Whose Harlem Is It?

"Around 123rd Street, an enormous luxury high-rise is going up. The people of the neighborhood have scrawled, in white paint, on the walls of the construction site: Where will we live? For Harlem is an exceedingly valuable chunk of real estate and the state and the city and the real-estate interests are reclaiming the land and urban renewalizing--or gentrifying--the niggers out of it."--James Baldwin, "Whose Harlem Is This, Anyway?" (1986), published in Essence magazine (November 1996), quoted in Whose Harlem Is This, Anyway?: Community Politics and Grassroots Activism During the New Negro Era by Shannon King (New York University Press, 2015), page 1 (Introduction).

Now that gentrification has firmly taken root in Harlem, Baldwin's comments are still timely and relevant in the 21st century.