Building a Healthy Black Harlem: Health Politics in Harlem, New ...

Desolate City,” McKay likened his spirit to a “pestilential city” full of “agonies,” “fever,” “rage,” and “gloom.” For McKay, the city was full of unfamiliar objects and people, making life, at times, insufferably lonely. He wrote, “Gone, gone forever the familiar forms… / Yet life still lingers, questioningly strange, / Timid and quivering, naked and alone, / Against the cycle of disruptive change.”¹⁴

Since they lived and wrote in Harlem, there is no doubt that Fisher's, Hughes', and McKay's works emerged from a consideration of their observations and experiences in the community. Being works of fiction, they do not offer a “realistic” depiction of the actual experiences of immigrants and migrants in the Harlem community. However, they reflect reality, express the dreams of black people, and give voice to the thousands of migrants and immigrants who suffered emotional and psychological isolation in a strange and often hostile new world.

As the sociologist Ira De Reid noted, Harlem residents “inherited the homes and tenements of people more economically secure than they.” By the late 1920s, de jure and de facto segregation in New York City had created the situation where black Harlem had within its boundaries some of the most densely populated blocks, many congested and unsafe apartment buildings, and excessively high rents.¹⁵ The 1930 census provided the first concrete opportunity to see how the black population had grown in Harlem. During that year, the Census Bureau adopted a new way of subdividing New York City's five boroughs for counting and recording purposes. Called statistical areas, this new organizing principle replaced the old form of organizing the city into assembly districts. According to the Bureau, Harlem's statistical area M8B, which was forty-three acres of land in Central Harlem bounded by West 126th, 130th, and 159th streets; and East 126th Street, the Harlem River, Park, Lenox, and Eighth avenues. The area was home to 16,467 residents, 99 percent of whom were black, and had an average of 382.9 people per acre.¹⁶