Mondern Day Harlem

As the life of Percy Sutton, the "Chairman" of Harlem past and the gifted businessman and 'father to many' was being celebrated at his Riverside Church memorial, the headlines in the NY Times were letting us know that "In Harlem, Blacks Are No Longer Majority." That's right, that place that was once home to a renaissance that gave birth to so many brilliant artists, writers, musicians; that place that became home to so many blacks who migrated to the industrial North from the cotton fields of the South; that fertile melting pot that spawned black nationalist and separatist and back-to-Africa movements; the home where minority owned businesses grew on every corner and provided nourishment for every family. Yes, that Harlem is no more. Gentrification has changed the landscape, whites moving uptown looking for more affordable real estate and recent immigrants have painted Harlem a different color than before. But as its new history unfolds let us not forget its rich and storied past. Let us hope it will be shared for generations to come;teachers will teach it in schools, ministers will preach about it in their Sunday sermons, storytellers will sit on the stoops of brownstones and stand on the street corners and share those stories so that the legacy of Harlem will be preserved and remembered for generations to come.