FOOD SECTION
Strlvara' Row la actually two rowa of beautifully raatored brown-
atonaa between Lenox Avenue and Powell Boulevard In Harlem
M oat of the bulldlnga are owned and occupied by middle-claaa
Black profeaaionala who are returning to Harlem In growing num
bare.
The Apollo theater la a treaaured landmark of Harlem. For more
than half a century it haa played boat to every major Black ainger,
dancer and comedian. M any, Including Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah
Vaughn got thair flrat profaaaional engagements aa a raault of ap
pearances on amateur night at tha Apollo.
St. David AME Zion Church in Sag Harbor, L.I.N .Y ., dataa from
1840. Tha church waa built by Black seaman and flaharman with tha
help of local Indiana. Reaidenta of Sag Harbor are working to have It
declared a national landmark.
Black History New York Style
by Robert H. Elliott
Mention Southern cooking to al-
nos, anyone, and they'll know what
you mean. Talk about New Orleans
or Southwestern cooking, and
they'll know what to expect.
But what do you get when you
visit fam ily and friends in New
York, the Big Apple?
Is there such a thing as a New
Y ork style in home cooking? Is
(here anything special about soul
food across 11Oth Street?
Those were the questions in the
minds o f the people from K ra ft
when they journeyed to New York
to research an article in their series
on the Heritage o f Black Cooking in
America.
They found that the cooking tra
ditions in New York reflect the city
itself— wide-ranging and cosmopo
litan. Black cooking in New York is
the product o f a complex heritage
and a variety o f sources.
This does not exactly fit the image
some people hold about Black
people in New York. They see more
than a million Black souls squeezed
into a small area at the north end of
M an h attan : “ This place is called
H arlem . It is the Black capital o f
A m erica. A ll Blacks in New York
live there. You lake the A train to
get to Sugar H ill way up in Harlem.
You have to take the A train be
cause no taxi will take you there."
The myth lives in part as the
backwash o f a remarkable period in
the '20s and '30s that is variously
known as the Black Renaissance,
the Negro Renaissance and the H a r
lem Renaissance. But H arlem and
Blacks had a lot o f history long be
fore then.
The first Blacks arrived in New
York in the 17th and 18th centuries
as indentured servants from
England and Africa. Some came as
slaves during New Y o rk ’s brief flir
tation with slavery.
In the years oetween the Revolu
tion and the C ivil W ar, M anhattan
and the surrounding boroughs be
came a haven for free men and es
caped slaves. It was a center o f the
abolitionist movement, though not
quite as active as Philadelphia and
Boston.
By the end o f the Civil W ar, there
were substantial numbers o f Blacks
living throughout the area, in the
years that followed, their numbers
increased slowly but steadily, and
they settled in small communities in
all parts o f the city.
A t that tim e , the area north o f
Central Park was largely rural farm
land and generally inaccessible. In
the last part o f the century, good
roads and public tran s p o rta tio n
made it an a ttra c tiv e residential
area. By the turn o f the century,
most o f the farms were gone and the
good burghers who settled the area
named it Harlem, after the river that
forms its north border.
Harlem is bordered on the east by
the East River, by Eighth Avenue on
the west and 110th Street on the
south, although many people use
the name to cover the entire area
north o f 110th, C olum bia U n iver
sity and M orningside Heights ex
cepted.
As the 20th century opened, H a r
lem was a stable, prosperous com
munity, if not necessarily the weal
thiest or fanciest.
The first Black families were a l
most unnoticed when they settled in
the community. That changed, how
ever, in 1903 when an enterprising
real estate broker began filling up
whole apartment buildings and rows
o f buildings w ith Black fam ilies,
who had recently moved from the
South. Some o f the white neighbors
panicked.
A t the same time, the practice o f
The AME Zion camatary In Sag Harbor la Just acroaa tha road
from 8t. David AME Zion Church. Lika tha church, It was craatad by
and for tha famlllaa of Black aeamen and flaharman who llvad In Sag
Harbor bafora tha Civil War. It la poaalbla to raad tha hlatory of Bag
Harbor'a Black community on tha anclant atonaa of thia camatary.
placing restrictive convenants on en
tire neighborhoods was grow ing
across the nation. It had the effect
o f squeezing almost all o f the new
Black migrants into Harlem. By the
time o f W orld W ar I, Harlem was
almost entirely Black.
In the years after the war, there
was a cultural explosion in Harlem ,
an o u tp o u rin g o f litc ras tu re and
music by and about Black people
that has been unequalled anywhere
in its quantity, quality and effect on
American life and art.
Poets such as C laud e M c K a y ,
C ountee C u llen and Langston
Hughes caught the eye and ear o f
the world. Novels, criticism and es
says flow ed from the pens o f
Hughes, M cK ay, W .E .B . DuBois,
Jean Toom er, E. Franklin Frazier,
Alain Locke, A rthur A . A. Schom-
burg and others.
Schomburg amassed a collection
o f the work o f the Renaissance and
earlier periods. It became the basis
for the nation's largest collection o f
literary works by and about Black
Americans. Today the collection is
housed in the Harlem branch o f the
New Y o rk Public L ib ra ry that is
named for Schomburg.
The literature o f the Renaissance
made and im p o rtan t and lasting
contribution to Am erican life, but
the most visible effects were in
music and the performing arts.
H arlem supported between six
and eight theater com panies at
various times during that period.
They performed works in the stan
dard rep erto ry and new plays by
Black writers.
The commercial Broadway thea
ter p referred works about Blacks
from white playwrights, so many of
the Black playwrights withered from
neglect.
Black actors were more fortunate
and performers such as Paul Robe
son, Ethel Waters, Charles G ilpin,
and Richard B. Harrison made it to
stardom on the Broadway stage.
The real pride o f Harlem in those
days was two night clubs and a thea
ter: S m a ll’ s Paradise, the C o tto n
Club and the Apollo. They featured
the brightest and best Black musi
cians, singers and comics o f the day.
The C otton C lub in particular be
came famous as the place where the
D uke E llin g to n orchestra first
caught national attention and Lena
Horne performed as a showgirl.
The C otton C lub was a favorite
place fo r w ealthy whites from
D ow ntow n to go slum m ing. Very
few Black residents o f Harlem ever
saw the inside o f the place. They
w eren’ t very w elcom e, and the
prices were sky high.
Anyway, their hearts belonged to
the A p o llo . They were welcome
there, and they could afford it.
I he A p o llo was home to every
prominent Black entertainer from
the Twenties right up to the Sixties,
when, lik e everything else in H a r
lem, it fell on bad times.
In those four decades, the Apollo
spawned more talen t than any
comparable place in America. There
is a saying among Black entertain
ers: “ I f you haven’ t made it at the
Apollo, you haven’t made it. I f you
can make it at the A pollo, you can
make it anywhere.”
The audiences at the A p o llo are
tough. A lot o f big names have been
booed o ff the A pollo stage. And a
lot o f stars have been created there.
Billie H oliday, Ella Fitzgerald ana
Sarah Vaughn were all discovered
on Apollo amateur nights.
It was not too difficult to believe
that Harlem was all o f Black New
York.
Yet, even at the height o f the Ren
aissance, Blacks were livin g and
thriving in other areas o f New York,
generally in smaller, satellite ghet-
toes.
A ll o f these communities m ain
tained a measure o f economic stabil
ity because the pattern o f racial seg
regation enforced economic integra
tion in the ghettoes. Well-to-do and
w elfare fam ilies lived in close
p ro xim ity even i f not in social
intimacy. That helped the communi
ty survive if not thrive, but it was
not enough for what was coming.
During the Depression and World
W ar I I , very little was done to ex
pand the housing supply in Harlem.
The heavy influx o f new resident
from the South during and after thi
war turned Harlem into a pressuri
cooker
After the war, the development oi
integrated public housing through
out the five boroughs relieved som<
o f the pressure. But not enough. At
the same time, the lifting o f restric
tive covenants made it easier fo
Blacks w ith means to live almos
anywhere they chose. They chos<
not to live in Harlem. Its feeble eco
nomic base disappeared.
In the Seventies, H arlem lookei
and fe lt lik e a war zone. It was i
place where almost no one went un
(Please turn to Page 10)
BLACK HISTORY '82
IN 1962, HERMAN RUSSELLWAS
THE HRST BLACK ADMITTED TO THE
ATLANTA CHAMBER OF COM M ERCE
TODAY HE’S JUST COMPLETED
HIS TERM AS PRESIDENT
Black H is to ry is livin g history.
It grows day a fte r day thro ug h the achievements of people like
Herman Russell
His vision and energy built his contracting business into a m ulti-m illion
dollar enterprise. One of his firms biggest accomplishments was helping build
America s newest and largest airport, Hartsfield Airport, in Atlanta
We re proud to congratulate Herman Russell. His future is
sure to make history.
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