or mind.

As Ellison's "Invisible Man" further reflects on the events of that night, he also realizes that despite what other Brothers might have thought or said of his speech, either positively or negatively, he had spoken the words from his heart, that is, spoken the truth as he sees it. Others listening, even if they were not the leaders of the Brotherhood, have responded, sincerely and truthfully, to his heartfelt words. From that day on, the narrator becomes noticeably less impressionable, more independent-minded and self-assured, less susceptible to the views and influences of other Harlem activists whoever they may be, and more trusting of his own, "more human," perceptions and instincts:

For the first time, lying in the dark, I could glimpse the possibility of being more than a member of a race. It was no dream, the possibility existed. I had only to work and learn and survive... Sure, I'd study with Hambro.

I'd learn what he had to teach and a lot more. Let tomorrow come. The sooner I was through with this Hambro, the sooner I could get started with my work. (Ellison, Invisible Man, pp. 347-348)

Coming of age in Harlem in the late 1940's and early 1950's, when Ellison's Invisible Man takes place, however, never becomes any easier or less complicated for Ellison's invisible narrator. By making him nameless and invisible, moreover, Ellison creates for the reader, symbolically-speaking at least, a black youth of Harlem who is both every Harlem dweller and (as white-dominated society would have it) nobody.

Ellison, by the end of the novel, offers no insights into how to "fix" that fact, though, for either his narrator or the reader. We only know, as Ellison ultimately suggests, that those inside Harlem can be as blind to objective truths and realities as those outside it. Harlem is merely a place; it has no soul of its own, and is only as good or bad as its people.

The Harlem-dwelling youth of Ralph Ellison's imagination experiences his next moment of truth about the Brotherhood he has just stopped believing in when he witnesses former Brotherhood member Tod Clifton's murder by a cop. Clifton has, unknown to other Brothers, actually abandoned the Brotherhood by that point.

And, in what would have undoubtedly been seen by them as an act of outrageous betrayal, not only of the brotherhood itself but of his own African-American roots and heritage, and of African-Americans in general, Tod Clifton is now seen by Ellison's "Invisible Man" selling obscene-looking little Sambo-like dolls on Harlem street corners, hideous looking things that move and dance obscenely to a song that severely degrades blacks.

Ellison's narrator in Invisible Man wonders, further, how Tod Clifton could possibly have stooped so low, in such a short time. Moments later, Clifton is murdered. The narrator speaks at his funeral, without ever revealing to the Brotherhood what Clifton had been selling right before he was shot. Clifton, whatever his feelings about him, deserves a dignified funeral and he will not stop it. This is another instance where the narrator demonstrates that he, at last, is beginning to think for himself.

Next, Clifton's murder precipitates a riot in Harlem, including the deliberate setting of a huge fire in which people set their own homes ablaze, in order to underscore the misery of their circumstances, the unfairness of the political system within which they live and work, and their fury at the police and the white establishment in general.

Fleeing the violence, the Invisible Man stumbles underground, finding himself inside a black hole that can be illuminated only by his burning of the contents of his briefcase: first his high school diploma, and then other official documents he carries. By burning these, one by one, literally but also symbolically, he can begin, at last, to see his way.