“Harlem in Black and White” in the Journal of Urban History

Our article “Harlem in Black and White: Mapping Race and Place in the 1920s,” has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Urban History.  It should appear at the end of 2012.  The abstract reads:

In the 1920s, as Harlem emerged as the largest black city in the world, a significant white presence remained in the neighborhood.  Whites not only frequented nightlife, they owned and operated the vast majority of Harlem’s businesses, policed its streets, staffed its schools and hospital, drove its public transport and most of the vehicles travelling its streets, delivered goods, collected rent and insurance payments, and patronized sporting events. Scholars have only made briefly mention of this presence and its impact on everyday life, portraying race relations as harmonious and inconsequential in a neighborhood represented as a segregated refuge from whites.  Drawing on black newspapers and legal records, and using the Digital Harlem site to map and visualize that evidence of the white presence, reveals a very different picture, of interracial encounters that often led to conflict, and of Harlem as a place of contestation, negotiation, resistance, and accommodation.

The map below captures part of the white presence in Harlem, locating the institutions staffed by whites, some of the posts patrolled by police, and the routes traveled by the buses and streetcars driven by whites.  The streets serviced by public transport also featured the neighborhood’s businesses, most staffed as well as owned by whites.  Other maps relating to the white presence in Harlem are already on the blog, in posts on traffic accidents, street vendors, and ice dealers.

Whites in Harlem (Bus routes, Streetcar Routes and Police Patrols appear in the list of Event Types)

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Catholics in 1920s Harlem

Catholic Churches (Search "Place=Church" + Keyword=Catholic)

Catholic churches were spread throughout Harlem, reflecting an organization that assigned each parish a particular part of the neighborhood. Unlike other religious denominations, the Catholic Church did not leave Harlem as blacks occupied the neighborhood. Catholic parishes retained white members into the 1930s, and even as blacks slowly came to dominate congregations, white clergy still presided.  The Church also operated schools in Harlem, and in the 1920s added a day nursery for preschool children and an additional primary school, both operated by black nuns.

In 1929, Lester Walton estimated that 5000 blacks attended Harlem’s Catholic churches.  The earliest were migrants from Maryland; the largest number were immigrants from the West Indies, Puerto Rico and Cuba. Walton identified St Mark’s on West 138th Street as the “largest Negro Catholic Church in New York,” with a membership of 1000.  In 1912, the Holy Ghost Fathers had taken charge of the parish, and within 4 years had converted 400 blacks. At St Charles Borromeo on West 141st Street whites remained a majority of the congregation until the mid-1920s, but by 1929, blacks made up 90% of members.  In Harlem’s other parishes, blacks were still a minority: at St Aloysius on West 132nd Street they made up about half the congregation; at the Church of the Resurrection on 151st Street blacks constituted about 40% of members; and only a few could be found at the two churches on the boundaries of the black neighborhood, St Thomas on West 118th Street and All Saints at East 129th Street and Madison Avenue.

Catholic Schools and Day Nurseries (Search Place="School_Catholic")

Catholic churches undertook one activity that the neighborhood’s Protestant institutions did not: they operated schools.  In 1929, the school next to St Mark’s housed 500 students, taught by seven nuns from the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament and three lay teachers.  Of the 330 students at St Charles Borromeo, all but 15-20 were black, taught by 8 Sisters.  Those teachers were white, as were most of those in the public schools.  Not so those at St Mary’s Primary School, set up in 1930 by the Franciscan Handmaidens, an order of black nuns, in the basement of their convent on East 131st Street (they also operated a day nursery on West 132nd Street).

St Mary's Primary School (Cecilia Moore, "Keeping Harlem Catholic," American Catholic Studies 114, 3 (2003): 14)

The school soon outgrew that location and in the mid-1930s relocated to St Aloysius, first to the rectory, and later to a purpose built structure, dedicated in 1941.

Notwithstanding the work of the Franciscan Handmaidens, the Catholic Church in 1920s Harlem needs to be seen as one of the institutions in which white control persisted long after blacks residents filled the neighborhood

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Cecilia Moore, “Keeping Harlem Catholic: African-American Catholics and Harlem, 1920-1960,” American Catholic Studies, 114, 3 (2003): 3-21.

Lester Walton, “Catholic Church Makes Strides in Harlem,” The World, September 29, 1929, 6E

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Fuller Long: A teenager’s life in Harlem

Fuller Long* was a seventeen-year-old African American boy placed on probation in 1928, after having been convicted of having sexual intercourse with his underage girlfriend.  The map shows his life in Harlem.
(Note: the image accompanying this map on the Digital Harlem site is not of Fuller Long, but a photo by James Van Der Zee of the Alpha Phi Alpha Basketball Team, taken in 1926 in front of their Harlem fraternity house, in the collection of the Corcoran Gallery of Art)
(* This name is a pseudonym, used at the request of the Municipal Archives)

This map is currently one of the Featured Maps on the Digital Harlem site; simply click on the image in the right hand column of the site to see the map. The pop-up box that opens contains an abbreviated version of the information contained in this post.

Together with his parents and two sisters, Long migrated to Harlem from Petersburg, Virginia, in 1923, living for two years at 46 West 132nd St, then in an apartment next door, at 48 West 132nd Street. (The buildings are so close to each other that you need to zoom to the closest level to distinguish them) Such residential stability was true of many families in 1920s Harlem, particularly those with multiple wage-earners (Long’s mother worked as a janitor, and later a housekeeper, and his older sister had a job in a factory; two months after they arrived, Long’s father left the family)

Long stayed in school until the end of ninth grade, when his mother insisted they needed his income to meet expenses and keep his younger sister in school. Schooling kept young blacks in the neighborhood; in the 1920s, Harlem had five public elementary schools and two junior high schools, one for boys, one for girls, a vocational school, and at least two Catholic schools and one private girls school.

Harlem's Schools (Search for Place, 'Location type' = 'School')

When Long left school, he worked first for ice-man based across the street from his home, and then worked outside the district, downtown and in the Bronx. What a New York Times reporter described on March 24, 1935 was also true of the 1920s: “Every morning sees an exodus of workers filling subways, surface cars and elevated trains and every evening sees them returning to their homes (E11).”  Harlem offered few jobs for blacks, with most of the businesses owned and staffed by whites, so Long was one of many residents who spent their working days outside its boundaries.

Long’s time in Harlem was thus spent at home and in leisure, at locations such as the Abyssinian Baptist Church (occasionally), venues where he played sport (gymnasiums where he played basketball (often) and a recreation centre where he swam), dance halls, and at the home of his girlfriend.  Most were within 10 blocks of his home.

It was sports that provided community ties that gave order and stability to Long’s life, and helped keep him from the ‘waywardness’ that reformers expected of the child of a single mother.

Basketball, Long’s particular passion, had a central place in 1920s Harlem.  The neighborhood was home to the Rens, the preeminent black professional team in the 1920s (for which White unsuccessfully tried out in November 1930), and to teams fielded by a variety of different athletic clubs, such as the St Christopher Club (based at St Philip’s Episcopal Church) and the Alpha Physical Culture Club.  Black fraternites regularly played in Harlem, and by the end of the 1920s, an interchurch league was in operation.  Harlem’s schools began competing in the Public School Athletic League in 1910, and by the 1920s repeatedly won championships in basketball. PS 89, where Long played, were city  champions from 1928 to 1937, when they lost to PS 139, Harlem’s junior high school.  Girls and women’s teams also competed, included teams of nurses from Harlem Hospital.

The main venue for basketball was the Renaissance Ballroom (2359 7th Ave), but games were also played at the Alhambra Ballroom (2110 7th Ave), the Palace Garden Casino (2395 7th Ave) and the Manhattan Casino, 258 West 155th St, at the YMCA, and in the gymnasiums of Harlem’s churches and schools.

Harlem's basketball venues (Search Events, 'Event type' = Basketball Game)

A more detailed account of Fuller Long’s life in Harlem can be found in our article, “This Harlem Life: Black Families and Everyday Life in the 1920s and 1930s,” which appears in the Fall 2010 issue of the Journal of Social History.

Other layers you could add to this map:

• Annie Dillard** (who worked in domestic service, outside Harlem, but in different parts of the city to Long.  She was also a single mother, dependent on family for support and shelter, who consequently experienced less residential stability than Long)

• Roger Walker* (who worked as a counterman at various drug stores and restaurants in Harlem.  Single and lacking stable employment, he changed residence frequently until his marriage)



(* This name is a pseudonym, used at the request of the Municipal Archives)

(** This name is a pseudonym, as required by the NY State Archives)

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