WHAT HAPPENED TO HARLEM?

WHAT HAPPENED TO HARLEM? Tuesday, June 06, 2017 By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman HARLEM in the 1920’s, when it was “in vogue,” was vastly different from that in its ensuing decades, when Harlem was no longer “in vogue.” Literature says it all. DADDY WAS A NUMBERS RUNNER by Louise Merriweather was introduced by THE BLACKER THE BERRY by Wallace Thurman, which late-20’s early 30’s novels sharply diverged from the beautiful Vander Zee photographs of well-dressed black men and women parading down its principal sidewalks on weekends, as though miming and rhyming the poetry of Langston Hughes or Countee Cullen. What happened to Harlem is a pedantic metaphor for the rest of black America? Its answer is as cosmological as cultural; economic as literary; legal as political. I first went to Harlem in 1970. I was exhorted by a brother to buy a refrigerator at the corner of 125th and Lennox Avenue, while walking down the street. No thanks. But “we real cool,” to paraphrase ‘60’s Haki Madhubuti, f/a/k/a “Black Don Lee.”