B0047Y0FJ6 EBOK

  —Greg Tate, editor of Everything but the Burden

  “Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts’s new book resists easy classification: It’s part literary walking tour, part urban history, part memoir, and all beautiful prose…. As Ralph Ellison, from whose 1948 essay Rhodes-Pitts borrows her book’s title, wrote in Invisible Man: ‘This really was Harlem, and now all the stories which I had heard of the city-within-a-city leaped alive in my mind…. This was not a city of realities, but of dreams.’ Reading Harlem Is Nowhere, we’re also watching Rhodes-Pitts chase this dream, and it’s impossible to look away.”

  —Laura Moser, “DoubleX Book of the Week,” Slate

  Credits

  Poems by Langston Hughes—“The Weary Blues,” “Lament over Love,” “Harlem Night Song,” “Juke Box Love Song,” “Harlem (2) [‘What happens to a dream deferred…’],” and “Theme for English B”—are from The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, edited by Arnold Rampersad with David Roessel, Associate Editor, copyright © 1994 by the Estate of Langston Hughes. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

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  Notes

  Epigraph

  “The writer operates at a peculiar crossroads”: Flannery O’Connor, “The Regional Writer,” in Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969), 59.

  Chapter 1: A Colony of Their Own

  “Harlem: A residential and business district”: The Columbia-Lippincott Gazetteer of the World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1952).

  This volume reveals that a city called Hankow: The Handbook of Geographical Nicknames (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow, 1980).

  Harlem is blocked in: The WPA Guide to New York City (New York: Pantheon, 1982), 253.

  “Negro Harlem, into which are crowded”: Ibid., 253 – 54.

  a haven for the clerks and small merchants: Charles Henry White, “In Up-town New York,” Harper’s Monthly Magazine, 112 (December 1905), 220.

  “The whites paid little attention”: James Weldon Johnson, “Harlem: The Culture Capital,” in The New Negro: An Interpretation, edited by Alain Locke (New York: Albert & Charles Boni, 1925), 303 – 4.

  When the Hudson Realty Company: Ibid., 304.

  A December 17, 1905, article: New York Times, “Real Estate Race War Is Started in Harlem,” December 17, 1905. http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archivefree/pdfres=9B00E4DB153AE733A25754C1A9649D946497D6CF (accessed May 5, 2010).

  “An untoward circumstance”: New York Herald, “Negroes Move into Harlem,” December 24, 1905. Excerpted in Allon Schoener, Harlem on My Mind: Cultural Capital of Black America, 1900 – 1968 (New York: Random House, 1968), 23.

  “Their presence is undesirable among us”: New York Indicator article quoted by unattributed author in “Opinion: Land,” The Crisis, Vol. 8, No. 4 (August 1914): 176.

  We believe… that real friends of Negroes: Harlem Home News, “Loans to White Renegades Who Back Negroes Cut Off,” April 7, 1911. Excerpted in Schoener, Harlem on My Mind, 25.

  “In Harlem, Negro life is seizing upon”: Alain Locke, “The New Negro,” in Locke, ed., The New Negro: An Interpretation, 7.

  Harlem represents the Negro’s latest thrust: Locke, “Harlem,” in Survey Graphic (March 1925: Special Issue, “Harlem Mecca of the New Negro”): 629.

  And there was New York City: Charles S. Johnson, “The New Frontage on American Life,” in Locke, ed., The New Negro: An Interpretation, 279.

  In 1928, Wallace Thurman’s: Wallace Thurman, Negro Life in New York’s Harlem: A Lively Picture of a Popular and Interesting Section (New York: Haldeman-Julius Publications, 1927), 5.

  “Harlem, like a Picasso painting in his cubistic period”: Langston Hughes, “My Early Days in Harlem,” in Harlem, U.S.A., edited by John Henrik Clarke (New York: Collier Books, 1971), 85 – 89.

  Harlem, I grant you, isn’t typical: Locke, “Harlem,” 630.

  “The question naturally arises”: Johnson, “Harlem: The Culture Capital,” 308.

  Chapter 2: Into the City of Refuge

  more determination than ever… what was that line: Wallace Thurman, The Blacker the Berry… (New York: Collier Books, 1970), 66.

  again she had that strange transforming experience: Nella Larsen, Quicksand and Passing (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1986), 43.

  Harlem, teeming black Harlem: Ibid.

  Oh, to be in Harlem again: Claude McKay, Home to Harlem (Belmont, CA: Northeastern, 1987), 15.

  Oh, the contagious fever of Harlem: Ibid.

  He stood up and his feet burned: George Wylie Henderson, Jule (New York: Creative Age Press, 1946), 96 – 97.

  A sign on a lamppost said W. 135th St.: Ibid.

  clean air, blue sky, bright sunlight: Rudolph Fisher, “City of Refuge,” in The City of Refuge: The Collected Stories of Rudolph Fisher (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2008), 35.

  “Negroes at every turn”: Ibid.

  In Harlem, black was white: Ibid., 36.

  “Who you say sentcher heah, dearie?”: Zora Neale Hurston, “Muttsy,” in The Complete Stories (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1995), 41 – 42.

  She wished herself back home: Ibid., 45.

  24 flight—but where?: Ibid.

  “She got off the train”: Ann Petry, The Street (Cambridge, MA: Riverside Press, 1946), 57.

  “Up here they are no longer creatures”: Ibid.

  Ay, Harlem! Ay, Harlem! Ay, Harlem!: Federico García Lorca, “El Rey de Harlem / The King of Harlem,” in Poet in New York: A Bilingual Edition (New York: Grove Press, 2007), 25 – 33.

  a long, hand-wringing article: Adam Gopnik, “Saving Paradise,” The New Yorker (April 22, 2002), 76 – 84.

  More recently a plaintive piece: Trymaine Lee, “Harlem Pas de Deux,” New York Times, February 17, 2008.

  a housing deficit, lacking over 38,000 units: Danilo Pelletiere, Keith Wendrip, Sheila Crowley, Out of Reach 2006 (New York: National Low Income Housing Coalition), 15.

  the availability of a quality latte in Harlem: John Leland, “A New Harlem Gentry in Search of Its Latte,” New York Times, August 7, 2003.

  The article ended by celebrating: Michael Stoler, “The Sweetest and Best of Manhattan,” New York Sun, September 1, 2005.

  any land where the native people were not Christians: V. Y. Mudimbe, The Idea of Africa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 30.

  nineteenth-century British architects of the plan: Diana Muir, “A Land Without a People for a People Without a Land,” The Middle East Quarterly 15 (Spring 2008): 55 – 62.

  The controversial “Harlem on My Mind” exhibition: The show was a groundbreaking endeavor for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, sparking debate and dissent on many fronts. It was a major exhibition at the nation’s premier art museum, but it did not feature any art, instead offering multimedia displays, archival photos, music. This was seen as an affront to black artists such as Jacob Lawrence and Romare Bearden, and as anathema to cultural conservatives, who saw the museum as straying from its role; both sides deemed the show a sociological exhibit. Meanwhile, community representatives from Harlem who’d been brought in to bolster the show’s credibility withdrew their support. Finally, the exhibition catalog contained an essay by a teenage Harlemite who was accused of anti-Semitism for her statements about the relationship between black Harlemites and Jewish shopkeepers. For more information about the historic exhibition, see Matthew Israel, “As Landmark: An Introduction to ‘Harlem on My Mind,’ ” Art Spaces Archive Project, http://as-ap.org/Israel/resources.cfm (accessed August 29, 2010).

  “A railroad ticket and a suitcase”: Locke, “Harlem,” 630.

  When I came out of the subway: Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (New York: Vintage, 1995)
, 159.

  “This really was Harlem”: Ibid.

  “I spent as much time as I could in Harlem”: Langston Hughes, “My Early Days in Harlem,” in Harlem, U.S.A., edited by John Henrik Clarke (New York: Collier Books, 1971), 57 – 59.

  youthful illusion that Harlem was a world unto itself: Ibid.

  “The arrival uptown, Harlem”: Amiri Baraka / LeRoi Jones, “The Black Arts (Harlem, Politics, Search for a New Life),” in Autobiography of LeRoi Jones (Chicago: Freundlich Books, 1984), 202.

  the Negro’s latest thrust: Alain Locke, “Harlem,” in Survey Graphic (March 1925: Special Issue, “Harlem Mecca of the New Negro”): 629.

  “It’s you young folks”: Ellison, Invisible Man, 255.

  She eschewed the “Y” as too bare: Larsen, Quicksand, 44.

  “Beds with long, tapering posts”: Ibid.

  “Little by little the signs of spring appeared”: Ibid.

  the dark, dirty, three rooms: Petry, The Street, 12.

  “The farther up they went”: Ibid.

  I usedta live in the world: Ntozake Shange, from for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf (New York: Macmillan, 1977), 28.

  Black boy / O black boy: Melvin B. Tolson, from “Alpha,” in The Harlem Gallery: Book I, The Curator (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1965), 20.

  sometimes a few little Italians and Jewish children: New York Evening Post, April 6, 1910.

  “Although Mrs. Matthews was at the dock”: Mary L. Lewis, “The White Rose Industrial Association: The Friend of the Strange Girl in New York,” The Messenger VII (April 1925), 158.

  friend of the strange girl: Ibid.

  Let us call it White Rose: Hallie Q. Brown, “Victoria Earle Matthews, 1861 – 1898,” in Homespun Heroines (Xenia, OH: Aldine Printing House, 1926), 214.

  Mrs. Matthews and her collaborators took turns at the pier: Ibid.

  pleasant lodgings for girls: Lewis, “The White Rose Industrial Association,” 158.

  Some were well educated: Brown, Homespun Heroines, 214.

  By 1918, when the black population of New York: Lewis, “The White Rose Industrial Association,” 158.

  one of the most unique special libraries: New York Evening Post, April 6, 1910.

  a good stock of aprons: New York Age, Advertisement, “Working Girls’ Home,” July 27, 1905.

  Our history and individuality: Victoria Earle Matthews in Richard Newman, African-American Quotations (New York: Facts on File, 2000).

  “Thus she hoped to inspire in them”: Brown, Homespun Heroines, 216.

  decorated to the taste: New York Amsterdam News, “White Rose Home Still a Refuge After 70 Long Years,” March 4, 1967.

  “The rooms retain their soft, nostalgic glow”: Ibid.

  Chapter 3: Searching for the Underground City

  The comedy advertised: The play was 39 East by Rachel Crothers. See John Corbin, “Drama: Wistaria Romance,” New York Times, April 1, 1919.

  The picture is titled: Within Thirty Seconds Walk of the 135th Street Branch, from the Franklin F. Hopper Harlem Scrapbook, 1920. NYPL Digital Gallery, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture / Photographs and Prints Division. http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/dgkeysearchdetail.cfm?strucID=465419&imageID=1168424#_seemore (accessed May 20, 2010).

  Staff and Friends of the Negro Division: Photograph, circa 1935, in The Legacy of Arthur Alfonso Schomburg: A Celebration of the Past, A Vision for the Future (New York: New York Public Library, 1986), 47.

  Instead of considering the Negro problem: Celeste Tibbets, Ernestine Rose and the Origins of the Schomburg Center: Schomburg Center Occasional Papers Series, Number Two (New York: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, 1989), 20.

  to preserve the historical records: Elinor Des Verney Sinnette, Arthur Alfonso Schomburg: Black Bibliophile and Collector (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989), 132 – 34.

  You would be surprised: Ibid., 74.

  His interest in black history was sparked: Ibid., 13.

  There is a Negro exhibit: Marjorie Schuler, “New York Public Library Shows Exhibit of Negro Achievements,” Christian Science Monitor, August 30, 1925.

  “Not long ago, the Public Library of Harlem”: Arthur A. Schomburg, “The Negro Digs Up His Past,” in The New Negro: An Interpretation, edited by Alain Locke (New York: Albert & Charles Boni, 1925), 232.

  “Mecca of Literature”: Richard B. Moore, “Africa-Conscious Harlem,” in Harlem, U.S.A., edited by John Henrik Clarke (New York: Collier Books, 1971), 37 – 38.

  Revealing volumes expressed the consciousness of Africa: Ibid.

  When I first thought of opening a bookstore: Abiola Sinclair, “Liberation Bookstore—15th Anniversary,” New York Amsterdam News, November 20, 1982.

  “a three-way standoff”: Rufus Schatzberg, Black Organized Crime in Harlem: 1920 – 1930 (Sacramento, CA: Garland Science, 1993).

  The book compiles the effort: The Civil Rights Congress, We Charge Genocide: The Historic Petition to the United Nations for Relief from a Crime of the United States Government Against the Negro People (New York: Civil Rights Congress, 1951).

  Mrs. Charles Turner of New York City: Ibid., 116.

  One speaker, David White: Lee A. Daniels, “City Proposal to Rebuild Harlem Gets Stony Community Response,” New York Times, February 3, 1983.

  “David White was a founding member”: From author’s private collection.

  Flashing through the streets: Ibid.

  “The American Negro must remake his past”: Schomburg, “The Negro Digs Up His Past,” 231, 237.

  The original symbol once guarded: Eugène Goblet d’Alviella, The Migration of Symbols (Westminster: Archibald Constable and Company, 1894), 204 – 7.

  When we consider the facts: Schomburg, “The Negro Digs Up His Past,” 234.

  dust of digging: Ibid., 237.

  So the Negro historian today: Ibid., 231.

  During the life of the Cheikh: See Allen F. Roberts and Mary Nooter Roberts with Gassia Armenian and Ousmane Gueye, A Saint in the City: Sufi Arts of Urban Senegal (Los Angeles: University of California Los Angeles, Fowler, 2003).

  Their holy men minister with words: Ibid.

  slum-clearance programs of the 1950s: See Committee on Slum Clearance Plans, Harlem: Slum Clearance Plan Under Title 1 of the Housing Act of 1949: Report to Mayor Impellitteri and the Board of Estimate (New York: Committee on Slum Clearance Plans, 1951).

  Chapter 4: Harlem Dream Books

  The instructor said: Langston Hughes, “Theme for English B,” in The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes (New York: Knopf, 1994), 409 – 10.

  life for me ain’t been no crystal stair: Hughes, “Mother to Son,” Ibid., 30.

  What happens to a dream deferred?: Hughes, “Harlem [2],” Ibid., 426.

  Come, Let us roam the night together: Hughes, “Harlem Night Song,” Ibid., 94 – 95.

  I could take the Harlem night: Hughes, “Juke Box Love Song,” Ibid., 393.

  “I got the Weary Blues”: Hughes, “The Weary Blues,” Ibid., 50.

  What you call a ghetto: Bruce Davidson, East 100th Street (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970), n.p.

  I was a neighborhood boy: Quoted by Ann Banks, “Introduction,” in Aaron Siskind, Harlem Document: Photographs 1932 – 1940 (Providence, RI: Matrix Publications, 1981), 7.

  I hung around playgrounds: Ibid.

  they were black and themselves “on relief”: Ibid.

  “So you want to know”: Ralph Ellison, “The Way It Is,” in Shadow and Act (New York: Random House, 1964), 284.

  “I’m in New York”: Ellison, “Railroad Porter,” in Siskind, Harlem Document, 54.

  “And you have to take care”: Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (New York: Vintage, 1995), 255.

  the low-down folks: Langston Hughes, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” The Nation 23 (June 1926): 692 – 94.

  the limitations of folk art: Babette Deutsch,
“Waste Land of Harlem” (Review of Montage of a Dream Deferred), New York Times, May 6, 1951.

  I cannot truthfully state: Langston Hughes, “Foreword: Who Is Simple,” in The Best of Simple (New York: Hill and Wang, 1990), vii.

  Without me saying a word: Ibid.

  asexual: Arnold Rampersad, The Life of Langston Hughes. Volume I: 1902 – 1941, I, Too, Sing America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 434.

  I hope my child’ll: Hughes, “Lament over Love,” in The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, 69.

  a basement to Hell: Hurston quoted in Valerie Boyd, Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston (New York: Scribner, 2003), 384.

  At certain times I have no race: Zora Neale Hurston, “How It Feels to Be Colored Me,” World Tomorrow 11 (May 1928): 215 – 16.

  lied about her age: Boyd, Wrapped in Rainbows, 75.

  carefully accented Barnardese: Zora Neale Hurston, “Research,” in Dust Tracks on a Road (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984), 175.

  “Almost nobody else”: Langston Hughes, “Harlem Literati,” in The Big Sea: An Autobiography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1945), 239.

  Research is a formalized curiosity: Hurston, “Research,” in Dust Tracks, 174.

  [to] many of her white friends: Hughes, “Harlem Literati,” in The Big Sea, 239.

  “Bam, and down in Bam”: Zora Neale Hurston, “Glossary of Harlem Slang,” in The Complete Stories (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1995), 134 – 38.

  arguing in favor of segregation: Zora Neale Hurston, “Court Order Can’t Make the Races Mix,” Orlando Sentinel, The Public Thought, August 11, 1955. In Waldo E. Martin, Brown v. Board of Education: A Brief History with Documents (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1998), 209 – 12.