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By Root 1624 0

Americans resided in Manhattan, of whom only 14,300 had been born in New York State. The great majority of blacks had been Southern born. With the onset in 1915 of the Great Migration from the rural South, hundreds of thousands of blacks began to make their way to Gotham. The city’s total black population steadily increased: 152,500 in 1920; 327,700 in 1930. The Census Bureau estimated that 54,724 black New Yorkers in 1930 were foreign born. Much of this increase was confined to the Harlem ghetto. In 1910, Harlem’s total population regardless of race was 49,600. In 1920, Harlem’s population was 73,000, of which about two-thirds were black. By the 1920s, Harlem became the urban capital of the black diaspora, a lively center for the extraordinary flowering of literature, plays, dance, and the arts, a period that would come to be known as the Harlem Renaissance. Harlem’s music, jazz, traversed the Atlantic, found a loving home in Paris, and became a global expression for youth culture.

Malcolm could not have lived in Harlem during World War II without being deeply affected by its turbulent history and cultural activities. By any standard, it had by 1940 become the cosmopolitan center for black political activity, not only in America but worldwide. Roughly one-quarter of its black population consisted of Caribbean immigrants, nearly all of whom had established political associations, parties, and clubs of all kinds. One of the most influential West Indian politicians, Hulan Jack, originally from St. Lucia, had been elected to represent the neighborhood in the New York State Assembly in 1940. Harlem was also the national center of black labor activism, headed by A. Philip Randolph, who began his legendary career as a public orator even before Garvey’s arrival in the United States. Thousands of Harlem residents were active members and supporters of the Communist Party; figures like Claudia Jones and Benjamin Davis, Jr., were widely respected and popular leaders.

Despite the demise of the Garvey movement, Harlem’s militancy had grown more intense, chiefly through the Depression-era 1930s and largely in response to social inequalities the black community was no longer willing to tolerate. For example, black workers in public laundries routinely earned three dollars per week less than whites performing identical work. Employment discrimination was rampant. One 1920-28 survey of 258 Harlem businesses employing more than 2,000 workers found that only 163 employees were black, and all held low-wage jobs. As the depression deepened, joblessness soared. Black youth unemployment for the period was estimated at well above 50 percent. In 1935, the federal Works Progress Administration (WPA), which had determined that the cost of living for a New York City household at “maintenance level” was $1,375 annually, estimated the average black family’s income at $1,025.

The economic pressure exerted by these conditions found a release as black citizens began to organize in protest. In 1931, the Harlem Housewives League initiated a campaign at local chain stores, insisting that they employ African Americans. Many former Garveyites joined the movement, urging blacks to support a “buy black” effort. In 1932, the Harlem Labor Union was created, which picketed white-owned stores that refused to hire blacks. A year later, the newly formed Citizens’ League for Fair Play, a popular coalition including women’s groups and religious and fraternal organizations, demanded greater black employment in business. In March 1935, such protests sparked a riot along 125th Street, involving several thousand people. Dozens of white-owned stores were looted; fifty-seven civilians and seven police officers were injured, and seventy-five people, mostly African Americans, were arrested on charges ranging from inciting to riot and malicious mischief to felonious assault and burglary. The NYPD’s brutal treatment of the rioters was subsequently documented by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia’s Commission on Conditions in Harlem. Its report found that police had made “derogatory and