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Preserving and highlighting Harlem’s history

By Marcus Craig

Harlem’s Convent Avenue Baptist is a majority Black church in a mainly Black neighborhood. But on a recent Wednesday afternoon, white people filled up most of the seats. They’d paid to hear seven singers, a pianist and a drummer perform black gospel music.

I’m a soldier in the army of the Lord … 

When the ensemble started that hand-clapping gospel song, almost every member of the audience clapped along. Some sang along. Before the evening was over, those white visitors would form a marching, strutting, dancing line around the church, moving to the various worship songs being lifted.

“This is what they want to hear,” said Jamaica-born Yuien Chin, the founder and executive director of Harlem One Stop, launched in 2006.

The concert is a collaboration between the church and Harlem One Stop. Using sacred and other public spaces as a means “to celebrate the music and dance legacy of Harlem” is one aspect of what Harlem One Stop and similar organizations do to spotlight and preserve Harlem’s history and culture.

Supporting and staging performances by local artists, working to have buildings registered as historic landmarks and scheduling events such as the Wednesday concerts at Convent Avenue Baptist are how those groups are keeping Harlem history alive as Harlem keeps changing.

In 1970, Black people made up more than 95% of Central Harlem and more than 63% of Greater Harlem, according to researchers at Citizens Union Foundation. By 2024, the  figure had fallen to 43.2% in Central Harlem and 30.1% in East Harlem.

Bronx-born Christopher Jackson, who moved to Harlem in 2022, has watched the neighborhood change.

“You would see a whole lot more Black-owned businesses,” he said, of the transformation. “Now, those are not the things you necessarily see Black people own.”

“The history of Harlem is being erased very, very slowly. So, we’re trying to use landmarking,” said Angelique Racine, an administrative associate at Save Harlem Now! “We try to landmark buildings that will [otherwise] just get renovated, demolished, changed in some way, shape or form.”

For the last 10 years, Save Harlem Now! has focused its efforts on preserving Harlem’s architecture. Researchers and advocates at the organization have succeeded in getting sites such as Regent Theater, Strivers’ Row and the brownstone where the March on Washington was planned in 1963 added to the National Register of Historic Places. The preservationists believe that the history of these locations would go unrecognized unless they became landmarks.

“Unless you walk by those areas or have somebody point-blank tell you what happened there,” Racine said, “you’re just gonna walk right on by.”