Boulevard of Dreams

In the make-up of New York, Harlem is not merely a Negro colony or community, it is a city within a city, the greatest Negro city in the world. 

—James Weldon Johnson

Harlem: The Culture Capital (1925) 

With the Great Migration north, Black newcomers to Harlem had to adjust from an agrarian American South or a colonial Caribbean to a more industrial north, a space that privileged hustle and concrete over land and contemplation. Nestled along the “boulevard of dreams,” a moniker for 7th Avenue (renamed Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard) were night clubs, the Lafayette Theater, St. Philips Episcopal Church, brownstones, rooming houses, and other sites catering to a flourishing new community. 

Establishing this new Black enclave meant developing community supports to acclimate recent arrivals. Labor activist A. Philip Randolph, founded the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first Black labor union, and James Reese Europe, founded the Clef Club, the society dedicated to Black World War I veterans and musicians.