Showing results for "Harlem" in History

Author Ron Chepesiuk chronicles the little known history of organized crime in Harlem.

African American organized crime has had as significant an impact on its constituent community as Italian, Jewish, and Irish organized crime has had on theirs. Gangsters are every bit as colorful, intriguing, and powerful as Al Capone and Lucky Luciano, and have a fascinating history in gambling, prostitution, and drug dealing. In the late 1800s, Harlem became a highly fashionable neighborhood.

The Harlem Hellfighters, also known as the 369th Infantry Regiment of the U. S. Army, embody a significant intersection of America’s military history and racial history. Initially raised as the 15th New York (Colored) National Guard and later federalized for World War I, the regiment was "loaned" to the French Army, where it compiled an extraordinary combat record, with a remarkable 191 days on the line and suffering about 1,400 casualties while never yielding its sector (Morrow & Sammons, 2014, pp. 3–6; Harris, 2003, pp. 233–235).

Harlem 1969; it's the height of the Civil Rights era and the community is still reeling from the assassination of Martin Luther King. Arthur Mitchell, the first Black principal dancer at the New York City Ballet, takes his protest to the stage and establishes the Dance Theatre of Harlem. Here begins the story of the five extraordinary women at the heart of this book. This is a book about ballet, the enduring allure of ballet for young girls, and about how these pioneers broke into a world that was closed to them and changed ideas of what a classical dancer could be.

Harlem Queen is an award-winning Black historical fiction audio drama based on the true story of Madame Stephanie St. Clair, the bold, brilliant "Numbers Queen" who built a Harlem empire during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Written, produced, and directed by Yhane Washington Smith, an A'Leila Bundles Scholar at Columbia University, this five-season series brings Madame St. Clair's world to vivid life through original music, meticulous sound design, and a full cast of characters. Jazzy, glamorous, and unflinching about what it meant to be a Black woman in America in the 1920s. As ...

When the American Civil War finally drew to an end in 1865, victory for the North seemed to herald a new beginning for African Americans. Emancipation for thousands of former slaves appeared, for the first time, to offer people the chance of full and equal participation in American society. That dream didn't last for long, particularly in the Southern states where new Jim Crow laws prevented African Americans from exercising fundamental rights, including the right to vote.

To hear Ethiopian and Swedish chef, TV personality, and restauranteur Marcus Samuelsson cook with special guests at the Red Rooster restaurant is to make an audio pilgrimage to Harlem. Listeners will get to know the iconic neighborhood, Marcus’ home, through its food, its history, and - most importantly - its people.

WINNER OF THE WOLFSON HISTORY PRIZE 2025 SHORTLISTED FOR THE NONFICTION CROWN AWARD 'Gripping … remarkably wide-ranging' THE TIMES This is an immersive and revelatory history of the survivors of the Clotilda, the last ship of the Atlantic slave trade, whose lives diverged and intersected in...

July 3, 1981, was a pivotal night for the future of America's newest art form: hip hop. In New York's Harlem World Club, the Fantastic Romantic Five and the Cold Crush Brothers competed, with an unprecedented $1,000 on the line in a highly anticipated rap battle. The show drew hundreds of fans to settle a question that still dominates hip hop circles: Who's the best? In Harlem World, journalist Jonathan Mael chronicles this fateful night of hip hop rivalry and shares a new look at how Harlem helped ignite a musical revolution.

In the blood-soaked trenches of World War I, where courage was tested and humanity often lost, one regiment rewrote the meaning of heroism. They were the 369th Infantry Regiment—better known as the Harlem Hellfighters—African American soldiers who defied prejudice, shattered expectations, and became one of the most decorated and respected fighting units of the entire war. At a time when segregation defined every corner of American life, these men fought not only against the German army, but also against the racism of the country they served.

Arthur Briggs's life was Homeric in scope. Born on the the tiny island of Grenada, he set sail for Harlem during the Renaissance, then to Europe in the aftermath of World War I, where he was among the first pioneers to introduce jazz music to the world. During the legendary Jazz Age in Paris, Briggs's trumpet provided the soundtrack while Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and the rest of the Lost Generation got drunk. By the 1930s, Briggs was considered "the Louis Armstrong of Paris," and was the peer of the greatest names of his time, from Josephine Baker to Django Reinhardt.

Selected by The New York Times Book Review as a Notable Book of the Year Years in the making-the definitive biography of the legendary black activist. Of the great figure in twentieth-century American history perhaps none is more complex and controversial than Malcolm X. Constantly rewriting his...

A reissue of Greg Tate's classic, out-of-print collection of essays, with a new introduction by Hanif Abdurraqib and a new foreword by Questlove. From one of the most original, creative, and provocative culture critics comes an eye-opening collection of essays and tales about American music and...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “Dapper Dan is a legend, an icon, a beacon of inspiration to many in the Black community. His story isn’t just about fashion. It’s about tenacity, curiosity, artistry, hustle, love, and a singular determination to live our dreams out loud.”—Ava DuVernay...

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW NOTABLE BOOK Finalist for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography The forgotten story of a pioneering group of five Black ballerinas and their fifty-year sisterhood, a legacy erased from history—until now. “This is the kind of history I wish...

100 years ago, artists and writers were forging new visions of Blackness—across America and abroad. Introducing Harlem Is Everywhere, a brand new podcast from The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Hear how music, fashion, literature, and art helped shape a modern Black identity. Presented alongside the exhibition The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism, the podcast is hosted by writer and critic Jessica Lynne. This five-part series features a dynamic cast of speakers who reflect on the legacy and cultural impact of the Harlem Renaissance. Shorty Award Winner | Best Art & Culture ...

Published during a literary era marked by the ascendance of Black writers such as Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, and Alex Haley, this thinly fictionalized account of Claude Brown’s childhood as a hardened, streetwise criminal trying to survive the toughest streets of Harlem has been heralded as the definitive account of everyday life for the first generation of African Americans raised in the Northern ghettos of the 1940s and 1950s.

Black, queer, feminist, Buddhist: The Fire Inside casts a fresh new light on the radical literary legacies of James Baldwin and Audre Lorde A Lit Hub Independent Press Bestseller Includes meditation exercises. The Fire Inside explores the writings of Audre Lorde and James Baldwin through a...

First time on audio! The timeless Pulitzer Prize winner, the first in an epic two-volume biography that set the standard for historical scholarship on this era, narrated by Emmy and Tony Award winner Courtney B. Vance. This monumental biography by David Levering Lewis—eight years in the...

An exciting social history encompassing music, culture, and real estate during the vital, artistically rich, and plain old fun period of the 1980s and ’90s in the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Fort Greene and Clinton Hill When Nelson George moved into 19 Willoughby Avenue in 1985, he was able to...

In The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke, Jeffrey C. Stewart offers the definitive biography of the father of the Harlem Renaissance, based on the extant primary sources of his life and on interviews with those who knew him personally. He narrates the education of Locke, including his becoming the first African American Rhodes Scholar, earning a PhD in philosophy at Harvard University, and his long career as a professor at Howard University. And yet he became most closely associated with the flowering of Black culture in Jazz Age America.