Spread Love: X: Or, Betty Shabazz v. The Nation
Listen up folks, you have until February 18 to catch X: Or, Betty Shabazz v. The Nation at the Theatre at St. Clement’s. This magnificent show vividly brings to life the assassination of the late great Malcolm X. We cannot say this enough, you need to see this show ASAP. Beautifully written by Marcus Gardley, […]
NYPL’s Schomburg Center in Harlem reveals its complete two-year renovation | Curbed NY
Check out the new gift shop, research spaces, and more by Tanay Warerkar After a nearly two-year renovation, the New York Public Library debuted a host of renovated spaces inside the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, in Harlem. The Center, located on Malcolm X Boulevard, between West 136th and 135th Streets is comprised […]
Happy Birthday Marcus Garvey…
“A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.” Marcus Garvey Before Malcolm, before MLK, before the Black Panthers, there was Marcus Garvey. On this day, August 17, 1887, Black giant Marcus Mosiah Garvey was born in Saint Ann’s Bay, Jamaica. While Marcus Garvey was born […]
On Whole Foods, Gentrification and the Erasure of Black Harlem | The Root
BY Angela Helm Bye-bye, black Harlem, glad I knew ye. Hello, Whole Foods, I do enjoy your products, but if you can gentrify greens, what chance do we really have? I first moved to Harlem in 1998. I was a young single mother in graduate school with a 2-year-old. Harlem offered me respite, refuge and […]
04/29/17: Harlem and the Future – Preserving Culture and Sustaining Historic Character
The 1st Uptown Preservation Conference – HARLEM AND THE FUTURE: PRESERVING CULTURE & SUSTAINING HISTORIC CHARACTER IN A CHANGING ENVIRONMENT Saturday, April 29, 2017 – 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM City College of New York – Aronow Theatre Cost: $10 includes lunch and a walking tour. Free for students and seniors. Tickets can be reserved […]
Black Cowboys, Busting One of America’s Defining Myths | The New Yorker
By Emily Raboteau In a 2016 portrait by the photographer Brad Trent, an older black woman poses on a bale of hay, a white Stetson hat on her head and a pair of hand-tooled cowboy boots on her feet. The fringe on her leather jacket flows downward, as do her knee-length dreadlocks, which echo the […]
The Harlem Hip at Lenox Saphire | The New Yorker
By Nicolas Niarchos There are two reasons Phil Young is an uptown legend. First, for his work as a florist: for many years, he ran the Carolina Flower Shop, one of Harlem’s oldest and most beloved stores. Second, for his drumming: in the early sixties, when Phil was in his teens, his band won a […]
A Young Black Girl’s View Of Harlem At The Height Of The Great Migration | The New Yorker
By Emily Raboteau Mildred Harris was born in South Carolina in 1926. She moved to Harlem as a baby, when her parents, Eddie and Jessie Mae Harris, joined the wave of African-Americans fleeing the South as part of the Great Migration. Mildred and her siblings—there would eventually be eight children altogether—grew up moving from building […]
Time Travel Tuesdays: A Curbside Sermon From Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker | NY Times
The Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker served as chief of staff for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. from 1960 to 1964 and spent nearly four decades as the pastor of Canaan Baptist Church of Christ, in Harlem. In this photo, from April 5, 1970, he is taking his message to the streets. Although it […]
On the Streets of Harlem, a Sense of ‘Erase and Replace’ | NY Times
By Maurice Berger Dawoud Bey’s large-scale color photographs of Harlem vividly document a bustling and rapidly transforming neighborhood: a verdant Marcus Garvey Park; construction sites popping up for more luxury housing; street vendors hawking hats and used clothing; posters of black women’s hairstyles in the window of a hair weave distributor adjacent to a vacant […]
The End of Black Harlem | NY Times
Newcomers say gentrification is about wealth, not race. But that’s a distinction without a difference. By MICHAEL HENRY ADAMS I HAVE lived in Harlem for half my life — 30 years. I have seen it in all its complexities: a cultural nexus of black America, the landing place for Senegalese immigrants and Southern transplants, a […]
2/27/16: Reclaiming Our Independence @ The Shabazz Center
Related: Uptown Gem – The Malcolm X & Dr. Betty Shabazz Center Freedom’s Sisters We invite you to subscribe to the weekly Uptown Love newsletter, like our Facebook page and follow us on Twitter, or e-mail us at UptownCollective@gmail.com.
A Push to Preserve the Cultural Legacy of Harlem’s Sugar Hill | NY Times
By DAVID GONZALEZ Morning sunlight filled Karen D. Taylor’s apartment, casting a warm glow on the books and artwork lining the dining room. Here, perched high along the bluffs in Harlem’s Sugar Hill, she invoked the names of prominent African-Americans who made her imposing building, 555 Edgecombe Avenue, the address of choice decades ago: Paul […]
Uptown Video: Heroes of Color – The Harlem Hellfighters
The Harlem Hellfighters were an African-American infantry unit in WWI who spent more time in combat than any other American unit. This awesome video (done in whiteboard animation style) by Heredia Designs tells the story. Watch out for more in the Heroes of Color video series.
Spread Love: The Day After MLK @ The Shabazz Center
The 50th anniversary of the assassination of Malcolm X will be commemorated at the Malcolm X & Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial & Education Center with the live performance art exhibit The Day After MLK. The Day After MLK is a fictional story based on true events, beginning with the assassination of Malcolm X and continuing […]
Malcolm X’s Public Speaking Power | WNYC
By Gwen Thompkins From what people remember, he fell like a tree. Malcolm X — all 6 feet, 4 inches of him — had taken a shotgun blast to the chest and a grouping of smaller-caliber bullets to the torso while onstage at the Audubon Ballroom in Washington Heights on Feb. 21, 1965. After a […]
What Would Malcolm X Think? | NY Times
By Ilyasah Shabazz (@ilyasahShabazz) FIFTY years ago today my father, Malcolm X, was assassinated while speaking at the Audubon Ballroom in New York City. I think about him every day, but even more in the last year, with the renewed spirit of civil rights activism after the tragic events in Ferguson, Mo., on Staten Island […]
Malcolm X Lives: Remembering Malcolm X on the 50th Anniversary of his Assassination
BY Led Black (@Led_Black) 50 years ago today, the epic struggle for freedom, justice and equality for African-Americans lost one of it’s leading lights. El-Hajj Malik El Shabazz, better known as Malcolm X, was assassinated in the Audubon Ballroom in Washington Heights on February 21st, 1965.
Black History Month In Brief: Power Lunch
BY A J Sidransky (@AJSidransky) In 1967 NYC schools were desegregated. In those years that meant black kids were bussed to an all white school, not the other way around. One of these kids was assigned to my fourth grade class. My last name is Sidransky and his Tate so we sat next to each […]
Uptown Video: The Harlem Hellfighters
The Harlem Hellfighters were an African-American infantry unit in WWI who spent more time in combat than any other American unit.
Black History Month In Brief: The Meaning of Freedom
BY A J Sidransky (@AJSidransky) I have had the distinct pleasure to meet and speak with Athelstein Sullivan Parrish known to her friends and family as “Mama T” who will be 100 years old this month and who was in Selma during the historic events of 1965. I am forever grateful to her for sharing […]
Black History Month In Brief: The Absence of Color
BY A J Sidransky (@AJSidransky) I was raised not to see color. That’s easy when you live in world where your skin is the same color as the flesh colored crayon in a box of Crayolas. A few years ago I moved uptown. I was raised not to see color. I never thought about it. […]
1/17/15: El Callejón de Hamel @ The Shabazz Center
Salvador González Escalona is one of Cuba’s top artists with global recognition. His primary interest in in African cultural heritage in Cuba and the Americas. In the crisis-ridden 1990s, without any official assistance and with no money, he created what is today the most celebrated work of public art in Havana, in the neighborhood of […]
Time Travel Tuesdays: Malcolm X Plan – Picking a Shrine Or Self-Reliance | NY Times
By SAM ROBERTS Published: May 10, 1990 Past a padlocked stairway and beneath the rubble, it is said that blood still stains floorboards on the wooden stage of a decrepit building in upper Manhattan, and that bullet holes in the black plaster walls bear further witness to a murder. Outside, a poster proclaims ”Malcolm X […]
