A NEGRO CITY.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVI, Issue 4887, 7 October 1925, Page 4

A NEGRO CITY.

NEW YORK’S BLACK BELT. STEADY’ ENLARGEMENT IN AREA. The cosmopolitan city of New York has many amazing thing's hidden away within its boundaries. Of all the intensely interesting populations which shelter .there one stands out alone, not so much because of its picturesqueness or its .tenacity of foreign customs and foreign ideals, but because it represents the greatest problem with which America has to cope. The Italian, Jewish, Slav, Chinese, Japanese, and other quarters may be picturesque and problematic enough, but it is. the Negro quarter, the home of the descendants of emancipated .slavery, the centre of the great colour problem, which arouses the greatest interest and sets the wheels of speculation revolving. A writer in the Saturday “Evening Post” has. revealed to the world the inner history of the negro city within New York. It is an astonishing history in that it shows the extent to which the American negro has adapted himself to city life, and has, like any foreign immigrant, congregated in a suitable area and there thriven. Harlem is the city within a city, and it is called the Harlem Black Belt. It has a population of close on 200,000 Negroes, and is the largest Negro city in the world.

You board a Bronx, local train and note the complexion of the passengers. From one-half to nine-,tenths are Negroes on their way to .the Black Belt. There is no need to wonder why they congregate in that .area. This is one of the few places in the world where a Negro may achieve wealth and dis.tniction among his own people. There is no need for him to bother with whites or solicit their custom or patronage. He may trade with or work for his own people, and ni view of the manner in which the Negro population is considered in America one can understand why he prefers that course. So Harlem becomes- the Mecca of all .the black people of the United States, and the population is growing daily.

Not all those within the black Belt in New York are American Negroes. There are some 40,000 West Indians quartered there. Some of these people speak Spanish, French, or Portuguese, and some speak English—not Amreicah English,, but English English, as it is spoken by educated Londoners. There is an amazing hubbub of languages in Harlem. Breaking through the comparative quietude of the Latin tongues comes something resembling an Oxford accent mingled with the soft tones of the American South. You go- into a restaurant in Harlem and you immediately think that the, waiter is giving you an imitation of a stage Englishman. You are tickled to death until you discover

later .that you have been had. With all this, Harlem is a, quiet city. Possibly the noisest faction is made up of the 10,000 jazz musicians who live there, but they are not so noisy after all.

Whereas the whole world knows something of this Negro city, Ne v York is barely acqm’ntc.l with its existence. Botham goes, its way unobservant and uninterested. That, however, is typical of Greater New York. Two hundred thousand people in a population of something like 8,000,000 represent only a very small community. Millions of white people ride under and over Harlem each day in the subways or elevateds without knowing exactly where it is. The Black Belt of New York is about 23 blocks long. It was not always a Negro centre. Once upon a time it was Dutch. Then it changed over to Irish. Later Germans, claimed it, and after them came the Jews. The Black Belt is a good district. All the houses are well| built; none are of wood. The district contains a model tenement block designed by .the late Stanford White, whose demise, it will be remembered, was responsible for the imprisonment for life of an American millionaire named Thaw. This is. not a ramshackle district, as the pictures of it show. The buildings are solid and have stood up to successive waves of immigration. It may remain Negro indefinitely, and then again it may not. Quite likely another twenty years will see it a white quarter again. But should th,at happen, the Negro city will merely have moved. The advantages- of congregation have been so great to these people that they will never scatter.

If history repeats itself, .the Negro centre will move again, tl has always been a moving factor in the population of New York. As far back as 1850 the New York Negroes lived in Broome, Spring and Lispenard Streets. When Washington Square and Lower Fifth Avenue became the centre of fashionable life the Negroes-, following their work, moved up to a fringe of houses in that vicinity.-The streets they lived in now constitute a part of Greenwich Village, which has since become an Italian quarter, and has been so Tor the last 25 years, but there are still a few Negro families there who have not cared to move on. Then came the move to Harlem. Harlem ■ was overbuilt and lacked adequate transportation facilities;. Many of its houses were empty. A Negro business man got to- work and introduced Negro families. The white landlords, resenting this, formed a company to buy up tenements and evict the blacks, but the flood had set in. The Negroes, realising that renting : was out of the question, set about buying their homeis en / the time-payment system. The whites, then tried to induce financial institutions not to renew the mortgages, and were, and are, to some extent successful.

These obstacles are all being removed slowly; and in the meantime the Harlem Negroes are happy. According to their chronicler, ‘‘they live ; they like Harlem ; they laugh, they sing, they dance, they have par-

ades almost every day, lodges and churches flourish in astounding numbers ; no one fe alarmed, because 200,000 of them reside there, and by degrees they are creating a, community life of real promise. Among them are writers, surgeons,, doctors , artists, scientists, actors, entertianers, singers-, musicians, nad educators. They also have a number of sound and flourishing businesses.” It is estimated that Negroes own more than £12,000,000 worth of land and buildings in Harlem, and they are steadily acquiring more. As the Black Belt spreads there is always opposition on the fringes-. The white population wilts in the face of the onward march and moves elsewhere, while .the negroes are manoeuvred into offering high prices and rents. The economic law, however, intervenes and prices go down. You can’t command high figures when your properties are empty. Still, even with this expansion, Harlem is crowded. Thousands of families with insufficient space for themselves, take in roomers, but the houses are better than those to which the Negroes have been accustomed, and the sanitary laws are strictly enforced.