Harlem, the Making of a Ghetto

Harlem’s transformation into a ghetto occurred in the early 1920s paralleling the New Negro Movement, commonly referred to as the Harlem Renaissance. To the casual visitor strolling down the avenue, Harlem in the 1920s appeared to be a thriving metropolis with all the advantages of a newly built community. With the renaissance in full swing, thousands of African Americans descended upon Harlem for work, for pleasure, and to be part of this new artistic movement.

Inheriting a housing stock that was less than three decades old, African Americans lived in some of the choicest property in New York City—tree-lined blocks and avenues, five- and six-story elevator buildings with maid’s quarters, and elegant single-family brown- stones with parlors. But behind the veil was Harlem’s dirty little secret—an emerging ghetto. While Harlem was in vogue and whites ventured uptown for dining and entertainment, the fact that African Americans lived in some of the worst housing conditions in the city was hidden from view. Harlem was fast becoming New York City’s new ghetto. Within a decade Harlem, once a potentially ideal community, transformed into a neighborhood with manifold social, economic and health problems.

Harlem’s decline into a ghetto was the result of a deteriorating housing stock and a high concentration of poverty brought on by overcrowded housing conditions, racial segregation, neglect and disinvestment by landlords and city government, a wartime housing shortage, and the African American community itself.

The massive influx of southern blacks and West Indians during the era of the First World War destroyed Harlem’s residential balance. Already a deteriorating neighborhood, large numbers of African Americans continued to descend upon Harlem, putting a strain on an already deteriorating housing stock. The high cost of living coupled with low wages forced families out of necessity to take in boarders and lodgers to pay the rent. Exacerbating the problems from overcrowding, unsanitary living conditions and strain on the physical structures of the housing stock became the norm.

African Americans, trapped and unable to flee like other ethnic immigrant groups who decades earlier were allowed to buy property in newly accessible outer boroughs, trans- formed Harlem into a racially segregated enclave of concentrated poverty. Spreading like the plague, poverty tore through Harlem creating hopelessness and despair and all the associated behaviors. Soon landlords lost interest in caring for their property and permitted buildings to become run down. Halls became dirty, broken pipes became the norm, heat was cut off, dumb-waiters broke, and homes became infested with ver- min. Concurrently, while the City of New York turned its head away from the problems, the federal government put restrictions on wartime housing construction. Harlem was confronted for the first time with a serious housing dilemma.

The Harlem tragedy of the 1920s is strikingly similar to the ghetto of the 1960s and 1970s. By the 1980s conditions worsened to the point that life expectancy in Harlem compared to that of a third world country. At the time, Bangladesh had a lower mortality rate between the ages of 5 and 65 than Harlem. While many are to blame for Harlem’s ghettoization—landlords, the city or racism—African Americans must become accountable for uplifting and restoring Harlem’s past glory and rich cultural legacy. For it is the present generation that has inherited the unsolved problems of the past.