HARLEM STUDIES
    A Course for Juniors at RiceHigh School

    
74 West 124th Street, Harlem, NY, 10027
    Prepared by Brother William J. Sherlog, CFC
    
When your history classroom is in Harlem   you might learn more looking out the window than by reading the book!.From its settlement in 1658 until today, Harlem   may be seen as a microcosm of United   States History. Its story, more than   three hundred years old, reflects the major themes of America's   history and celebrates the triumphs and strugglesof the Black   community.So, let's get started and peer through  history's windows
HARLEM STUDIES is
  1. a general survey of Harlem's   History
   2. a celebration of
Black Culture
   3. a wayto begin an educational dialogue with people in the community   who have expertise in this area's  local history
   4. an attempt to record some valuable oral history

Touchstones for the Course
1.  Dream Deferred    Theme for English B    Esthete in Harlem    Night Funeral in Harlem ; by Langston Hughes
2.
Seven Story Mountain, Thomas Merton,pages 333-345a reflection on Harlem during a visit to the Blessed Martin de Porres Center on 135th Street in the 1930s.
.
3. Professor Dianne Swann-Wright, Director of Special Programs at the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, Monticello, Virginia
4. Cornell West, World of Ideas with Bill Moyer
5. Frederick Douglass
6. Marcus Garvey
7. Ralph Ellison. Invisible Man

Student Tasks
1. Construct a timelinethat parallels five events in Harlem with other events;outside of Harlem.
2 Summarize each Touchstone. How does the text reflect that Harlem's World has an impact that goes nationwide, or worldwide?
3. Complete one brief research assignment based on a visitto the Schomburg Library.
4. Create a video as a response to your understanding of the
James Van der Zee collection
  (Van der Zee has been called the
;visual voice of the Harlem Renaissance. His last studio was directly around the corner from Rice on 272 Lenox Ave).
5. Suggest data and websites that can be linked to this page.

HISTORICAL DATA ON THE VILLAGE OF HARLEM
EARLY HAARLEM:On the Dutch-Colonial Rise
1658 Peter Stuyvesant&lands in Niew Haarlem where 125th meets the East River. Since the Dutch were slaveholders African Americans were present in Haarlem as early as the 1600s  in the beginning of the ;Middle Passage.
By 1696 present day MarcusGarveyPark was known as Slang Burg, or Snake Hill.
In 1776 a prelude to the Battle of Harlem Heights was the American Colonial evacuation of Snake Hill.
Alexander Hamilton was a Harlemite.
Emancipation Day Parade- 1827
The settlement and displacement of Blacks in Colonial America follows the following path: from Wall Street to Five Points Area.
. See African-American Burial Ground . From Greenwich Village to the Tenderloin District 23rd to 53rd Street. From Central Park to;Harlem. ;
Agrarian Harlem on the Urban Rise, Harlem on the Upper Class Rise
By 1837 The Fourth Avenue Train, an elevated train, was going through the "wilderness" of Harlem .It is the original Metro North!
The 1850 fire watchtower is a landmark in present day MarcusGarveyPark that seems to mark the transition of Harlem from farmland area to city life. MountMorris area was the suburbs, close to transportation to downtown but away from the noise and dirt of the trains. Harlem was an exclusive community for wealthy whites. By 1903 the NY Herald reported that the Mount Morris Park Mansions rivaled those of downtown Fifth Avenue. Astor Row is found on 130th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. These homes reflect the original country farm look of Harlem
The present day SevenDayAdventistChurch was built in 1877as the Dutch Reformed Church.
The Harlem Club was built in 1890.   There was a racetrack in Mt Morris Park.
HARLEM ON THE RISE FIGHTS FOR EQUALITY
White Anglo Saxon Protestants resisted the entry of Blacks and Jews who began to appear with construction of
Second, Third and Eighth Avenue Els in 1878 and the Lenox Ave subway ;1900.
By 1906 The Temple of Israel was built. Today it is MountOlivetBaptistChurch. In the late 1800s Harlem was one of the largest Jewish communities in the world! Koch and Blumsteins were famous Department Stores. In these times of segregation only white females could be  "Blumstein Girls." In any socio-economic system there is an underclass, poorer and less privileged than the upper class.  As Harlem was developing in the late 1800s one underclass would be white woman who were filling in some of the lower paying jobs. Remember the appearance of women in the workplace is one result of the Industrial Revolution.  
The YWCA moved into this area with the specific mission of helping white workingwomen.  Their first establishment was at 9 W 124Street where the Franciscan Handmaid Convent now stands. In 1892 they purchased a large wooden frame house at 74 W 124th Street. Between 1893 and 1896 they erected a six-story Brownstone In 1917 the present building (today RiceHigh School) was erected. The YWCA originally had a segregation policy. Its transformation is an interesting case study.
African Americans fled the South after the Civil War. The failure of Reconstruction, the establishment of the KKK, and Jim Crow led to the North Migration. By 1914 50,000 blacks populated Harlem. WWI and the stoppage of European Immigrants opened job markets. The resurgence of the KKK gave impetus to a continued migration.
See
The Birth of a Nation, 1915.
HARLEM ON THE AFRICAN AMERICAN RISE
The rise in the African American population coincided with over development of Harlem by white entrepreneurs. By 1907 four hundred and fifty tenements were built in Central Harlem at 135street for white tenants. When whites began to pass Harlem for the Bronx and WashingtonHeights this area was opened to black renters and buyers. Saint Philip's Church was instrumental in negotiating the buying of these apartments. Black Harlem begins here.
In the March 1914 March edition ofCrisis; WEB Dubois, who helped form NAACP; responds to the;Harlem Property Owners Improvement Association, a white organization designed to keep Blacks from making greater inroads to Harlem.
At this time DuBois continuedto protest in Crisis Magazine about
1100 lynchings. The center of the Black press was 135th Street and Seventh Avenue. Meanwhile, 135th Street and Lenox was noted as: Speakers' Corner. This coalescence of ;African American Identity was nurtured by Arthur Schomburg,     Madame C.J. Walker and the Dark Tower. With poets like Claude McKay the Harlem Renaissance was underway. Thanks to Alain Locke's seminal work Harlem: Mecca of the New Negro, 1925 Harlem was on the rise!
THE FOLLOWINGHISTORICAL SITES CAN BE SEEN FROM RICE WINDOWS
B. T. Washington speaks at what is now the EphesusSevenDayAdventistChurch.
1917 Marcus Garvey at Bethel AME on 123rd Street

 
Father Divine
1934 The Rev. John H. Johnson, Vicar of Saint Martin's Protestant Episcopal Church, also known as Sufi Abdul Hamid organized the Don't Buy Where You Can't Work; Boycott Campaign
1958 ;Martin Luther King on 125 Streets
1960  Castro at the Hotel Theresa
1964 Malcolm at Hotel Theresa
; AMERICA'S
HARLEM REAL DREAM
Hell   fighters Victory Parade;
Malcolm X letter   to Harlem
Harlem as Balm in   Gilead
Adam   Clayton Powell, Jr.
Fidel   Castro
 
   CONCLUSION :   Ideas of Rice Men based on the works of Langston Hughes, Thomas Merton, and Cornel West.
  1. Harlem was not meant to be such an important place, but it is.
2. Harlem is "better"  than most places.
3. Harlem offers an historical environmental experience for the US History Student.
4. If a student knows the history of Harlem and its culture and its problems then they know of the problems that the whole USA is facing.
5. Harlem shows every way of life in Americabecause you have every race, every culture and mostly every religionand he rich, the poor and everything in between.
6. The lives of Langston Hughes, W.E.B. DuBois, and Billie Holiday are mini US History stories.
7. Malcolm X's speeches, the Million Youth March, and Langston Hughes poems&tell you a lot about American History
8. Harlem is a better place than what it appears to be.
9. Harlem offers a lot of history because of struggle. It shows blacks coming out of the white man's shadow.