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Welcome to another edition of black man in America presented by a city station in cooperation with the city's commission on human rights these programs are broadcast Tuesday afternoons at five on W. N.Y.C. F.M. ninety three point nine mega cycles and Tuesday evenings at nine W N Y C eight hundred thirty killer cycles here now to tell you more about this important series as a moderator Thomas Allen deputy executive director of the City Commission on Human Rights Good evening this is Thomas a challenge I'm here to bring you another in the series the black man in America devoted to the topic as the title states to examining the history and life of Afro Americans and the contributions they have made in our making to the material cultural and spiritual wealth of this country this includes all of living not simply the civil rights issues we see in the headlines tonight's guest is Mr John Henrik car editor of Harlem a community and transition published by settled on press in one nine hundred sixty four which is being republished in March of this year Mr Clarke's stories poems and articles have been widely published in magazines and newspapers is associate editor of freedom ways magazine's former director of the heritage teaching problem of how are you out and as a wound on teacher of our African and I from American history he is the editor of two other successful and ologies American Negro short stories and Harlem USA and the critical study where you mistrial and not turn a ten black writers response Welcome Mr Clarke to the program this evening I'm delighted to have you as our gas. And I first like to began. I had to ask when that Harlem become a black community well actually late in the late in the nineteenth century and it became a black community Elise it started being a black community as results of the pressures that were brought on the black community downtown by mainly immigrant groups of people coming from Central Europe and the competition for space there's been. Five black communities really and it's an interesting story is how these communities got started the first black community it was in what is now Chinatown The second was what is now going to village then they moved to the third is up and do what is in the Pennsylvania Station area and they told on that community to build Pennsylvania Station and to the best of my recollection this was the first urban renewal Negro removal thing that we know of in the country then they moved to the area in the fifty's called Hell's Kitchen now and many of the black veterans of the Spanish-American War coming back. To the country and having fought with Teddy Roosevelt would send one hero decided not to return to the south but Southern that area and they call that area San Juan Hill but. Early in the century. Were not on those aristocratic white neighborhood with very few are. Blacks the pressure downtown started again then with a spanking of the subway system Harlem was kind of overbuilt in the real estate men started looking around for customers for their houses that were not being bought and they saw one apartment to a black person and then another and they whites panicked and started a campaign to save Harlem for the whites on the center of Harlem was mainly Dutch extraction Anglo-Saxon and on the fringes of Harlem was a Jewish population in talian population but they actually played polo at the Polo Grounds doing those years and it was actually operate the Harlem are opera house and they had a kind of carriage trade but the first blacks to move to Harlem and to establish a new home. Well our money gentry of that period and I have among the gentry of that period show business people but. Burly people people like that will mount cook and they moved one hundred thirty nine hundred eight hundred thirty six Street and that area became kind of the aristocratic area it's called Strivers Row It became Strivers Row because they created outlandish prices for those houses and had to strive so to keep up the payment and they did in spite of it kept up the pavement and it was from this driving to keep up those payments that their YOU CAUSE drivers row now you're saying this is first time I've heard it that Harlem was an affluent community it was a time of year a flaw in community with the kind of carriage trade type and if you are go into the private homes in that area now Strivers Row and for three blocks of down would you find one floor in every house that's not parking because that those are the servants' quarters Yes I noticed that the doctor's offices along there now and of course there some families still remaining and in those houses their home gone through the period of other ethnic changes before the black smoke and so often happens the affluent first and then and I think minor and then maybe one or two others and then. The black there were other ethnic minorities on the fringes of Harlem as a finished community around Fifth Avenue and one hundred twenty eighth street and back and back parts of East Harlem an area where I have to one is now on a twenty seventh Street in the real railroad and all of that and that's been since my own day in the gas because I can remember in the late thirty's with the. Travel agencies finished book stores on hundred twenty fifth Street and what is now the Monterey Baptist Church used to be a Finnish community hall and up the street was a Finnish men's club and they used to have a Scandinavian bass sauna bad as in that area you're only one left no no it's one hundred twenty. Fifth Street and Madison right off the corner near that hospital I think so the the evidence of other ethnic groups haven't lived in Harlem in the recent past I mean the. Evidence is still that yes as a young star I lived on a hundred eighteenth Street between Lennox and Sabbath and I attended some way it was one thirty secs one hundred sixteenth Street. Which was in the east blocks. As I recall most of my classmates were white I thank they were of Jewish background not sure but I think most of that area was and that seems to me because later my family moved over to Morningside Avenue and I believe this was predominately Arash you would know the US now and only arson that area and in fact all of the high speed move out of the center of Harlem of the outer edges of the peripheral areas of Harlem until. Well around for want to sell and because there was still whites in the area of one and twenty fifth Street as late as for the for the eight and. In the period before the Second World War the whites living in Harlem and occasionally they would let like ten or one like turnips like the idea of select colored tenants used to see that side of it and Harlem in the house and heard about the one hundred twenty sixth Street and Fifth Avenue. When they first opened their houses new houses select colored tenants now there's not a white tenant and the house and they only had about seven light families out of a possible sixty family house and I remember Bill or exile moved into the halls and three rooms nice place and paid the outlandish song forty dollars a month read. That a Belling at a hundred and twenty secs hard and then fell five. Correct forty dollars a month that was out Landis you know that was high up at that time and in its Adela Billy kept that apartment I may still have it through the years mean as kind of New York could call it was cheap enough in it. You could always professional you know the right of his income tax but that was one of those times and I know another belting out I will not take this from you but I cross from side of him hospital today well some live that on the Carnival hundred twenty fourth and St Nicholas I mean you know that building yes it's probably all black but no yesterday the rooms are very good it's a very good physical arrangement within their party quite so you can tell they're part of the old who now. Rush to clock out what processes took place to change Harlem from and I'm quoting a symbol of elegance and distinction an ideal place to lay have sociologist go but Sask is a description of the early years of Harlem as a black community to what I'm quoting again a six square mile festering black sky on the alabaster underbelly of the white man's and difference and this latter statement was so vast and leaks. Actually Harlem was a pretty clean very good community to live and it's still not the worst community in the world the depression being one one one thing. And the loss of what I call Harlem's responsible elite We had a group of people in Harlem who were aristocratic in as much as they are soon their responsibility to the community to make sure that schools were there and that they were properly run and that light skep burning and work properly effects and the streets were clean and they communicated with the political establishment of of the city but they flap their name Mr Clarke there is a rather our own government when they began to going to begin to break down discrimination in housing and they had mobility they went of state West Chester Long Island you know and the like and a lot of them just died but they gave Harlem it's for its political reasons I mean they said these were the people that supported. The great Ferdinand que Morton and Charlie Anderson these were the political pillows of early hollow and this was that political renaissance that came to Harlem in the years before the emergence of Adam Powell who was kind of the bright star of the second Harlem political renaissance. But the fact that we had such a good political connection both Republican and Democrat Yashin that both parties haven't competed for our vote which made a difference in almost any election you know began to actually give genuine patronage you know the Harlem Hospital the nursing home the armory all of these are things that came to the community through political patronage and we had men who could deliver things at that time John Anderson with the Republicans and for the Nikkei Moten was with the Democrats well as do community politicians then we began to elect a statewide politicians like Edward Johnson the first man to go to the to the assembly then all of them and. And the like and these men pay more attention to their constituents and it was more political to listeners in Harlem during this period than now is an unfortunate Harlem is had almost a complete change in population and urban people are rude people coming into Harlem that has not been a climatized you know climatology responsibility to become a dad is to paying attention to to the streets and a lot of people coming into Harlem in the past a sample don't have the know how is not the know how and the and the center and the responsible incentives and this is the importance of having among you people who call attention to what is to be had by the by and from the political structure of a city to me and other words the attrition through DAF as you've indicated some of them died off but. The attrition because of an aggression so many were able to move away I wonder if that as ever any possibility of getting people to move back to how the Westside for instance west of Central Park you know many of our streets are now being rehabilitated people are beginning to move back end of that area and I just blacks but that's going to be a new era I think it's going to be an integrated area is going to be. An evenly mix middle class area I don't think the whites who are moving into this area are going to panic and run they're buying homes and I buy gas that I have. And that is kind of a sameness of class structure so the blacks in the air and the whites of the area mean they can invite each other the tea the elbow professional people on about the same economic and social level so they're not afraid of each other you know you know Iceland and they're not also then they're not of. The love of the poor working class black community because the poor were like those houses Yeah you know the civil rights you mention several names matter of fact the Harlem that you are talking about I think I see this and I don't know how you regard it but the Harlem on my mind show at the museum today so much a shell of of older how and those people names that you have mentioned the lives that they lived in when they were in that community you mention several names but Harlem has been called repeated Rev a cultural and intellectual capital of the black race in the Western world in addition to last complimentary names as I can see in the heart of the setting. What you want to talk about about the contributors to Harlem literary musical theatrical and I lecture for life doing the twenty is the whole of those discovered was discovered by Black Riders discovered by. White. Social climbers a genuine. White moneyed people with social conscious who who were kind of looking for. New Connection they were looking for soul of that day you know yeah and they were defying their families by their middle class families by associating with blacks on a subtle social equality debases some of them were looking for the mythological noble savage the exotic Negro and some of them are helped to underwrite the careers of a lot of other blacks but many of these black rhinos would have written just as well in any other on any other period Langston Hughes got himself discovered several times and never had an objection police discover fed him and made sure that he had some money to practice is his craft but in spite of the mildly funny Kermit aspect of it a lot of good writing came out of that period lot of good art Zora Neale Hurston Langston Hughes the great western union writers like called McKay and Eric wall room and I were brilliant writer and I'd. Come to Cullen's in. A while a third for it was indeed a renaissance of art a black writing and black intellectual flowering in that area brilliant women writers like Zora Neale Hurston and. Nelly lies are in just the first set and people like that they gave Harlem. A literary. Polish that it never previously had in Harlem became kind of the intellectual mecca of the black world but something else happened in Harlem to other than just the literate people Harlem became the end of the proving ground for all of ideal as our pretenders and our messiahs Marcus Garvey came to haul of doing that period in his movement Rosenfeld in the midst of all that then the other side doesn't pretenders good bad and different people but Harlem became that place where our men could come and try out almost any kind of ideas and get some kind of acceptance of the early A Philip Randolph or came to Harlem on during the during that period immediately following the Second World War and established the magazine the messenger with Chandler Owens in the B.B. to boys. Lived in Harlem part of that time and it was doing this period that the last aspect of the conflict between Du Bois and Booker washed and was debated out and the period before Washington died in the period immediately after the death of Washington it was where the great jungle is Teton misfortune flourished as the early editor of The New York agent he later went over to edit Garvey's used paper the negro world it was indeed event as ours but during this period of a responsible elite What I like to think of as as the genuine aristocrat I do not believe in the rest of cracks in the money it sense because I think most of my parents said but I'm talking about an aristocrat in the sense that a man will assume responsibility for the maintenance of his community for the culture of things in the community then something else happened in that community that's been also sadly forgotten and left out of things like Harlem on my mind a show that has such great potential. But it was a failure and as much as the potential never came to it's a great food Asian and many of these middle class black women started institutions in Harlem like homes for unwed mothers and things of this Nature Institute. New care of cured nursing home the utopian house the whole day nursery different thing so a lot of measuring so we can't just write all of these people off as being black she was in Cocktail happening socialites some of these people made able contributions to the maintenance of our community and created in the community a social engine seas and even relief agencies doing that period when there was no government release leaving no city no city relief at all and some of it started in the city about this church but the main thing is that it did start and it started in a pendant of government a city of issue and we need to look with a greater degree of respect upon the people out of this period you have touched upon us but we want to go into more detail about where it. Began and to become a community and decline. I would say about. The depression period get it can be marked by the the early thirty's. Physical decline although it still had a great deal to offer culturally and today yeah yeah and doing the period of its decline it was offering quite a lot I mean in bookstores and cultural evenings at the Y. and we had a little symphony at the wives so soon forgotten and it was barely yesterday when we had the Earth symphony August in Harlem supported by the people of the community drama group supported by the people of the community no federal subsidy you know but I think doing the third is that became the physical decline. Then lot of people moved out with the mobility. Brought about by the slacking of. Restrictive covenants and then during the war a lot of people made money they had not made before and used that money as an opportunity to move out a lot of people moved out to take jobs elsewhere and never move back and a lot of the older people just grew tired some of them died some of them moved out to places a little more peaceful for their declining years and so we can say that the decline the political decline started then too but that went into how to become politically involved you mentioned earlier that she wasn't well she had me she believe was early in the center then. It was the twenty's when for an I.Q. Morton and John Anderson emerge John Anderson was a collector of internal revenue for his district and that's Wall Street and he collected the taxes down there a self-made man and a very brilliant man but who knew taxation for an I.Q. more became kind of a head of the civil service workers. And he held that job for most in twenty years but he was a kind of chairman of the United colored democracy is subdivision of the Democratic Party that he used as a whip and this structure was dismantled doing the Laguardia administration ever have anything to hold against Laguardia that's one thing I hold against him he took away from the Harlem community that very vital political whip that we could use in this city and we showed a needed one then we need one now yes and that's a classic you know we haven't touched the top nearly enough about it but one of your your book has said that all of the book as a work of sociology and history and part at all it is also a cry rage. It shows the intense Farai that grips the Negro American today but beyond that it shows a contradiction as a group the Negro community the reviewer points to the statements at an article in your book but after all Tamil Anderson who said that quote extreme nationalism has a car to my eyes the Negro movement with your lab right on this contention in the book and the book grew out of a special holiday issue of freedom with magazine the sum of nineteen sixty three and I edited this special issue my attempt was to bring in as many diverse view analyzing the Harlem community as I could get it within the pages of of the magazine and at that time to take this also ologist the you and take a popular view and also address myself to the literature and the different personalities the. The the book has if it came out the way I planned on a number of dimensions that might seem to contradict each other but the idea was to get as many dimensions as possible and as for extreme nationalism sometimes extreme nationalism in the Harlem sense becomes are kind of are. Neurotic hostility is a and if that's what. To mean I can agree with him because a whole lot of people calling themselves nationalists are really not nationalists really but self seekers and this kind of self seeker intruding upon the nationalist movement has taken out of it so much of the good that it can be in a solid number of people on the whole concept S. cret of it back out of your own on nationalism but that too many sincere insincere people. In the in movements call called nationalists and while I am an admitted nationalist myself sometime I now call myself a traditionalist because I don't want to be confused that will be one of the confusing some of these persons right here using the nationalist movement as a as a me feathering their own nest saying yes you have included an article by Charles Well said in your letter straight up the governing board of I asked to all white in your new expanded edition of your book in which he describes They are the last ones of that demonstration district one of those last things and do you agree with them I agree with them basically and I think that from these lessons we learned. That the people of Harlem will have to gain some kind of direct control over their school system dictator to some extent the content of education we we know that our children are being educated educationally cheated we cannot let another generation. Come into being be behind other people reading in the basic two moves that one needs to to survive and how the technical side night Mr Carter salad can let you me when our time is almost up without saying where do you think the harm of sixteen eyes had it and what do you believe is the most needed for Harlem development I think Harlem is regrouping and only this morning I attended a press conference on in the printed on board of education for Harlem it's going to have to take many many. Course it is but I think Harlem is moving toward some form of direct community control control of which resources control over its its occasion and I know that we had kids create a separate state within the area of Harlem but nearly every ethnic group in the United State generally control that community and Holland is asking for nothing less than the right to control its community. John Henrik Clarke has been our guest this evening and we've been hearing from him on various subjects. Mr Clark is the editor of Harlem a community and crime section. And also he contributes to his associate out of actually of freedom ways magazine Clark just in closing would you like to say anything about either of those publications like to say. That it's very good to have the Hollywood community in transition back in print and it's a good introduction to the Harlem community and about freedom ways magazine and I'd say it's in his eighth year going into its ninth year and that we have. An excellent issue. On the Press and one we published recently on education Thank you John Hancock This is time now I'm saying good night. We welcome your comments on these programs send your cards and letters to black man in America W N Y C E New York one trip zero zero seven and join us again next Tuesday afternoon at five hundred value and Y.C. F.M. or Tuesday evening at nine on W. N.Y.C. black man in America is a feature presentation of your city station broadcast in cooperation with the New York City Commission on Human Rights.