David Brooks is very excited about the results reported by the Harlem Children's Zone. But do the statistics back up his excitement?
posted by wittgenstein on May 22, 2009 - 48 comments

Extravagant Crowd - Carl Van Vechten’s Portraits of Women and Photos of African Americans. Previous post by ND¢: Creative Americans: Portraits by Carl Van Vechten 1932-1964. Also, public domain works from Wikimedia Commons. [more inside]
posted by madamjujujive on Mar 22, 2009 - 3 comments

Invincible Cities "Hundreds of color photographs of Richmond, California, Camden, New Jersey, and Harlem, New York, intended by the artist to be part of a 'Visual Encyclopedia of the American Ghetto.' The photos depict the built environment of these cities as they change over time (1980s-2005). Website features a detailed introduction and databases of photos from each city with interactive maps." [via] [more inside]
posted by MLIS on Mar 3, 2009 - 10 comments

"No one told me there would be unremitting noise every Saturday for the rest of my life.” Historic Harlem drumming circle drives young white professionals drum crazy. Who will prevail?
posted by [NOT HERMITOSIS-IST] on Jul 9, 2008 - 151 comments

"And I couldn’t get over the fact that there was no difference between [Harlem's famous] Sylvia’s restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City. I mean, it was exactly the same, even though it’s run by blacks, primarily black patronship....It was like going into an Italian restaurant in an all-white suburb in the sense of people were sitting there, and they were ordering and having fun...And there wasn’t any kind of craziness at all." 1968? Nope. Bill O'Reilly in 2007. [more inside]
posted by ericb on Sep 25, 2007 - 95 comments

Harlem's commercial and cultural backbone, 125th Street, has been gentrifying fast; many of its Black-owned businesses have been forced out by high rents and replaced by branches of white-owned national chain stores. The street's best-known cultural centers remain (notably the Apollo Theater and the Studio Museum in Harlem), but now, its oldest surviving Black-owned store, The Record Shack, is facing eviction. Owner Shikulu Shange, along with other Harlem residents, will lead a town meeting next week to discuss strategies for keeping Black economic development alive in Harlem and in NYC (as of the 2000 U.S. Census, NYC's five boroughs were home to more than 98,000 of about 129,000 Black-owned businesses in all of New York State).
posted by allterrainbrain on Jul 7, 2007 - 52 comments

Bill Clinton Doesn't Care About Black People. (More. Protest Announcement.)
posted by bardic on Jul 24, 2006 - 79 comments

A long-lost treasure too toxic to touch: Construction at New York City's Harlem Community Justice Center recently revealed a room piled high with records documenting the building's former life as an early 20th century prison. They offer a peek into the street life of ca. 1900 NYC and scholars are already interested - there's only one problem: the room also contains decades worth of toxic pigeon droppings. (NY Times - registration required). Photos (click on the "records rescue" link at the bottom) of the room are available at the great correctionhistory.org which also offers histories and photos of other out-of-the-way corners of NYC like the Hart Island Potter's Field.
posted by ryanshepard on Nov 5, 2004 - 9 comments

How much do you like your cell phone? (NY Times link - alternate here) Bronx resident reaches into train toilet to retrieve dropped phone, becomes trapped, is rescued by jaws of life.
posted by Aaorn on Oct 31, 2003 - 11 comments

Harlem 1900-1940, a site full of pictures and history. The scope of this portfolio is Harlem from the years 1900-1940. Various elements of the history of the urban experience in Harlem's early days as the Cultural Capital of African Americans are represented here by graphic and photographic images from the Schomburg Center collection.
posted by Ufez Jones on Sep 8, 2003 - 3 comments

A Great Day in Harlem. Jazz history through one photograph.
posted by plep on Mar 2, 2003 - 13 comments