Harlem

HARLEM Harlem was originally a village on Manhattan island, now the local name for that part of the borough of Manhattan, New York city, beginning at io6th street and extending north between the East and Harlem rivers and Eighth avenue. Its settlement, on the site of what is now Mount Morris park, dates from 1636. In 1658 Peter Stuyvesant named the village New Haarlem, after Haarlem, the town in Holland from which many of its inhabitants came. The old village is charmingly described by Washington. Irving in his Knickerbocker's History of New York. Harlem re tained its quiet aspect, surrounded by farms, until 1836, when daily communication by horse railroad was established with New York. Thereafter, by degrees, the village became a populous sub urb and was finally transformed into a densely built residential section of the metropolis. The name now refers more specifically to the district north of 125th street, which in the 1920's became the most populous urban Negro community in the world.

The Negro

the World War about soo,000 Negroes, taking advantage of the restrictions placed upon Euro pean immigration, and lured by war-time wages, turned from agri cultural pursuits in the South to the highly specialized industries of the North. In New York city the migrants, uniting their for tunes with a stream of 6o,000 Negroes coming from Central America and the West Indies, swept uptown and formed above 125th street a fabulous Negro city of 250,00o souls. This district does not constitute, however, the only point of Negro mass con tact on Manhattan island. On the crest of "San Juan Hill" is a colony of 5,000 to 6,000 Negroes which in point of primitivity and hardihood easily outstrips Harlem. Within the shadow of the Fifty-third street elevated are the remnants of a Negro settle ment which antedates by at least a quarter of a century the glamorous "Mecca of the New Negro." But the concentration of the Negro population in Harlem has dwarfed the various settle ments of the race in other parts of New York city. In the evolu tion of Negro communities in the North the dominating motive has always seemed to be economic, until Harlem arose to challenge the tradition ; for here there is no single avenue of employment.

Economic Status.

In Harlem, unlike other American Negro communities, there are no banks, insurance companies, or large realty firms under Negro management. There is no outlet for the

young Negro trained in business or finance. Apart from a branch of the Y.W.C.A., a branch of the Y.M.C.A., and half-a-dozen sparsely staffed weekly newspapers, there are few places for Negroes to gain experience as stenographers, book-keepers or accountants. The district has not yet awakened to the necessity of a group consciousness in business. Indeed, the lines of business in which they are engaged are the traditional ones : barbering, hairdressing, operating undertaking establishments, cabarets and employment agencies. Sometimes competition by outsiders is keen in lines which are usually associated with Negro enterprise in cities, such as the management of theatres, restaurants, poolrooms, cabarets and dance halls. With one or two exceptions all the rest—delicatessen stores, drug stores, haberdasheries, ice cream parlors, department stores—are owned and operated by whites. In fact it is recognized in Harlem sociology that the only Negroes of training who dare risk the chances of a career in the com munity are physicians, lawyers, dentists, preachers, teachers, etc.

Cultural Ascendancy.

In spite of this curious showing Har lem's ascendancy over the rest of the Negro communities of the country is a striking and vital one. Harlem is, to begin with, the goal of the Negro artist, poet, painter, musician or writer. Because Harlem is a part of New York it has done most to focus attention on the creative gifts of the American Negro. Likewise, because of the welter of native Negro races simmering in its orbit, it is a sort of market place for all sorts of ideas concerning Negro life, and the history and the future of the race. It is the fountain head from which spring most of the plans of welfare and conduct and of agi tation and protest against mob violence, lynch law, segregation and disfranchisement. So far Harlem represents the most conspic uous civic promise Negroes have enjoyed in the United States of securing the rights and privileges of human equality.

historical data see Washington Irving, Knicker bocker's History of New York (5809) ; J. G. Wilson, Memorial History of the City of New York (1892-93) ; C. H. Pierce, New Harlem, Past and Present (1903) ; and James Riker, Revised History of Harlem