This Was Harlem: A Cultural Portrait, 1900-1950

Jervis Anderson's utterly engaging reconstruction of a major chapter in America's past begins with the migration of blacks to Harlem at the turn of this century, and ends in 1950, when the "hearts of new arrivals no longer missed a beat". The years between provide a portrait of early Harlem as a social and cultural magnet to almost all American blacks - the community that the young Duke Ellington had likened to scenes from "The Arabian Nights". Before 1900, Harlem was an all-white neighborhood. The migration to Harlem was part of the chain reaction beginning in lower Manhattan that kept black new Yorkers as much on the run as on the move uptown. Once they were ensconced between 125th and 135th Streets, their culture began to root and flourish: Harlem's heyday began. Anderson's closely observed chronological account of this period ranges over all aspects of life as it was: literature, painting, and music, including showplaces like the Cotton Club and the Apollo which made Harlem the favorite late-night playground of Manhattanites; the cultural clashes among Southerners, West Indians, and Northerners; the life style of affluent Harlem neighborhoods such as Sugar Hill and Strivers Row; speakeasies and numbers racketeers of the Prohibition era; churches and religious sects; radicals and black nationalists of the 1920s; and individuals who played leading roles in the shaping of the community. Jervis Anderson (1932-2000) was a staff writer for The New Yorker for 30 years and a leading chronicler of African-American life best known for his biographies of A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin.