Spirit of Harlem: A Portrait of America's Most Exciting Neighborhood

Lana Turner, 51 REAL ESTATE BROKER

In Harlem, everything is in your face. It's a man blowing a trumpet on a subway platform or a stranger asking for a dollar. It's half a dozen African women sitting on chairs along the sidewalk, asking to braid your hair. It's a kid with his shirt open and his pants falling down, moving to the music in his head. It's walking past a group of men and one of them says, "Baby, you sho' look good today." The minute you step out your door, everything in Harlem is in your face. There's a beauty and a poetry in all of that.

Some people say, "Oh, the crowded streets and the noise! How can you take it?" To me, the idea of living anywhere else is so foreign because there's so much going on here that's beautiful, that's thought provoking, that's humorous. Despite all the things we have to plow through, blacks in Harlem still have a sense of humor.

There used to be a handwritten sign on a building on Lenox Avenue, across the street from Sylvia's Restaurant. It said: "This is the future home of the Crossroads Baptist Church, whenever we can raise the money." I loved that sign. It was hilarious, and yet it said something about faith.

I think it's important to walk the streets of Harlem. You can't feel Harlem if you're driving by. But if you walk, you'll see all kinds of things. There's an artist by the name of David Hammons. Back when there was an empty lot filled with tall weeds next to the Studio Museum, David Hammons collected dozens and dozens of wine bottles, the cheap ones made from green glass. He took those bottles and turned them upside down and stuck them on top of the weeds. One day I was walking past the museum, not payingany attention, and was dumbfounded when I saw what he did. It was like a field of glass flowers. That to me is extraordinary. It's extraordinary because there's humor in it and there's truth in it. It said something about the larger society seeing Harlem as a throw-away society, and how Harlem, nevertheless, can see the beauty in itself, can find art in weeds and empty bottles. There's beauty in the discarded. I'll never forget that.

I don't mean to idealize Harlem. There are some things that certainly need to change. No one would say they want crime or dirty streets, and everybody wants a better education for their children. But there are many things here that are so wonderful.

There's a woman I've seen who wears a tiara every day, and some sort of fairy-tale dress. It would be easy to write her off, but there's a certain courage rooted in her attire. This is a woman who sees herself as royalty. Her statement is to herself, and she's true to it every day. Some people fashion a way to be uniquely themselves outside of what everyone else thinks. They are the mavericks who influence the music we hear, the books we read, the art we appreciate.

Yes, Harlem has its own mythic proportions attached to it, but it's not unlike other black communities throughout the United States. There's humor, there's courage, there's art. Everyone worries about, "Oh, Harlem is becoming this or that!" I don't worry. What really makes Harlem Harlem, is the soul of the place. And despite all the change coming, I don't think you can obliterate that.

If you look back to to the early 1900s, when African Americans first came to Harlem in sizable numbers, there were headlines in the papers that were written in terms of a war being waged: "The Negroes Are a Menace" or, "Negroes Take Yet Another Building on 139th Street."

MICHAEL HENRY ADAMS Michael Henry Adams, 45 HISTORIAN AND AUTHOR

Once, I was conducting a tour of Harlem for the Lesbian-Gay Community Center. We were standing on Seventh Avenue and I was talking about the building across the street, and how Josephine Baker had lived there with a group of women when she was a chorus girl in Eubie Blake's musical Shuffle Along. As I was speaking, whizzing out of an upper window in the building behind us came a soda bottle. It hit a man in the head. The bottle broke and blood streamed down the man's face. Someone took him to Harlem Hospital, and four people on the tour decided they were leaving. Another man said, "Let's just cut our losses and go to lunch." I said, "No. Harlem is my home. I can't just surrender the streets to hoodlums." A woman in the group agreed, "Yeah, that's right! Let's get reinforcements and go through the building and find the person who threw the bottle." I said, "Well, I don't know about all of that." Anyhow, we continued the tour.

This whole notion of who belongs in Harlem, and who doesn't, is momentous. Black people here are really embittered by the prospect of displacement. You can ride on the subway and hear young men discussing what they see as white people coming and taking over Harlem. I've heard people complain about the national chains getting tax incentives to come here: the Gap, the Disney Store, Starbucks--heaven knows Manhattan doesn't need another Starbucks. And when I take tour groups around, which are often all white or predominantly white, invariably there will be a gesture of resentment toward the group. Some residents, rather than walking around the group, will very loudly and curtly say, "Excuse me!" Then they'll march through the middle of the group, the inference being, "This is my sidewalk. How dare you inconvenience me!"

That happens all the time. I was giving a tour last year and someone walked by and started shouting, "You people should go back where you came from. Harlem is not for sale! Harlem is not for sale!" The tragedy is that everything is always for sale. And the tragedy as far as African Americans are concerned is that we own so little of anything anywhere, including here in Harlem. A lot of people say this is our fault because we didn't buy buildings when we had the opportunity. There's something to be said for that. But as a historian, it occurs to me that this has happened before.

If you look back to the early 1900s, when African Americans first came to Harlem in sizable numbers, there were headlines in the papers that were written in terms of a war being waged: "The Negroes Are a Menace," or, "Negroes Take Yet Another Building on 139th Street." You'd think that was motivated out of pure racism, but now, as I experience the discomfiture of seeing the complexion of Harlem change, I realize that part of what those people were feeling was a sense of loss, a sense that a place they thought of as uniquely their own, a place connected to their culture and heritage, was turning into something else, was becoming someone else's.

During a recent television interview on CBS's "Sunday Morning," I said, "More and more, as I walk around Harlem, I see people who don't look like me, but who obviously live here." This was a joke to some of my white friends. They said, "What do you mean they don't look like you? They don't wear a straw hat?" But it's a concern to me because I wonder, in the wake of this change, if the African-American cultural capital can endure.

Bubba and me thought Harlem was heaven, all the tall buildings and the lights and the sights. One thing that stood out to me was seeing so many black people. I asked my aunt, "Where do the white folks live?"

REV. BETTY NEAL Rev. Betty Neal, 70 MINISTER AND ACTIVIST

I was twelve years old when they had that big riot in Harlem in 1943. I was in New York for the first time, on vacation, me and my brother, Alexander. We called him Bubba. Bubba was a year younger than me. My folks had sent us to visit with our aunt. We lived in Sumter, South Carolina, the Gamecock City, home of Revolutionary War general Thomas Sumter. There were no other houses out where we lived. We were way out in the woods. There was no running water, no electricity. We had a pump and kerosene lamps.

Me and Bubba were so happy about going to Harlem. Daddy took us to the bus depot. He went up to some black folk and asked who was going to New York. Somebody spoke up and Daddy asked them to watch over us. People were different in those days. You could trust strangers with your children, traveling eight hundred miles. Daddy told us to be good.

All the white people got on the bus first. When they got seated, all the black people got on and sat in the back. That's how it was.

In those days, buses didn't have toilets so they had to stop frequently. When we got off, we'd have to go on the colored folks' side of the depot to get a sandwich or anything. At one place we stopped, everybody got off except me and Bubba. We decided to sit on the front seat and open up the lunch mama made for us. Two white women had been sitting on that seat. When the driver got back on he said, "Now y'all chillins gotta go to the back of the bus. We ain't in New Yawk yet."

Aunt Roxanna met us at the bus station. Bubba and me thought Harlem was heaven, all the tall buildings and the lights and the sights. One thing that stood out to me was seeing so many black people. I asked my aunt, "Where do the white folks live?" She just laughed.

Aunt Roxanna lived at 239 West 116th Street. Right on the first floor. Beautiful apartment she had. She flicked a switch and a light came on. It was like a miracle. Aunt Roxanna had running water, a real bathtub. At home, we bathed in a big washtub. You had to heat the water in the fireplace or on the stove, if Mama was cooking. In the winter, the tub was in your bedroom. In the summer, it was on the back porch and you'd use cold water. At Aunt Roxanna's, I took a bath two or three times a day.

One night, the radio said there was a riot going on in Harlem. They were telling everybody to get off the street. A cop had beat up a black soldier, or shot a black soldier, and all hell broke loose. Four or five people got killed. My aunt said, "Oh, my Lord! Where's Bubba?" She ran from door to door and street to street but we couldn't find him. She said it wasn't no need calling the police because the police were busy with the riot.

Must have been around ten or eleven before Bubba came back. He said he was up on 125th watching the whole thing. He said, "Yeah, they were breaking out store windows and stealing things. People were running everywhere." Aunt Roxanna said, "Bubba, it's a wonder you didn't get killed."

That was some summer vacation.

When I was fifteen, I became a graffiti artist. I just got cans of spray paint and went out in the middle of the night and started doing it. . . . I was creating art on private property so it was vandalism, but I called it noncommissional work.

BRETT COOK-DIZNEY Brett Cook-Dizney, 33 ARTIST

My father doesn't talk to me. He's a retired educator, former assistant superintendent of schools in Oakland, California, where I grew up. His perspective is: "You have a degree in art. You have a degree in education. You could do anything, but you're living in an abandoned building, with no health care. How can you go to an institution like Berkeley and be satisfied living that spartan existence?"

Right before I moved to Harlem in 1997, I lived in an abandoned building in Newark, New Jersey. There was no heat. I ate potatoes every day. It was a huge building. It covered a whole block. Some nights, I could hear people breaking into the building to use drugs. I told myself, This sacrifice will matter one day. I've been through a lot to get here, to be an artist in Harlem.

I always loved creating art. My mother kept me quiet in church by giving me her deposit slips to draw on. When I was fifteen, I became a graffiti artist. I just got cans of spray paint and went out in the middle of the night and started doing it. That's not the traditional apprenticeship structure in graffiti, where someone usually shows you technique and style and then you fill in their lines for a while. Other graffiti artists were painting text, but I would paint figures, people in suits and fat shoestrings. I was creating art on private property so it was vandalism, but I called it noncommissional work.

People look at my murals and assume that I use brushes. But I work out of cans. Traditional painters say, "What you're doing with tone and color is incredible." Graffiti artists say, "Your can control is off the meter." Graffiti artists may not understand tone and color, but they understand how difficult it is to do what I do. When you work out of the can, you can't mix your colors on a palate. I have to do all these juxtapositions of colors to create depth and light and shadows.

I always thought graffiti was a real medium, even though the art world kicks it to the curb. But people don't know how to define what I do. Is it hip-hop? Is it high art? Is it urban beautification? Is it social activism? It's all of that, and a bunch of other stuff.

I've done thirty-something paintings here in Harlem in the last four years. Big eight-feet by twelve-feet panels of ordinary people who live in Harlem, people that look like your best friend's uncle on his mother's side, people you wouldn't otherwise hear about unless it was in an obituary. I hang the pieces in the neighborhoods where the subjects live. Six hundred people may come to a gallery, but if I put it outside, six hundred thousand people might see it in a day. The pieces are not going to live forever outside, but what they represent is timeless.

I never sign my work so it's difficult to get feedback. People can't find me. But that's fine because it's not about me. It's about the work. It's about Harlem. One day, as I was hanging some pieces on buildings, there was such an outpouring of gratitude. People kept coming up saying, "Thank you. Thank you." At every site, people upon people upon people. "We really appreciate this. Pictures of ourselves in Harlem. Thank you." It was one of the most profound days I've ever had as an artist. I'd like my father to understand how I felt that day, but it's a lot bigger than my father. It's about having people understand. Life is more than the pursuit of comfort. Life is learning to sacrifice.