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.

HED TK

TXT TK

HED TK

TXT TK

HED TK

TXT TK

Note: Today is Pearl Harbor Day, a day to commemorate the 1941 Japanese air attack on the Pearl Harbor naval base in Hawaii. The attack led to the United States entering the Second World War.

HED TK

TXT TK

Note: I'm getting ready to put together a list of books I hope to read in the new year.

HED TK

TXT TK

World AIDS Day, 2018

Today is World AIDS Day, a time to remember friends and family members who succumbed to this disease as well as to reflect on the progress made thus far by medical science in fighting and possibly eradicating it.

Looking back, the AIDS epidemic made the 1980s and 1990s a scary time. Especially because so many people were dropping like flies and a cure seemed a million years away.

But it was also a great time for AIDS activism and artistic expression, particularly among black gay men. So whenever I look through one of my scrapbooks or manuscript folders containing articles that I've written, I'm reminded that, as a journalist, I was privileged to have had the opportunity to witness and document what went on within the gay community during a frightening time.