My old stomping grounds…145th and Frederick Douglass Blvd.

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 to 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. Is the current gentrification cycle ripping its way through Harlem and other Black neighborhoods significant in the overall theme of Black reinvention? My blog posts mostly consider this theme through the lens of the Harlem Renaissance time period, but I think there are some interesting thoughts on this topic when adding in a contemporary lens. A large part of the reinvention in the 1920s was having Harlem be this central point throughout the Blak diaspora. Now that Harlem is being broken up it will be interesting to see if there will be another Black “mecca” that arises. And if so, what would be its goal.