Where is nowhere?
Excerpt from a new book
Harlem is Nowhere by Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts
The question naturally arises," Are the Negroes going to be able to hold Harlem?" If they had been steadily driven northward for the past hundred years and out of less desirable sections, can they hold this choice bit of Manhattan Island? It is hardly profitable that Negroes will hold Harlem indefinitely, but when they are forced out it will not be for the same reasons that forced them out of former quarters in New York City. The situation is entirely different and without precedent.When colored people do leave Harlem, their homes, their churches, their investements and their businesses, it will be because the land has become so valuable they can no longer afford to live on it. But the date of another move northward is very far in the future.
James Weldon Johnson, The New Negro 1925
Has that date arrived?
Harlem is Nowhere by Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts
The question naturally arises," Are the Negroes going to be able to hold Harlem?" If they had been steadily driven northward for the past hundred years and out of less desirable sections, can they hold this choice bit of Manhattan Island? It is hardly profitable that Negroes will hold Harlem indefinitely, but when they are forced out it will not be for the same reasons that forced them out of former quarters in New York City. The situation is entirely different and without precedent.When colored people do leave Harlem, their homes, their churches, their investements and their businesses, it will be because the land has become so valuable they can no longer afford to live on it. But the date of another move northward is very far in the future.
James Weldon Johnson, The New Negro 1925
Has that date arrived?
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