New York, The Real Black Experience

I have chosen New York City, focusing on the two points where black population is huge in the city, the Harlem and Bronx neighborhoods. New York is a very cosmopolitan city in which many cultures come together and live together.

The Dutch were the first Europeans to settle in the area and in 1614 they built Fort Nassau, the first European settlement in the area of ​​present-day New York. In 1626, Peter Minuit, Governor of the Dutch West Indies Company, bought the island of Manhattan from the Indians for $ 24 and created a colony he named New Amsterdam. The colony specialized in the fur trade with the Indians. In 1674, by the Treaty of Westminster, the island of Manhattan passed from the Dutch to the English, who renamed it New York in honor of the Duke of York. With the neighboring colonies the English constituted New England. With the presence of the English, New York gained importance and prosperity as a commercial port, and in 1754 Columbia University, currently one of the most prestigious in the world, was founded.

Throughout the 18th century, English colonists clashed with the French on numerous occasions for control of Manhattan, wars in which colonists managed to implicate the Indian tribes for their cause. New York played an important role in the War of Independence of the United States, being the scene of several battles. In 1775, revolutionaries opposed those loyal to England and approved independence the following year. However, the state of New York did not ratify the federal constitution until 1788. After the contest ended, Congress met in New York and named George Washington president in 1789, and it was the federal capital for one year until it moved to Washington. DC

In the 1820s New York became the center of abolitionist activism in the North. In 1863, during the American Civil War, New York experienced a civil insurrection with very violent protests against forced enlistment, known as the days of the "draft week". Immigration and development transformed the city so that in 1835 New York became the largest city in the United States. Until 1898 the city was made up solely of Manhattan, which was joined by the districts of Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx and Staten Island. The construction of many of its famous bridges and the metro in 1904 contributed to this.

During the 20th century New York has not stopped growing. The Statue of Liberty has witnessed the arrival of millions of immigrants (in 1948 it already surpassed London as the most populous city in the world). New York became the center of European, Asian and Latin American immigration. After World War II, New York became the most important city in the world with a great economic weight (Wall Street), political (UN headquarters) and cultural (it replaces Paris as a mecca of art and culture). It has also become a great international tourist destination. The history of New York dressed in mourning after the criminal attacks of September 11, 2001, from which new security standards were established both in New York and in the rest of the world. Today, New York is the destination dreamed of by travelers from all over the world thanks to its appearance in hundreds of books, movies and series.

Wall Street is known worldwide as the headquarters of the financial district of New York. Visited by more than 60 million tourists a year, it is a cardinal point for taking photos of the New York Stock Exchange building, as well as the iconic Bowling Green bull facing financial power. In the minds of the general public, the interior of the financial capital of the world is imagined as a bunch of frenzied vendors with phone in hand actively participating in auctions. However, the first successful public sales on Wall Street were not stocks, futures, or property titles, but something just more valuable: human slaves recently descended on the fledgling city, which by the first decade of the 18th century would reach make up of about 20% of the slave population. The Dutch East Indies Company began shipping slaves from Africa to New Amsterdam (the Dutch settlement located in the south of present-day Manhattan) in 1626. The port gained radical importance, not only because of its strategic location that provided different mouths. to the entire bay and the possibility of going upstream the Hudson, but for being a center of commerce and piracy that does not neglect its main business, that of the sale of slaves.

The Bronx is located to the Northwest of New York City, above Manhattan. The “South Bronx” or South Bronx is the area of ​​the Bronx district closest to Manhattan and during the 70s and 80s it underwent a continuous process of degradation and decline that - helped by the cinema and television - ended up giving it the image fearsome and the bad reputation that we all know today. The multi-ethnic, poor and overpopulated neighborhood was a victim of racial segregation and injustice, and was the most bitter expression of poverty, marginalization and social inequality. The deterioration of the district began in the 1940s in the neighborhoods closest to the Harlem River, Mott Haven and Melrose, extending in the 1970s to Hunts Point, Morrisania and Highbridge. But this process was not spontaneous. For this to happen, a set of very aggressive and strongly conditioning elements had to be combined. From the outset, the white population that lived in the neighborhoods of the Bronx, which was mainly Jewish, left with the massive arrival of Hispanic and black Antilleans and from the southern states of the United States. This was due to simple racism and also influenced by an illegal but widespread practice among real estate agents, which was to convince homeowners that their home prices would drop with the arrival of "the new neighbors", so they sold quickly and downward, with the consequent speculative business for real estate. For their part, the owners of the buildings - new or old - began to worry about their properties, from which they could no longer get the desired returns and these deteriorated due to lack of maintenance.

At the same time, the municipal authorities stopped investing in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods, due to the economic crisis that the country was experiencing in the period. In an attitude, a mixture of racial segregation and economic conservatism, private investors, banks and insurers avoided contact with the inhabitants and the neighborhoods of the South Bronx as much as possible, which resulted in an absolute lack of activity. The urban networks were completely broken: there was a lack of an efficient transport system that would bring the neighborhood closer to the city, turning it into the same urban space; the plot of neighborhood relations was also divided; the neighborhood was a "ghetto" incommunicado and structurally short-circuited. To this we must add unemployment and the lack of expectations of its inhabitants. The peak of insanity came when many owners of residential buildings decided that it was more profitable for them to burn houses and collect insurance than to continue to maintain them. Thus Hell came to the Bronx. The fires started in Harlem and spread throughout the South Bronx. The poor and miserable population was relocating in the battered buildings and the chaos took over the district. The New York City Council, at that time scarce in the media, allowed the houses to burn, more concerned with what happened in the wealthy neighborhoods. The zenith of urban decline in the Bronx was marked by drugs and specifically heroin and crack. The neighborhood became a drug supermarket and a haven for drug addicts. Thus crime, fear and insecurity were the face of everyday life in the Bronx.

After more than two decades after those turbulent years, the Bronx is recovering and trying to lift its head. After the demolition of the sick neighborhoods and the development of institutional plans for reconstruction and re-housing, normalcy has returned to the district and entrepreneurial initiatives arise that aim to promote local economic development. However, this apparent economic revival can bring about a process of "gentrification" or gentrification, according to which, if the disabled areas acquire a certain level of prestige and quality of life, they will attract the urban bourgeoisie of the city center ( Manhattan, -whose house reaches impossible prices-) and this little by little will be displacing the population that already lives in the area, which will not be able to cope with the progressive increase in the cost of the neighborhood

North of Central Park, between 96th Street to the south, 155-160th Street to the north, Fifth Avenue to the east and the Hudson River to the west, is the neighborhood of Harlem. The visit to this area of ​​Manhattan has become in recent years an unavoidable stage for all travelers since it includes a large part of the changes and the history of the city. In 1658 it was named Nieuw Haarlem by Dutch Governor Peter Stuyvesant (the Dutch were the first to occupy the neighborhood) in honor of the Dutch city of Haarlem. The English, years later, renamed it Harlem by taking control of the colony. With the arrival in 1837 of the New York and Harlem Railroad, which linked Harlem with southern Manhattan, there was a large increase in population that caused the cost of housing to rise. Speculation was on the rise and the property boom led many families to leave the area as they were unable to cope with mortgages or the acquisition of new homes.

It was at the beginning of the 20th century when the first black men and women arrived. One of them, Philip Payton, a real estate agent, acquired devalued buildings by renting them to members of his community who arrived after being evicted from other neighborhoods in the large city. These facilities granted to the newcomers were configuring Harlem as a mainly African-American area of ​​residence, which is maintained today. Coinciding with this change in residents, a cultural movement known as "The Harlem Renaissance" developed from the 1920s. A cultural and artistic explosion led by black musicians, intellectuals and artists who made African American culture known The Cotton Club or the Apollo Theater became temples of a new rhythm, jazz, which ironically in a time of racial tension, enjoyed by whites Legends of those times were Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald or Duke Ellington, bearers of a essence that still persists. This era of splendor gave way in the 1960s to an era of crime, marginalization and drugs that made the neighborhood a dangerous area and restricted to visitors, an image that many still have of Harlem that they have known through numerous films. that reflected that reality. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X were killed in those difficult years for defending civil rights, but they are still present in the neighborhood where two of the most famous streets, 125 and Lenox Avenue, are also known by the names of these leaders. The arrival of the 90s, the opening of new shops and the timid insertion of multinationals in the neighborhood, marked the beginning of regeneration for the community.

Currently, the increasing influx of tourists and the purchase of properties by professionals seeking to settle in the area, is revitalizing it economically, gradually incorporating it into the great metropolis before the melancholic gaze of those who see the essence and personality of his neighborhood.

New York is an impressive city, where we find no less impressive cultural diversity. The mixture of Latin and Anglo-Saxon, African and Aboriginal, Caribbean, Asian cultures ... that occur in the city also provide a no less impressive bouquet of cultural profiles and possibilities. New York also has a wide range of possibilities to go to Museums, Art Galleries, cinemas, Theaters such as those in Brooklyn, concert halls, etc ... New York is the cradle of a good part of the cultural movements that the country has had , literature, music, painting ... a good part has had its birth and subsequent development in this city, jazz for example is a music that had its epicenter in the middle of the 20th century in the city, not to mention that the Bronx For example, it is the birthplace of rappers and hip hop. Punks also had their space in this city in the 70s, with groups like Strokes, Sissor Sisters ... the cinema also had its grain of sand in making this city known. This is why the cultural influence of African Americans has always been key in the development of the city, with musicians, artists, actors ...

A clear example of this urban art that the city of NY offers us, is jazz and one of its greatest exponents is the great Louis Armstrong, who lived in this city and filled it with his music. In the Queens neighborhood there is a museum of his home in honor.

This center is one of the most important places for the investigation of the African experience and its cultures. In addition to research, he also organizes cultural events of theater, music, cinema and talks about African culture. Another point of interest is that the Schomberg Center is one of New York's public libraries

Works cited

White, Shane. “Stories of Freedom in Black New York” Staging Freedom, Harvard Univ. Presss, 2002

Harris, LaShawn. “Sex Workers, Psychics, and Numbers Runners: Black Women in New York City's Underground Economy”. University of Illinois Press, 2016.

Sacks, Marcy S. “Before Harlem: the Black Experience in New York City before World War I”. Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 2006

Flores, Ronald J.O. “Journal of Urban Affairs.” The Reassertion of a Black/Non Black Color Line: The Rise in Integrated Neighborhoods Without Blacks in New York City, 1970-2010

St. Clair; Cayton Drake, Horace R.; Cayton, Horace R. “Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a NorthernCity”, 1962