Harlem The Four Hundred Year History from Dutch Village to Capital of Black America

by Gill, Jonathan

• ISBN13: 9780802145741
• ISBN10: 0802145744
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-02-14
• Publisher: Grove Press

Summary

The most iconic neighborhood in the United States, Harlem has been a bastion of freedom and the capital of Black America. Its renaissance changed our arts, culture, and politics forever, but Harlem has played a vital role in American history for centuries. A point of contact between natives and explorers, a colonial outpost on the edge of the known world, and then an agricultural center under British rule, Harlem was also the site of a key battle in the Revolutionary War. Later, wealthy elites built great estates there for entertainment and to escape the epidemics ravaging downtown. In the nineteenth century, Harlem urbanized, and waves of immigrants arrived from Germany, Italy, Ireland, and elsewhere. This mix of cultures, extraordinary wealth, and extreme poverty was electrifying and explosive, a crucible for American identity.

Author Biography

A professor of American history and literature, Jonathan Gill has taught at Columbia University, and is currently on the faculty at the Manhattan School of Music and the University of Amsterdam.

Table of Contents

Unrighteous Beginnings
From Muscoota to Nieuw Haarlem, 1609-1664	p. 1
Strange Bedfellows
British Harlem, 1664-1781	p. 40
Sweet Asylum
Founding an American Harlem, 1781-1811	p. 63
The Future Is Uptown, 1811-1863	p. 76
The Flash Age, 1863-1898	p. 100
Nostra Harlem, Undzere Harlem
The Age of Immigration	p. 131
"To Race with the World"
The New Negro and the Harlem Renaissance	p. 170
"The Kingdom of Culture"
Harlem's Renaissance Comes of Age	p. 226
"Moon Over Harlem"
The Great Depression Uptown, 1929-1943	p. 282
"Tempus Fugue-It"
Harlem in the Civil Rights Era, 1943-1965	p. 334
Harlem Nightmare, 1965-1990	p. 385
Old and New Dreams
Reviving the Renaissance	p. 421
Illustration Credits	p. 465
Sources and Further Reading	p. 469
Index	p. 481
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.