"Will Harlem become merely a famous ghetto, or will it be a center of intellectual, cultural and economic forces exerting an influence throughout the world, especially upon Negro peoples?"--James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938;Harlem Renaissance writer), "The Making of Harlem," Survey Graphic, March 1925, quoted in One Righteous Man: Samuel Battle and the Shattering of the Color Line in New York by Arthur Browne (Beacon Press, 2015), page 193.
"Have you ever stopped to think what the future of Harlem will be? It will be a city within a city. It will be the greatest Negro city in the world within the greatest city in the world."--James Weldon Johnson, "The Future Harlem," New York Age, January 10, 1920, ibid., page 153.
None of the above will happen if the gentrifiers and real estate developers of the 21st century have their way.
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