Special Section: The New Harlem - Harlem, New York

Ebony, August, 2001 by Charles Whitaker

Introduction

THERE WAS A TIME, in the '20s, '30s and '40s, when a lot of people in Harlem--and outside Harlem--believed Harlem was the center of the universe and that nothing of importance in entertainment and Black economics and politics happened outside the blocks bounded by 90th Street and 168th Street.

In the 20s, for example no one, not even royalty, not even the great names of European classical music, could visit the isle of Manhattan without going Uptown, as they say, to the capital of the Black World.

In the '30s, the center of New York nightlife and the center of the musical universe was the constellation of clubs and names, the Cotton Club, the Home of Happy Feet, Smalls Paradise, the Apollo, that defined jazz and color and cool.

In the '40s and later, when W.E.B. DuBois, Thurgood Marshall and other major Blacks lived on Sugar Hill and decided major events in Black America over chess and cocktails, every major Black visiting New York could be seen in the lobby or the bar of Hotel Theresa.

Time, demographics, unemployment, hard drugs and other withering, late-century dynamics dimmed Harlem's glamor in the '50s, and the spotlight shifted to other meccas--Chicago, Atlanta, L.A. But within recent years, with little or no notice in the media, new forces and new people have triggered a renaissance and new questions: Can history repeat itself in Harlem? Can Harlem become once again the international Black Mecca?

This is an interim report, and a tentative answer, on the New Harlem, which is moving once again into the national spotlight it never really relinquished and is talking big again, as in the days of Garvey, as in the days of Powell, as in the days of Langston Hughes, when everybody or almost everybody was taking the Ellington/Strayhorn "A-Train" to 125th Street and the center of Black Light.

New Money, New Economic Development Create New Mood

With a phalanx of constituents saluting her along the way, C. Virginia Fields, the president of the borough of Manhattan in New York, tools down a bustling 125th Street in Harlem, proudly pointing out the obvious signs of progress. There is the Blockbuster video store, which has quickly become one of the most profitable of the mega-chain's Manhattan outlets. There is the Old Navy clothing store, also doing record-breaking business since its parent company, the Gap, decided to test the retail waters in Harlem. There are scores of small businesses, from hamburger joints to handbag emporiums, each teaming with browsers and buyers on a steamy Wednesday afternoon. And to top it all off, there is that omnipresent symbol of gentrification, a Starbucks coffee shop, parked right on the corner of 125th and Lenox Avenue.

Harlem is definitely hot. After decades of decline, in which a third of its residents and two-thirds of its large businesses fled (or, in the ease of some businesses, collapsed), Harlem, which was the unofficial capital of Black America, is on the rebound. And this time, the rebound is for real.

Sure, there's been talk before about a new Harlem Renaissance--a revival of the so-called glory days of the 1930s, '40s and '50s, when Harlem appeared to be the epicenter of Black commerce and culture. But efforts to pump economic vitality back into the community always seemed to come up short, as was evident in the desolation that marked 125th Street, Harlem's commercial hub, from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s.

"There was a period," says Fields, a 30-year Harlem resident, "when some of the larger businesses no longer expressed interest in Harlem to the extent that they had before. So for years this community didn't have many of the services we should have had. You had to go downtown if you wanted to see a first-run movie or to get your prescription filled at the drug store."

That was then, before Harlem became Manhattan's new "in" destination, before a new influx of upper-middle-class and wealthy transplants from downtown--many of them White--moved up to Harlem in enough numbers to convince retailers that opening an outpost north of 96th Street wasn't such a huge gamble after all. "What we're seeing now," says Fields, "is the result of a significant population shift. People are moving in the community with a great deal of disposable income, and the businesses are responding to that."

Who are these new arrivals? Many are young, upper-middle-class couples like Geraldine Moriba-Meadows, 35, a producer for NBC's Dateline news magazine, and her husband, Warner Meadows III, 39, an anesthesiologist. The Meadowses moved with their two children in March into a gutted and rehabbed brownstone on a block Geraldine describes as "still in transition." Yet, she says, they had no trepidation about moving to Harlem.

"Harlem is such a beautiful part of New York," Geraldine says. "We just liked its proximity to everything, and we felt that this was a place where our family would feel comfortable, culturally and socially."

But young, upwardly mobile couples are only part of the story of the new Harlem. High-profile transplants are also contributing to the renewed vigor that's coursing through the community. On the commercial side, you have Magic Johnson, who has built one of his multiplex theaters in Harlem. Former President Bill Clinton is currently in the process of setting up his new headquarters in a gleaming tower on 125th Street. And on the cultural front, real estate agents are buzzing about the fact that famed writer/actress/ director Maya Angelou is leaving her longtime home in North Carolina to establish residence in Harlem.