Abstract
Harlem is an iconic Ghetto. The original settlers in Harlem, before 1910, were often 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” from the U.S. South continued, and the size of the black population expanded, an area of concentrated poverty developed. Kenneth Clark's (1965) edited volume entitled Dark Ghetto certainly was influenced by Harlem. Clark taught for years at City College, which is in the midst of Harlem. Clark's studies of the influence of segregation on school children were recited in the famous footnote 11 to the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954 that ruled that segregation was illegal, at least with respect to schools. From the 1950s until recently, the involuntary segregation of housing and schools has been seen by most sociologists and other social scientists as an unrelenting negative. There is, of course, another side to this view of segregation, which argues that segregation of African Americans in and of itself is not necessarily pernicious, and since African Americans are discriminated against and stigmatized by many whites and other nonblacks, it is better for them to develop on their own in their own communities. Harlem was and is still seen by many non–African Americans as a dangerous place, which is unsafe to travel in even during the day. More recently, many have noted that Harlem, along with most other neighborhoods in Manhattan, is becoming more and more affluent. We will see to what extent this is true.
This brief essay will look at the development of the African American presence in New York City and the development of the area that is Harlem. It will focus on the patterns of segregation in the city, as a whole, and the growth and change in Harlem. It will also examine the social and economic status of Harlem residents, at different points in time, to see the extent to which Harlem changed. Most particularly, the more recent developments of Harlem becoming much less black and of Harlem townhouses, condominiums, and rental property drawing residents from outside the African–American community will be examined in terms of what it means for the future of one of the most famous Ghettos in the United States.
Segregation in New York City: 1880 to 2000
The migration to the North and the consolidation of African–American Ghettos in major cities, the efforts by the Census Bureau to produce data at small areas (census tracts), and the development of measures of segregation all occurred simultaneously. Ethnographic researchers such as Drake and Clayton (1945) focused on the day–to–day life and organization of the Ghetto. Drake and Clayton included a fair amount of quantitative material, as well as work by WPA researchers. Alma and Karl Taeuber's (1965) Negroes in Cities examined segregation in 207 cities in the United States. Using the tract concept, which was institutionalized in 1940, though developed first in New York City by Walter Laidlaw in 1910, the Taeubers were able to give a quantitative measure to how separated and isolated the African–American community was from the white community in various cities. The measures they used have been used by other researchers since the 1960s, and work by Massey, White, and Phua (1993) shows that the indexes they developed capture two of the main dimensions of residential segregation.
What was not easily possible was to examine the patterns of segregation before 1940 using the same tools and concepts. The creation of the data and boundary files now available in the National Historical Geographic Information System (NHGIS), as well as the enumeration district codes on the 100 percent sample from the 1880 population census, have made it possible to explore long term patterns of segregation in New York City. (All data are available for download from the Minnesota Population Center.) Using these data, which were tabulated by Census tract for 1910 through 2000, and which I tabulated at the enumeration district for 1880, I was able to compute standard measures of segregation, as well as the growth of the black population in New York City, from 1880 and 1910 through 2000. My results are presented in table 1.
Population, Racial Composition, and Segregation, New York City, 1880 to 2000
For comparative purposes, for this analysis I treated all blacks as black, regardless of Hispanic status. The concept of Hispanic was not fully developed until 1980 by the U.S. Census Bureau. in New York City, there were a substantial number of Puerto Ricans as early as 1950 and 1960. Puerto Ricans are still the number one Hispanic group in New York City. Very few Hispanics report that they are “black”; however, a substantial number do report being “other” and a large number also report being “white.” For the development of Harlem from 1980, this distinction is taken into account.
In any event, the number of blacks in New York City was slightly more than 35,000 in 1880, was about 325,000 in 1930, reached over 1 million in 1960, and peaked at 2.16 million in 2000, before declining to 2.06 million in 2006. in 1990, the percentage of black New Yorkers peaked at 28.7 percent and had declined to 25.1 percent in 2006. New York City is now losing black population. This trend is happening in many cities in the United States (Dougherty, 2008). Indeed, the native born African–American population in New York City has been declining since at least 1980.
The most common index of segregation is dissimilarity. It measures the proportion of a group that must be moved to even the group out across some unit, here the census tract. It is most useful with only two groups. The size of either group does not matter, so one can gauge level of segregation regardless of group size. It makes the interpretation of black/white segregation relatively simple. When one examines table 1 it is plain that the segregation of blacks from whites in New York City was high to start with, became even higher by 1930, and has maintained a quite high level ever since.
The two other common segregation measures are isolation and exposure. Each looks at the presence of members of groups by neighborhood, here the census tract.
Isolation is the average proportion of members of the same group in a tract for members of that group. Exposure is the proportion of members of a different group in a tract for members of a given group.
When one examines black isolation from other groups, both whites and others, it is plain that over time blacks have become increasingly isolated from other groups. in 1910, only 18 percent of the other residents of the average black person's tract were black. By 1930, this number was 54 percent, and it reached 69 percent in 1950, and was 62 percent in 2000. The isolation of whites from other groups declines from 98 percent in 1920 to 66 percent in 2000. When one looks at the exposure measures, which give the proportion of other groups that share the tract with a specific group, the following patterns are found: Exposure of white to black increases in small ways, from 0.02 in 1910 to 0.10 in 2000, while exposure of black to white declines, from 0.82 in 1910 to 0.17 in 2000. in short, the African Americans are more and more isolated and less and less exposed to whites. This implies that the African–American areas (including Harlem) consolidated in New York City, and blacks, experienced Ghetto conditions; they lived quite apart from whites. Indeed, in New York City the three main concentrations of African Americans remain centered in Harlem, as well as in Southeast Queens and in Flatbush and Bedford Stuyvesant in Brooklyn. of these three, Southeast Queens remains the area that attracts the most affluent African Americans into its areas of mainly owner–occupied, single–family detached homes.
HARLEM's TRAJECTORY FROM 1910 TO 2006
Using materials from the NHGIS, it is possible to track the trajectory of Harlem for 96 years. Going all the way back to Osofsky (1966), the definition of Harlem, as with many New York neighborhoods, is difficult to discern. For purposes of this essay, two definitions will be adopted: Central Harlem and Greater Harlem. The outline of each is shown in Figure 1. Greater Harlem does follow the Osofsky definition, more or less, but is somewhat more restrictive. It 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 top of the area is mainly 155th Street, though a little area above that is also included on the East Side. The advantage of this definition is that it can be used consistently from 1910 through 2006, since it is based upon the Public Use Microdata Areas or subboroughs, which are used to report data from the American Community Survey and are delineated in 2000 and 1990 Censuses. Central Harlem is shown on the map and is basically north of Central Park and East of Morningside Avenue and St. Nicholas.
Central and Greater Harlem delineated.
The racial and population change in Central Harlem, Greater Harlem, and New York City is shown in table 2. Here the distinction is made between Hispanic and non–Hispanic beginning in 1980. 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, Greater Harlem was about 35 percent black, but the rest of New York City was still not 2 percent black. in short, by 1930, during the Harlem Renaissance, Central Harlem had become very definably black. By 1950, Central Harlem was about 98 percent black, and Greater Harlem was 57.5 percent. By 1980 Central Harlem had declined a bit to 94 percent black, while Greater Harlem was 58.8 percent black. Central Harlem lost more than half of its population between 1950 and 1980, and Greater Harlem also declined. This was a period of very marked economic decline in New York City, especially for the black community. It also included the era of urban renewal, and many older housing units were raised either for public housing projects or for other apartment developments. The new developments did not come close to housing the same number of people.
Population and Racial Composition in Harlem and New York City, 1910 to 2006
Sources: 1910 to 1940, Census Tract Data from National Historical Geographical Information System, Compiled by Andrew A. Beveridge and co–workers; 1950, Ellen M. Bogue File, as edited by Andrew A. Beveridge and co–workers; 1960 through 2000, Tabulated Census Data from National Historical Geographic Information System; 2006 Data from American Community Survey, U.S. Bureau of the Census.. Boundary Files from National Historical Geographic Information System 1910 to 2000, U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2006. All data and boundary files available from Minnesota Population Center. Since results are tabulated from the sources indicated, they may not necessarily match Census published figures for population and race.
From 1980 on, Central Harlem has become less black, and by 2006 it had a lower percent black than it did in 1930 and had less than half the population. in 1980, there were 672 whites in Central Harlem, which constituted about 0.6 percent. By 2006 that figure had increased to 7,741 or about 6.6 percent. in short, there had been a turn around of sorts in Harlem. The white population that had moved to Harlem by 2000 was distributed in many different areas. Figure 2 displays the concentration of the black population in and near Harlem in 1980 and 2000. Comparing those two maps, it is obvious that there has been a decline in the concentration of blacks in Harlem during that 20–year period. Furthermore, according to the 2006 American Community Survey, the overall decline in black population has continued.
Maps showing concentration of Black population in and near Harlem 1980 and 2000.
By 2000 and 2006, there were areas of some highly affluent residents. in the early days of Harlem, the black community there was quite diverse, especially compared to African Americans who lived elsewhere. During the period of the rapid influx of residents from elsewhere, the level of concentrated poverty increased in Harlem. During the 1950s through the 1970s, urban renewal occurred along with housing lost and Harlem had a declining population. At the same time, the area in Southeast Queens that was attractive to affluent black families developed. Now it appears that areas of Harlem are sought after once again. Indeed, one of the areas with the highest income now is Lenox Terrace apartments, where the local Congressman Rangel, who had moved in around 1970, was living in an apartment combined from three units, which would rent for nearly $8,000 on the open market. He was paying somewhat more than $2,000 per month. 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.
Thus, there is some evidence of change in Harlem, as the area is transformed from one that is mostly impoverished with a few middle class families still in residence to an area where some middle class, including a few whites, have now moved in and made their homes. However, unlike Chicago or other major cities, New York City has chosen not to tear down its public housing. As such, one cannot expect Harlem to escape the designation of a largely minority area with high concentrations of poverty anytime soon.
Conclusion: Still a Ghetto, but on the Rise
Harlem is still a Ghetto in the sense that it is still an area with high concentrations of low–income African–American population. Some parts of Harlem 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 others. The traditional town house areas around Strivers Row, Sugar Hill, and Marcus Garvey Park have undergone a rebirth. Partially abandoned buildings and decrepit structures have been and are being destroyed. Townhouses now often sell for well over one million (some even higher), and new condo developments in West Harlem in the 140s and other areas are signs of a bustling real estate market. Columbia University, which had been trying to expand into Harlem, has just had its plans to condemn a large swath of West Harlem approved. Stores and restaurants catering to the affluent have opened in West Harlem, while Magic Johnson opened a Starbucks and a Multiplex on 125th Street in Harlem, near where former President Clinton has his office suite.
Now, of course, the panic and crash in 2008 may cool the new real estate boom, while the concentration of public housing means that Harlem's newly affluent will be living quite near the poor. 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 income, occupational, and educational diversity 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. Finally, a real economic downturn will probably hit Harlem harder than most of the city. So, though the future of Harlem as a Ghetto is uncertain, it is certain that it has reflected and will continue to reflect changes in the wider New York City area.