Loren Miller’s 1935 history of Harlem. One of the most important Civil Rights attorneys of the 20th century, Miller defended Angelo Herndon and many other 1930s militants. Close to, probably in, the Communist Party at the time, Miller was the very definition of a ‘fellow-traveler’ of the movement most of his life as an activist lawyer.

‘Harlem: A History Without Make-up’ by Loren Miller from New Masses. Vol. 16 No. 7. August 13, 1935.

VIOLENT conflicts involving Negroes are no novelty to Manhattan Island. As long ago as 1712 a group of Negro slaves revolted and marched on the scattered settlements. The uprising was crushed and of the twenty-seven slaves condemned to death “some were burnt, others hanged, one broke on the wheel, and one hung alive in ye towne.” Poor whites and slaves were charged with plotting another revolt in 1741 with the result that eighteen Negroes were hanged, fourteen were burned alive and seventy-seven deported. Disapproval of the Civil War draft laws in 1863 was turned against Negroes and for three days a frenzied mob raged up and down the city, burned dwellings and public buildings and killed a number of hapless victims. A Negro killed a policeman in 1900 while defending his wife against unwarranted brutality and in retaliation officers organized and led a mob that vented its wrath on every Negro who could be found. Mayor Van Wyck appointed an investigating commission and the whole affair was whitewashed.

Harlem had no part in these early disturbances; its growth as a Negro community did not begin until a quarter of a century ago. Its history is prosaic enough. The earliest Negro New Yorkers lived far downtown. Northward moves finally took them as far as the region between Fiftieth and Sixtieth streets, where they remained until James Payton, a Negro real estate agent, pushed through a practical business deal. Roughly, Harlem is bounded on the south by 110th Street, and on the north by 155th Street, on the east by Fifth Avenue and the Harlem River and on the west by Eighth, St. Nicholas and Amsterdam avenues. That section of the city had been overbuilt in the early part of the century, but there was no rapid transit, with the result that many of the apartment houses were empty. Payton approached the owners and proposed to fill the buildings with Negro tenants. Eventually he secured three large apartment houses.

The World War caused a tremendous labor shortage in the industrial centers and inspired stories were circulated in the southern states to the effect that Negro workers could get almost fabulous wages in New York. Civil rights, it was said, were also respected there. A wave of Negro migrants, particularly from Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia, swept into Harlem. Another group came from the West Indies. Today Harlem has a Negro population of 200,000, almost 25,000 of whom are West Indians.

The first Negro newspaper ever published in the United States was founded in New York in 1827. The city early became one of the political and cultural centers of Negro life and by the time Harlem began to grow as a Negro community its preeminence was well established. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People had headquarters here and was publishing its then very influential magazine, The Crisis. The National Urban League, a nationwide organization founded to help Negroes adjust organization founded to help Negroes adjust themselves to urban life, had its national office in New York. There were numbers of other influential Negro organizations, encouraged in many instances by liberal whites. Fairly adequate civil-rights laws and the cosmopolitan character of the city encouraged self-expression by Negroes and when America entered the war New York was startled to see more than 10,000 Negroes march down Fifth Avenue behind muffled drums in silent protest against discrimination.

In 1916 a West Indian by the name of Marcus Garvey landed in New York. Five years later he had built up to tremendous proportions his Back-To-Africa movement, an almost exact parallel of Zionism. The movement enlisted the loyalty of hundreds of thousands of Negroes, particularly the West Indians, intrigued by this appeal to their nationalism.

After the War

THE United States discovered Harlem after the war. Everybody was tired and disillusioned and looking for diversion. Startled New Yorkers discovered that right in their midst were 150,000 self-assertive Negroes who lived in what almost amounted to a foreign community. And, my dear, the Negroes were so amusing. They had the most outlandish customs. They held rent parties. They ate, and relished, such odd dishes as pigs’ feet and chitterlings. Their dances were fresh, much fresher than the staid ballroom dances then in vogue. They sang gaily and drank bad gin. They amused themselves by strolling along the streets in clothes not cut to the latest patterns. Tired sophisticates flocked to Harlem to see the strange sights and be amused. Enterprising Negroes with an eye to turning an honest penny caught the idea: there were white people willing to pay for entertainment of a kind; they were eager to provide it. Harlem began to assume its character. Few visitors who have thrilled to the atmosphere of a Harlem night club know even today that the most exclusive and popular cabarets in Harlem refuse Negro patronage.

The Negro people were restless in the early 1920’s. Thousands of Negro soldiers had returned from France where they had learned that racial restrictions do not exist everywhere. The government’s failure to carry out its war-time promises provoked resentment and Garvey’s preachment of an African Empire ruled by black kings added to the turbulence. A militant note crept into Negro letters and young poets like Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen established themselves in Harlem. Negro art became a fad, then a craze, then an obsession.

Tin Pan Alley drew on Negro music for popular songs. Negro musical comedies made a hit on Broadway. The columnists, the smart magazines and even the newspapers saw that Harlem was a rich mine. They dilated on what they thought were its exotic aspects and converted it, in the popular mind, into a never-never land where happy, care-free Negroes danced and whiled the time away with never a thought of tomorrow. Later, a song writer viewing the scene convinced himself, and thousands of others, that “that’s why darkies were born.” Poets, playwrights and novelists turned to Harlem for inspiration and Eugene O’Neill wrote All God’s Chillun Got Wings and Emperor Jones. Carl Van Vechten summed up the literary attitude in his novel of Harlem, N***r Heaven-a derisive term applied by Negroes to the third and fourth balconies where they were seated in southern theaters and where they carried on a good deal of neighborly and good-natured rivalry.

Housing Problem

The sudden emergence pf the Negro into the foreground of Negro life called for explanation. The critics of life and letters had an easy answer. Everything that was happening in Harlem from rent parties to poetry was interpreted in terms of race. Negroes, it was explained, had certain race gifts and tendencies. They were a primitive, kindly and simple people of whom, to quote a writer of the time, “The white man’s education had never been harnessed.” V.F. Calverton even speculated as to whether or not a “calcium factor in bone structure” might account for “the Negro’s superior response to jazz.”

As a matter of sober fact, these explanations were wide of the mark. What was happening in Harlem was that essentially rural people were adapting themselves to the demands of urban life. They brought with them customs and habits that seemed outlandish and amusing only because all foreign customs seem so. Rent parties will provoke amazement until it is learned that they are means of raising the rent by holding a party and pooling resources. Harlem Negroes drank bad gin because they had no money with which to purchase good gin. Dances and songs stemmed from traditional folk songs and dances that had grown up during slavery and plantation days. Clothes weren’t in style because some of the country folk hadn’t learned how to dress in the city. Nor was there anything racial about eating habits. Chitterlings, a delicacy prepared from hog intestines, became an article of diet when slave owners and landlords preempted the more choice cuts of pork. And if there was something of a carefree note in the air it was but the natural response to better wages and improved living conditions. Had most of the observers looked further than night clubs they might have learned that there was always a little bit of faking in the side presented to inquiring and sensation-seeking whites. Part of it was acting in character and part of it was a defense against prying and hostile eyes.

There was another side of Harlem life that attracted little attention and almost no serious study or comment. It was never quite true that wages were fabulous or even adequate. Food was high; rent was high; clothing was high. White workers took over the skilled jobs during the labor shortage and Negro workers had to be content with employment as porters, messengers, elevator operators or personal servants. The man at the head of the house often found his wages inadequate to support the family and Negro women were forced to seek employment. Many of them became household servants or found work in the needle trades.

The rapid influx of Negroes early created a housing problem because the area of Negro settlement was limited. The shortage played into the hands of the landlords who promptly raised rents. Workers’ families found themselves forced to take in roomers or give rent parties to forestall eviction.

Despite the fact that white shopkeepers remained to prevent the growth of a group of Negro business men, not all Harlem Negroes were underpaid workers. There was an upper strata composed of professional men, civil-service servants and a few skilled workers. Members of this group found it possible to purchase property and to enjoy ordinary middle-class comforts.

The Crisis

THE crisis struck Harlem a hard blow. Jobs vanished overnight. Professional men found that their clients had no money for fees. Discrimination is the norm in American life and it was altogether natural that when relief agencies were established they should discriminate against Harlem folk in a thousand and one subtle, and not so subtle, ways. Embroiled in other and more serious problems, those who had once spent so much time and thought on Harlem and its quaintness forgot about it. Anyhow the mania had spent itself. Few people noticed that unrest began to stir Harlem after 1930. There was a constant clamor by Negroes for more jobs; boycott movements directed against merchants who solicited Negro patronage but refused to hire Negro clerks sprang up. There were complaints against inadequacy and discrimination in relief. Spontaneous rent strikes broke out. Politicians who detected the rumbling of trouble scattered a few jobs around; the humanitarian La Guardia named a Negro to a $10,000-a-year job on the tax commission. But nobody but the Communists seemed alive to the real situation–they were only agitators. An uneasy peace brooded over middle Manhattan.

Harlem broke the peace on March 19 when angry Negroes surged through the streets, defied police and smashed windows in the 125th Street region. Liberals were shocked into silence at this spectacle of happy-go-lucky Negroes–so quaint, you know–acting so out of character. Newspapers tried to paint the outbreak as a race riot instigated by Red agitators. But the truth could not be denied; the disturbance was a violent demonstration by Negroes against discrimination, high rents, unemployment, police brutality and callous neglect by officials. Mayor La Guardia followed Mayor Van Wyck’s precedent and named an investigating committee. There the parallel will end; a whitewash will not restore complacency.

The mayor’s committee, headed by a conservative Negro physician and sprinkled with liberals of both groups, will do little more than hatch an elaborate report detailing conditions that everybody knows exist. But Harlem and friends of Harlem will have the last word and the mayor’s committee has served some purpose in focusing attention on conditions. The story begins with unemployment.

Nobody knows how high unemployment is in Harlem. Some estimates place it as high as 80 percent. This much is certain: Negroes constitute only four percent of the population, but they furnish 14.5 percent of the employable relief population. Fifty-one out of one thousand whites are on relief rolls, the figure for Harlem is 129 per thousand. Discrimination keeps the number down. New York laws require applicants to prove two years’ residence by means of letters or receipted bills and many members of an insecure group like Negroes cannot show such proof. Although Negroes furnish 14.5 percent of the employable relief population they get only eight percent of the jobs. On one project it was learned the Negro draftsmen were being paid $21 per week for work for which white workers were getting $27.

Cops’ Clubs

THE housing situation is remarkably bad. Crowding has always been prevalent and it is steadily growing worse as families find it impossible to retain homes and are forced to move in with neighbors and friends. Surveys show that rent takes from 40 to 50 percent of the average income and the Hoover housing commission report disclosed the fact that “the average rental per room of low income groups in New York City is $6.67, whereas the rental for Negroes was placed at $9.58.” A New York Urban League survey of 2,236 Harlem apartments showed that more than half of them had no baths. Nothing vital has ever been done to allay these conditions, the only step having been taken by the philanthropic Rockefellers who got themselves an amazing amount of publicity for a “slum clearance” project a few years ago. When the apartment was completed, rents were so high that only high salaried middle-class folk like W.E.B. Du Bois were able to occupy apartments.

The Children’s Aid Society reported in 1932 that “the whole Harlem district is almost totally devoid of recreational facilities” and that congestion rendered “practically impossible any normal, decent family life.” A recent report shows 23.8 percent of Negro school children suffer from malnutrition. Of course juvenile delinquency is high. The health problem created by these conditions is treated in almost a criminal manner. Death rates from almost every cause are much higher than those of the city at large: the Harlem tuberculosis death rate is five times that of the rest of the city. There are few adequate facilities to combat this situation, but the worst example is the Harlem Hospital. Located in Harlem itself, the hospital is understaffed and rife with discrimination against Negro doctors. Overworked nurses contract tuberculosis at an alarming rate and Harlem folk dub the hospital “the butcher shop.”

Such conditions breed unrest for which officials have one answer: police brutality. Testimony offered at the mayor’s committee. hearings showed that officers bully-rag Negroes and call them “black bastards” and “n***rs” with impunity. Murder is resorted to when it is felt necessary and facts are made to fit a case of self-defense for the offending officer. Inquiry boards whitewash these killings with monotonous regularity. A case in point was the shooting of Lloyd Hobbs, 16-year-old schoolboy, at the time of the March 19 outbreak. He was shot in the back and when protest arose the police department used its machinery to paint him as a looter. Some semblance of fairness on the part of the police department is maintained by the appointment of a few Negro police officers and one was promoted to the rank of lieutenant last spring.

Statistics could be cited at great length to improve the points that Harlem is overcrowded, that unemployment is amazingly high, that health and sanitation are bad and that police officers are brutal and arrogant. These are the things that the mayor’s committee will report after long and arduous hearings.

Harlem folk have a certain advantage over the commission; they know beforehand just what will be found out and they need not wait for publication of the report to take action. Contrary to the general impression Harlem is not a unified community in which everybody sees eye to eye. There are deep and thoroughgoing divisions of opinion reflecting economic groupings.

Bulwarks of Conservatism

HARLEM’S conservative spokesmen draw their support from the numerically small group that has some degree of economic small group that has some degree of economic security: civil service servants; professional men; skilled workers and the like, median family income of the professional group was never high: it was only $2,229 in 1929 and it had declined to $1,440 in 1932. It must be even lower at the present time, but that does not alter the fact that these people are property-minded. Advantages of training and education make them articulate and their words carry weight with the masses. Harlem newspapers reflect their views.

Bulwarked behind such organizations as the Y.M.C.A., the Urban League and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, these middle-class folk preach a doctrine of gradual reforms and protest of invasions of civil liberties. The Urban League is dominated by Secretary James Hubert, a man who has a pathetic faith in a return to the farm as a cure for the ills from which the urban Negro suffers. He is almost convinced that that program, although sound, is impractical. Prospective Negro farm workers ask him whether farms will afford electric lights or steam heat. “Do you suppose the Pilgrim Fathers asked whether or not Plymouth Rock afforded those facilities?” he asks with the air of a man who has proved his point that Negroes are not pioneers. The local branch of the National Association has never been very militant or influential. “Present officers of the Association are more radical than their predecessors,” a newspaper man explained to me, “they write more indignant letters.” Secretary Henry Craft of Harlem’s million dollar Y.M.C.A. didn’t want to be interviewed. It is all so difficult and “we can’t have all that we ought to have, right now.”

Formerly the church was one of the bulwarks of conservative thought, but the leaven of exploited communicants is doing its work and such ministers as A. Clayton Powell, Shelton Hale Bishop and William Lloyd Imes are impelled to cry out against abuses. At the other end of the religious scale is Father Divine, who has convinced his followers that he is God and exerts a large influence over them. His flock comes from the under-privileged and despite his fantastic religious ideology, Father Devine marshals them for united front parades and demonstrations on occasions.

The middle-class ideal of slow but steady progress toward equality in American life dominates in the political field. For the past fifteen years Harlem has had Negro representatives in the State Assembly and the Board of Aldermen. There are two aldermen and two assemblymen at the present time. Both assemblymen and one alderman are Tammany men; politicians with an eye on the main chance and the ballot box. Of course the Democrats have no special platform for the Negro, Tammany Assemblyman William Andrews said. He was sure that no party had. “Negroes just have to go into all parties and build up their own demands.” Against the Tammany machine, one supposes.

Garvey’s preachment of an African Empire left a deep impression on Harlem. He was deported a number of years ago, but his organization, the Universal Negro Improvement Association, is active. The official Garvey organization still furthers the Back-to-Africa movement, but the emphasis on the racial aspects of the Negro question are not so strong. The preaching of a race war is carried on by former Garvey followers who have split from the official organization. The Ethiopian situation has given them renewed vigor and their voices are raised on a half- dozen street corners crying out against the white man’s injuries and urging Negroes to turn their eyes to the ancestral fatherland.

Rise of Sufi

Leadership in the movement to foment racial feeling and hatred against whites has passed to Sufi Abdul Hamid, a former soldier who claims to have been born a Moslem in the United States. Sufi is a crafty and clever demagogue who counts as colored all of the millions of the earth’s population who live in Asia and Africa. His dream is a grandiose one: a billion and a half colored peoples–Japanese, Chinese, Hindus, Africans–conscious of their own strength arrayed against a puny half billion whites and driving the whites off the face of the earth to take possession of their ancient heritage.

Formerly very active in the boycott movement, Sufi was not above using anti-Semitism to further his ends. He made a fairly plausible case to Negro workers burdened with unemployment and angered at discrimination and rising prices at neighborhood stores. Most Harlem shopkeepers are Jews and Sufi twisted their middle-class outlook into manifestations of racial characteristics. His anti-Jewish activities finally landed him in jail and he now denies that he is anti-Semitic, but he will admit that Olin Hearst, member of the National Socialist Party, has spoken at his meetings. The Ethiopian situation is grist in Sufi’s mill and he now heads the African League for International Justice, a paper organization which he says will send him to Asia and Africa next year to begin the work of rousing the world of color. Meanwhile, his close connections with the Nazis and his call to racial warfare are playing their part in complicating the situation in Harlem.

Communists, white and Negro, had been active in Harlem long before the March 19 outbreak. The work of the Communist Party was very difficult in the beginning. Constant emphasis on color had done its work and Negroes were suspicious of white men and women who came to them, no matter how fair their words or how practical their program. The Communists had no formula to overcome this distrust except intensified work.

They led the fight for the Scottsboro boys, they popularized the Herndon case. No issue was too small and none too large to enlist their support. They took an active part in rent strikes and in struggles against discrimination. Always their emphasis was the same: unity and cooperation of all workers against every assault on workers’ rights. In the wake of the Communist Party came mass organizations like the League of Struggle for Negro Rights, the International Workers’ Order and the International Labor Defense. The thorough-going character of the work of the Communist Party can be seen in the confidence and following it has won for itself and its Harlem leader, James W. Ford, former vice-presidential candidate.

Communists in Harlem

ACTIVITIES at the Harlem headquarters reflect the Communist Party’s position in the community. Surely there were never any other political headquarters like these. I was there to interview its leaders when a man came to see “Mr. Ford.” He was disappointed that Ford wasn’t in because he had been having trouble with his wife and he just wanted Mr. Ford to speak to her and persuade her to adjust their difficulties. A butcher came in. He had been fired and his union couldn’t help him. “I told them I would go to the Communists,” he said a little triumphantly. As a matter of fact the Communists could do something and he was later reinstated. Another worker came to say that his merchant was constantly cheating him. I expressed my doubts about the ability of the Communists to deal with that kind of a complaint. He pitied my ignorance. “Man,” he said, “these Reds can do anything.” A group of doctors came to lay plans to aid Ethiopia in the medical services.

These and similar incidents suggest the extent to which the Communist Party has implemented itself in Harlem life. As a conservative newspaper editor explained it: “the Communists have made the poor Negroes articulate.” An ever-widening circle of United Front activities is growing; ranging from the Committee Against Discriminatory Practices to the Provisional Committee for the Defense of Ethiopia. Churches, fraternal organizations and kindred groups are entering these United Fronts. There is still much to be done from the Communist viewpoint. There is a vast difficulty in understanding and adjusting the intricate questions that agitate Harlem life flowing out of the Negro’s position as an oppressed minority and in relating these problems to the wider working-class question that underlies them all. The struggle is two edged to marshal Negroes for a constant struggle and to prevent the dissipation of strength on sporadic outbursts.

The Socialist Party has a long Harlem history but it lacks the influence of the Communists. Socialist headquarters, in charge of pontifical, albeit somewhat bewildered Frank Crosswaith, are quiet and restrained. Crosswaith talks incessantly of building a labor movement but in action his talk simmers down to cooperation with A. F. of L. leaders and the barring of militant unions from his labor conferences. Their very suggestion of a United Front pains him: “No sane man can make a United Front with the Communists.” The Socialist Party? “It is rather weak now partly because of factional strife.” Ethiopia? “Well, we have to remember that there are still slaves in Ethiopia and we Socialists are against oppression everywhere. Our fight is at home. Yes, our fight is at home. Of course we’re against Italian aggression. Italian aggression. But-But-But-“

A New Era

THAT is Harlem. Not a giant but a long-suffering strong youth who awoke from his passivity March 19 and turned on his tormentors in bitter wrath armed with the memory of a thousand wrongs. Harlem is a little proud of its new-found strength too and a little contemptuous of those who would restore the old ways. Those days are done for. Oh, of course there are still night clubs and tinsel spots to attract the tourists who want to thrill over strange folk, blind fools who can still believe that “darkies were born” only to entertain the sensation-seeking sophisticates who still visit in the evenings after theatre.

Harlem has a new sense of its position and importance. Frightened officials have already let up on discrimination in relief agencies. Negro conductors have been hired on city-owned subways. Everybody has been forced to admit that things are bad in Harlem. The government has purchased a site for a slum-clearance project, a move that makes the knowing in Harlem smile because they know that a paltry $4,700,000 will do almost nothing toward relieving congestion and because they know too that the purchase of the site relieved the Rockefellers of a large tract of vacant land. Meanwhile old slum apartments still stand.

When you sift it down nothing fundamental has been done. Not a dent has been made in unemployment, not a single blow struck at police brutality. The pattern of discrimination is woven into the very warp and woof of American capitalism. New York is still in the Union.

Will there be further outbreaks? It is easy to make out a case to prove that very end. There have been minor flare-ups terminating in an encounter between police officers and a Harlem crowd last week. Newspapers called the affair a “riot.” The trouble began when a Negro police officer jostled a Negro woman and the crowd stoned Negro and white officers with impartiality in defending themselves. A community-wide rent strike is planned for October 1 and trouble may occur if force is attempted. Privately, Harlem merchants claim that they are frightened and that they can feel the hostility of their customers. The Ethiopian situation is the most explosive factor at the moment. Irresponsible preaching of racial hatred may transform a small incident into a dangerous situation if the idea that the Italo-Ethiopian clash is a war of races is pursued far enough. The truth is that nobody can foretell what is in store. But everybody is agreed on one point. You hear it over and over again: “Something’s got to be done.” And despite differences of opinion and conflicting ideas Harlem is organizing to do something.

The New Masses was the continuation of Workers Monthly which began publishing in 1924 as a merger of the ‘Liberator’, the Trade Union Educational League magazine ‘Labor Herald’, and Friends of Soviet Russia’s monthly ‘Soviet Russia Pictorial’ as an explicitly Communist Party publication, but drawing in a wide range of contributors and sympathizers. In 1927 Workers Monthly ceased and The New Masses began. A major left cultural magazine of the late 1920s to early 1940s, the early editors of The New Masses included Hugo Gellert, John F. Sloan, Max Eastman, Mike Gold, and Joseph Freeman. Writers included William Carlos Williams, Theodore Dreiser, John Dos Passos, Upton Sinclair, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Dorothy Parker, Dorothy Day, John Breecher, Langston Hughes, Eugene O’Neill, Rex Stout and Ernest Hemingway, Artists included Hugo Gellert, Stuart Davis, Boardman Robinson, Wanda Gag, William Gropper and Otto Soglow. Over time, the New Masses became narrower politically and more journalistic in its tone.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/new-masses/1935/v16n07-aug-13-1935-NM.pdf