NEW PANTHERS IN COURT FRIDAY!
(sorry about the lines jammed - someone's mischief)

On Friday, September 26^th,  two of the five members of the New Black Panther Party who faced arrest after the police

attack on Sunday’s Harlem Day Parade, will be in court to answer the charges they have  been faced with.

They will appear at 100 Centre Street, Part F, in Manhattan at 9a.m.

“The community should pack the court for these young warriors who put themselves on the line in their defense,” insisted Sis.

Khadijah X of the Party’s Brooklyn chapter.

Sis. Khadijah’s son, Hannibal, was among those arrested and will be in court on Friday.

This past Sunday, the New York City Police Department, in a reckless and outrageous expression of police abuse,senselessly

attacked the New Black Panther Party’s contingent in the highly regarded annual Harlem Day Parade. The incident resulted in

five members of the Party being arrested and several officers sustaining injuries.

            The appears to have been set off by the unwarranted pushing of a Panther who was doing nothing more than keeping

his contingent in line as they were marching in formation up 135^th Street by a police officer. The behavior of the police

infuriated participants and spectators alike and could have easily degenerated into a full-fledged riot where scores of people

could have been hurt on both sides. The five Panthers arrested, whom the community is now calling the ‘Harlem 5,’ are now

facing charges ranging from disorderly conduct to assaulting a police officer.

This coming Sunday, September 28^th, there will a community-based critical review of the incident at the Harlem chapter’s

weekly meeting. This will take place at the National Black Theatre, on the corner of 5^th Avenue and 126^th Street at 12 noon ,

and there will be a speak out on the streets immediately afterwards in front of the Harlem State Office building after Sunday’s

meeting about 2p.m.. They are being guided every step of the way by their national chairman attorney Malik Zulu Shabazz and

have vowed to continue to “raise hell,” in his language. Any witnesses to the incident are especially encouraged to come out

and participate in the dialogue.

                      For more information, please call 917-420-8662…

THE BATTLE FOR THE SOUL OF THE SOUTH WARD CONTINUES

On Tuesday, September 30^th, there will be a ‘Quality of Life Unity Rally,’ at the corner of Bergen Street and Custer Avenue at 12 noon, in the ongoing struggle to prevent an unwanted liquor establishment from coming into this historic Black neighborhood.

This event, echoing its ongoing theme ‘Futures Not Funerals,’ is being organized by a powerful united front of community elements, led principally by elder Carolyn Kelly-Shabazz of First Class Championship Center, and including Imam Aqeel Mateen of United Muslim Inc., Church leaders Evangelist Dorothy Statham  and her husband Rev. Ronald Statham of Gethsemane Church of God in Christ, Rev. Pauline Ballard of the Pentecostal Prayer Center, Zayid Muhammad of the New Black Panther Party, author Sandra West, editor of the Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance, and most recently Sha Reagins, principal of the TEAM Academy, an incredible charter school just two blocks from the contested site of the liquor establishment, among many more.

 Area law states that a community can stop the opening of any liquor establishment if churches and or schools within a certain radius oppose its opening for public safety reasons.  

Several weeks ago, the neighborhood  resistance effort rallied around community clergy and held a Unity Prayer Vigil which included a nearly block-long ‘wall of silence,’ a high form of protest speak to the appreciation of the community. The prayer vigil was an expression of area clergy’s opposition. The rally on the 30^th will bring together both the opposition of area clergy and schools.

            “Haven’t we had enough funerals for our kids who we are losing to the madness of these streets?”asked Carolyn Kelly-Shabazz, a principal organizer in the resistance. “Here we are with a chance to prevent some of the negative influences that are claiming our kids from coming into our community, crossing every legal ‘t’ and dotting every legal ‘I,’ and yet the City continues to drags its feet on this issue. How long are we going to be held hostage to this process?”

Unlike the protest focus of the previous gatherings, this gathering will also showcase some of the enormously positive things happening with the neighborhood’s youth. This will include a spotlight of the TEAM Academy’s students.  

“This new administration is supposed to be a ‘Quality of Life’ administration. Yet they continue to drag their feet on our right to be heard. All we are saying is be consistent with your policy, not hypocritical. What about the ‘quality’ of our children’s lives,” said Muhammad, the Party’s national minister of culture.

            For more information, please call 973 318 7013…

Gotham Gazette - http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/demographics/20080827/5/2620

An Affluent, White Harlem?
by Andrew Beveridge
27 Aug 2008

Photo (c) Roger Smith, LOC

Harlem street scene, 1943.

Lenox Terrace, where U.S. Rep Charles Rangel had four apartments, now qualifies as a luxury building. Townhouses in Harlem sell for one, two and even more million dollars, as real estate developers build new condos in Hamilton Heights and elsewhere, Meanwhile Columbia University arranges to get much of West Harlem declared blighted so its expansion in Harlem, past the Fairway grocery store and Dinosaur Barbecue, can march on.

With the recent city rezoning of the area (see related story), many residents fear they will be pushed aside by new development. What is happening to Harlem? Is it becoming white? Is it becoming a neighborhood for the rich?

Harlem has gone through many changes since 1910. How far the latest transformation will go, though, remains to be seen.

As with many New York neighborhoods, defining Harlem's boundaries can be difficult. Central Harlem follows the definition set out by Gilbert Osofsky in his 1966 book Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto. The southern edge starts at 96th Street on the East Side; at Fifth Avenue and Central Park it goes up to 110th, and then cuts over to 106th Street on the West Side. The northern boundary of the area in most places is 155th Street, though it extends a bit further up on the East Side. Central Harlem is basically north of Central Park and east of Morningside and St. Nicholas avenues.

Prior to 1910, most of Harlem's settlers were middle class, including many notable African Americans. In the 1920s, an efflorescence of culture known as the Harlem Renaissance occurred, and the Apollo Theatre and the Savoy Ball Room were founded. As the "great migration" of blacks from the American South continued, and the size of the black population expanded, an area of concentrated poverty developed. Kenneth Clark's 1996 book, Dark Ghetto, certainly was influenced by Harlem.

Click on the image for full graph

The changes in Central Harlem and New York City are shown in the table. In 1910, Central Harlem was about 10 percent black, Greater Harlem was a little more than 4 percent black, while the rest of New York City was less than 2 percent black. By 1930, Central Harlem was over 70 percent black and Greater Harlem was about 35 percent black, but the rest of New York City was still less than 2 percent black. In short, by 1930, during the Harlem Renaissance, Central Harlem had become very definably black area in a largely white city. By 1950, Central Harlem was about 98 percent black, while Greater Harlem was 57.5 percent black.

Central Harlem lost more than half of its population between 1950 and 1980, and Greater Harlem also saw its population drop as well. This was a period of sharp economic decline in New York City, especially for the black community. This also marked the era of urban renewal, and many older housing units were razed either for public housing projects or for other apartment developments. The new developments did not come close to housing the same number of people. Almost all of the people who remained in Central Harlem, though, were black.

Since1980, Central Harlem has become less black, and by 2006 a smaller percentage of the population was black than in 1930. Meanwhile, the white and Hispanic populations rose. In 1980, there were 672 whites in Central Harlem, constituting about 0.6 percent of the population. By 2006 that figure had increased to 7,741 or about 6.6 percent. Hispanics accounted for 4.3 percent of Harlem residents in 1980, the first year they were classified separately. In 2006,that number reached 18.6 percent.

In short, there had been a turnaround of sorts in Harlem. The white population that had moved to Harlem by 2000 was distributed in many different areas. Between 1980 and 2000, there has been a decline in the concentration of blacks in Harlem. Furthermore, according to the 2006 American Community Survey, the overall decline in black population has continued.

In the early days of Harlem, the black community there was quite diverse, especially when African Americans in Harlem were compared to those who lived elsewhere. During the period of the rapid influx into the area, the level of concentrated poverty increased in Harlem. That accelerated during the 1950s through the 1970s with urban renewal, housing deterioration and a decline in population. At the same time, areas such as Southeast Queens attracted affluent black families.

Now it appears that areas of Harlem are sought after once again. By 2000 and 2006, there were areas of some highly affluent black and white residents. Median household income in Central Harlem had increased from about $13,765 in 1950 to over $26,161 in 2006, in 2006 dollars. Still, this figure is well below the median of $46,285 for the rest of New York City.

Harlem has changed from an impoverished area with a few middle-class families to one where some middle-class people, including a few whites, have moved in and made their homes. In some parts of Harlem, blacks have been joined by Hispanics, but that percentage has not grown much since 2000. Rather, the new residents of Harlem seem to be non-Hispanic white and non-Hispanic, who consider themselves to be "other race," neither black nor white. The traditional townhouse areas around Strivers Row, Sugar Hill and Marcus Garvey Park have undergone a rebirth. Stores and restaurants catering to the affluent have opened in West Harlem, while Magic Johnson opened a Starbucks and a Multiplex on 125th Street, near where former President Bill Clinton has his office suite. Columbia University's expansion will bring more change to West Harlem.

What these changes portend for New York City's iconic black neighborhood is hard to fathom. On the one hand, new residents mean that Harlem will have more diversity of income, occupation, educational level and race than it did in the 1970s and 1980s. At the same time, the large stock of public housing and the relatively low income means that high levels of poverty will continue to be a feature of Harlem. Harlem will not lose its black majority or its high concentrations of poverty anytime soon.

Andrew A. Beveridge has taught sociology at Queens College since 1981, done demographic analyses for the New York Times since 1993, and been in charge of Gotham Gazette's demographics topic page since 2000. The opinions expressed are his alone.