Once an affluent neighborhood, Harlem was gradually abandoned by its original white Manhattanite inhabitants as European immigrants, predominantly Italian and Jewish refugees flocked into the area toward the end of the 19th century. They, in turn, steadily gave way over the opening decades of the 20th century to residents from New York’s other black communities, as well as newcomers who moved to the city as part of the Great Migration, immigrants from the British Caribbean colonies, and a growing number of Latin American arrivals after World War One in the area that became known as “Spanish Harlem.” During the 1920s, the area was populated by African-Americans (predominantly Central and West Harlem) alongside Irish, Italian, Jewish, and Latino communities (largely based in East Harlem). The neighborhood was plagued by police brutality, as well as racial tension as newcomers came and went, further fueled by the return of African-American soldiers seeking housing, work, and recognition of their civil rights following the Great War. African-American gangs formed across the city in order to protect their neighbors and neighborhoods from the police and white (usually Irish) rabble-rousers, although much of the tension in Harlem itself involved police harassment of the various ethnic communities. While the New York Age urged respectability and good citizenship in the face of this violence, the Amsterdam News encouraged Harlem’s African- American residents to speak up and demand justice, though the paper stopped short of advocating violence in return. In 1920, the boundaries of Harlem were roughly defined as 131st Street to 144th Street between Lenox and Seventh Avenue. By 1928, this had expanded out to cover the area between St. Nicholas Avenue and the Harlem River (west to east) between 110th Street and Central Park and 159th Street and the Polo Grounds (south to north). Perhaps the thing Harlem is most famous for during the 1920s and '30s is the Harlem Renaissance, an outpouring of African-American art, literature, culture, and social activism that reached its peak between 1924 and 1929. People from all over the city (and country) flocked to Harlem for, among other things, events and talks at the 135th Street branch of the New York Public Library and the flamboyant nightlife in the neighborhood’s many clubs, speakeasies, and saloons. Homosexuality was also more accepted in Harlem than elsewhere in New York, but due to the ongoing pressures to conform from certain quarters, such residents still had to watch their step.
Organized Crime Harlem was home to several organized crime factions, including the notorious Italian Black Hand gang of extortionists (whose activities largely died out in the 1920s due to changes in American immigration law). It was also the playground of both the Jewish and Italian mobs (including the 116th Street Crew) who controlled the area’s speakeasies and nightclubs, including the famous Cotton Club (owned by gangster and former Sing-Sing inmate Owney Madden). African-American gangs, particularly those under the control of Stephanie St. Clair and Casper Holstein (the so-called “Bolito King”) ran numbers in Harlem so as not to encroach on the white gangs’ territories (extortion, prostitution, and bootlegging).