Title
Harlem : the four hundred year history from Dutch village to capital of Black America / Jonathan Gill.
Edition
1st ed.
ISBN
9780802119100
0802119107
9780802145741
0802145744
Publication Details
New York : Grove Press ; [Berkeley, Calif.] : Distributed by Publishers Group West, c2011.
Language
English
Description
520 p., [32] p. of plates : ill., maps ; 24 cm.
Call Number
F128.68.H3 G55 2011
Dewey Decimal Classification
974.7/1
Summary
Harlem is perhaps the most famous, iconic neighborhood in the United States. A bastion of freedom and the capital of Black America, Harlem's twentieth century renaissance changed our arts, culture, and politics forever. But this is only one of the many chapters in its history. In this work the author, a historian presents a chronicle of this remarkable place. From Henry Hudson's first contact with native Harlemites, through Harlem's years as a colonial outpost on the edge of the known world, he traces the neighborhood's story, marshaling a wealth of detail and a host of figures from George Washington to Langston Hughes. Harlem was an agricultural center under British rule and the site of a key early battle in the Revolutionary War. Later, wealthy elites including Alexander Hamilton built great estates there for entertainment and respite from the epidemics ravaging downtown. In the nineteenth century, transportation urbanized Harlem and brought waves of immigrants from Germany, Italy, Ireland, and elsewhere. Harlem's mix of cultures, extraordinary wealth and extreme poverty was electrifying and explosive. This work is the history of the Manhattan neighborhood of Harlem, beginning with Hudson's first experiences in the area, through its early growth as a Dutch village and colonial agricultural center, to its transformation into a modern neighborhood.
Bibliography, etc. Note
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Unrighteous beginnings: from Muscoota to Nieuw Haarlem, 1609-1664
Strange bedfellows: British Harlem, 1664-1781
Sweet asylum: founding an American Harlem, 1781-1811
The future is uptown, 1811-1863
The flash age, 1863-1898
Nostra Harlem, undzere Harlem: the age of immigration
"To race with the world": the new Negro and the Harlem Renaissance
"The kingdom of culture": Harlem's Renaissance comes of age
"Moon over Harlem": the Great Depression uptown, 1929-1943
"Tempus fugue-it": Harlem in the Civil Rights Era, 1943-1965
Harlem nightmare, 1965-1990
Old and new dreams: reviving the Renaissance.
