December 17, 1932
Cold winds blow as flurries trickle down. A stiff frost bears down on Harlem.
In winter’s early sunset, a nascent darkness rises, a still gloom offset by beams of bright city lights, which glow over people wandering through walkways lined with makeshift wooden shack homes and around trash that litters city streets like the leaves of fall in a quaint suburban New England neighborhood. These are the barren, but not the few, who are impacted by a furious Great Depression.
Life now in Harlem is not the one of a past bright day when there was a skip to a jaunt in a simple stroll through the art district, in a time when even on days fraught with frigid breezes from harsh winters, smiles gleamed wide. Back then, some would say that Harlem was a modern-day Florence.
That was the 1920s, a time of glory for Harlem and the many people who fled the South in reams as part of the Great Migration. Descendants of the enslaved who, for so many generations, lived at the mercy of masters’ whips and whims. Harlem gave these men and women the freedom to flourish in the spirit of their dreams. And how they did. Duke Ellington and Langston Hughes are just some of the names we know, with many more given the opportunity to thrive as artists. For many in the arts, Harlem in the ’20s was the center of America, maybe even the world.
But that time has passed. Now, the city erupts in chaos, ripe with an uprising from a Great Depression in which racism roars. The time is difficult for most communities around America, but black communities suffer more. Already prone to “last hired, first fired” policies, close to 50 percent of people in Harlem live unemployed, double the overall rate in America of 25 percent.
So anger boils where smiles once flourished. But still, I love my dear Harlem, even if sweet Harlem is now gone.
Note: “Harlem's Changing Season” is a fictional historical journal entry. The story, characters, and incidents are fictitious.
Sources:
Sundstrom, William A. “Last Hired, First Fired? Unemployment and Urban Black Workers During the Great Depression.” The Journal of Economic History, vol. 52, no. 2, 1992, pp. 415–29. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2123118. Accessed 23 July 2024.
"New York City Weather in 1932." Extreme Weather Watch, https://www.extremeweatherwatch.com/cities/new-york/year-1932