I was born and spent most of my childhood living in Harlem (145th & Frederick Douglass Blvd. to be exact) something that I will always cherish about living there was the sense of community. As a young kid, I spent hours outside with my older siblings and friends ripping through the neighborhood streets and parks, and on nearly every block there was someone that we knew and could talk to. This community-based lifestyle is seemingly an ongoing thread when it comes to Harlem living. When looking through the archives of images and publications written about the Harlem of the 1920s and 30s, it’s clear that is where this sense of community began. The vibrant neighborhood was awash with a true community of artists, writers, working-class laborers, musicians, etc. whose roots were maintained through my own Harlem experience in the mid to late 2000s. Although I haven’t been back to my part of Harlem in about four or five years, I am extremely interested to see if gentrification has had any effect in breaking up that sense of community that to me is such an essential part of life in Harlem. Like many mostly Black neighborhoods, Harlem has undergone major changes due to gentrification and it would be interesting to see if there is such a thing as gentrification maintaining a community’s natural life.