Harlem, capital of black America
Audio 48:30
Samuel Hargress, in 2018, in his legendary club the Paris Blues in Hargem.
In 2020, he died at the age of 84, from the Covid.
© Sarah Lefèvre
By: Céline Develay Mazurelle
51 min
In February in the United States, England, Canada and more timidly and recently in France, the "Black History Month" aims to honor and share the contribution and history of black diasporas, Afro-descendant.
On this occasion, we invite you to go back to New York, to one of the historic strongholds of black America: Harlem.
Publicity
Located in the south of Manhattan Island, this district has been undergoing rapid change since the 2000s.
Until then, tourists hardly dared to venture between 96th and 155th streets.
Long perceived as dangerous, it has even become an object of real estate desires.
Developers are investing heavily, betting on the neighborhood's proximity to Central Park and the rest of Manhattan.
The renovation of the "brownstones", these mythical houses in red sandstone, and the construction of high-end residences have attracted new, much richer inhabitants.
But between Starbucks and starred restaurants, Harlem still proudly bears the traces of its history, its black culture and its struggles for the emancipation of African-Americans.
Because here, the greatest black artists as the greatest leaders of black thought, from the civil rights movement to today Black Lives Matter marched there, with their heads held high and their fists raised… Travel between Mecca and the Ghetto, in a district of legends where we meet James Baldwin, Zorah Neale Hurston, Duke Ellington, Malcom X, Adam Clayton Powell Jr and many others ...
A report by Sarah Lefèvre, initially broadcast in February 2018.
To read :
-
Walking Harlem
, Karen F. Taborn, Éditions Rutgers University Press, 2018
-
Harlem, The four hundred year history from Dutch Village to capital of Black America
, Jonathan Gill, Grove Editions, 2012
-
Harlem
, Eddy L. Harris, Liana Levi Publishing, 2000
-
Baskets, Travel stories,
Jean-Claude Charles, Éditions Mémoire Encrier, 2018.
To have :
-
Malcolm X
(1992) or
Jungle Fever
(1991), Spike Lee
-
Cotton club
, Francis Ford Coppola, 1984
-
Murders on the 110th Street
(Across the 110th Street), Barry Shear, 1972.
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United States
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Harlem sur Seine
Literature
Harlem 1920: a West Indian in the heart of the New York underworld
International book
Book: "Les poilus de Harlem" by Thomas Saintourens, Tallandier editions