A Small Paradise 2

In works from The Weary Blues (1926) to Montage of a Dream Deferred (1955), the poet Langston Hughes captured the felicity of community and the reality of hardships experienced by residents striving to survive. Such are the basis for Black placemaking in urban centers in which African Americans have had to endure and resist and thrive. This occurred in many different locales, including the first 135th Street YMCA building, established in 1918 as a “Colored Man’s Branch” during a time when the YMCA had a policy of segregated branches. Hughes himself stayed there.

Hughes also frequented Smalls Paradise jazz club, which at the height of the Harlem Renaissance was the only Black owned entertainment venue serving patrons of all races. Smalls Paradise endured to become one of the longest running jazz clubs in Harlem at the time of its closing in the 1980s.

Trace the footsteps of this map to Langston Hughes Harlem sites, first printed by the Academy of American Poets in 1981.