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

worked outside of the home in Harlem during the 1920s.²⁴ Close to three-quarters of working black women were domestic servants, laundresses, or waitresses.²⁵ In a study of 57,853 black Manhattan residents, the historian Herbert Gutmann found that nine out of ten black men in Harlem were skilled, unskilled, or service workers in low-paying jobs.²⁶ The National Industrial Conference Board determined that the “average minimum [yearly] cost for maintaining a fair American standard of living” for an industrial worker's family of four in Manhattan in 1926 was $1712.16: $408.00 for housing, $97.70 for fuel and light, $762.32 for food, $257.02 for clothing, and $411.32 for sundries. After pooling their resources, typical annual family earnings in Harlem during the 1920s amounted to only $1300, or $25 per week: an income that was only 75 percent of the yearly “fair American standard” of1712. To maintain this “fair” standard of living, a family of four in Manhattan would need weekly earnings of $32.93.²⁷

While these urban black workers earned more money than they would have down South, their wages did not meet the higher costs associated with urban living. Echoing this idea, a Harlem resident who had recently migrated from St. Helena Island off the coast of South Carolina lamented the high cost of living in the following statement:

Exorbitant monthly rents partially explain why “livin' [was] so high” in the 1920s. Segregated housing practices in New York City enabled landlords to exploit black renters by charging high rents. Blacks, on average, paid higher rents than whites. Several studies conducted in the 1920s indicate an increase in