A History of Black Life in Manhattan

From The New Yorker’s archive: Jervis Anderson’s remarkable series on the history of Black Harlem. View in browser | Update your preferences That Was New York Harlem: The Journey Uptown The history of a neighborhood—and a refuge—for the Black community of twentieth-century Manhattan. By Jervis Anderson Few neighborhoods in New York City—indeed, few neighborhoods anywhere—are as closely linked with a community as Harlem is with African Americans. In literature and music, fashion and film, the area has become synonymous with Black culture and history—to such an extent that many people may not realize how recently that history started. “Until 1900, Harlem had been a virtually all-white neighborhood,” Jervis Anderson wrote in The New Yorker, in 1981. “The blacks who began settling there at that time did not see themselves as the advance guard of a larger community.” But, as quickly became clear, those uptown transplants were building something new, a vibrant home that enriched the city as a whole, even as those contributions were often overlooked. In a four-part series, Anderson—a staff writer between 1968 and 1998—delivered a remarkable history of Black Harlem, tracing the community’s beginnings to the arrival, more than three centuries earlier, of the first Africans in Manhattan. Anderson’s collection, later published as a book, “This Was Harlem,” movingly conveys the story of the neighborhood, detailing the diversity of its residents and a multitude of their accomplishments, many achieved in the shadow of discrimination and violence. On this February 1st—the start of Black History Month and the anniversary of Lincoln’s signing of the Thirteenth Amendment, banning slavery—we wish you rewarding reading. Read the story Also from the Archive That Was New York Harlem: Shaping a Black Metropolis From 1981: The neighborhood’s early development, from the rise of Black-owned businesses and ragtime, to Marcus Garvey and Madam C. J. Walker, the millionaire beautician. By Jervis Anderson Books The Man Who Led the Harlem Renaissance—and His Hidden Hungers From 2018: Alain Locke helped launch black modernism, but he was spurned by the artists he hoped to turn into lovers. By Tobi Haslett More from The New Yorker Annals of Inquiry Surveillance and the Loneliness of the Long-Distance Trucker A new book shows how electronic tracking systems have failed to make trucking safer. But they have helped companies spy on their workers. By Gideon Lewis-Kraus Postscript He Was Tom Verlaine Patti Smith remembers her friend, who possessed the child’s gift of transforming a drop of water into a poem that somehow begat music. By Patti Smith Thanks for Reading. Let us know your thoughts about today’s edition. Plus, browse more newsletters and invite a friend to sign up for The Daily. You’re receiving this e-mail because you signed up for the New Yorker Classics newsletter. Manage your preferences | View our Privacy Policy | Unsubscribe The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from the products and services that are purchased through links in our newsletters as part of our affiliate partnerships with retailers. Copyright © Condé Nast 2023. One World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. All rights reserved.