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

on individual well-being.² Decisions as to where one decided to rent an apartment in Harlem had larger implications for one's future health, well-being, and access to the limited resources of the area. Lutie Johnson's situation, then, is symbolic of the experiences of a large cross section of working-class Harlem residents in the interwar period. With this group as the focus of my study, I argue that restrictions placed on the community's health and well-being by deleterious housing conditions, minimal access to health services, and racial discrimination during the 1920s and 1930s encouraged not only personal and organizational pursuits for health services, but also political organization within the community in order to demand health options from medical and political leaders of New York City and the state of New York. Arguably, the struggle to improve health and wellness options for the community and enhance the well-being of Harlem residents was the principal struggle waged by Harlem residents for the community's survival during those inchoate decades of black urbanization. At times the struggle comprised white allies, but the onerous task of creating health options and an environment wherein residents could access the care they needed fell on the shoulders of, and was assumed by, black working-class and middle-class residents and activists of Harlem. This desire and subsequent work to provide and improve wellness options placed Harlem at the center of local, citywide, and nationwide policies wherein lack of political power, powerlessness, and exclusion shaped, constrained, and limited health and wellness options.

Since the primary goal of this work is to discuss the ways black residents of Harlem, New York, mobilized around issues of health and health care, my approach is perforce a multi-disciplinary task. As such, Building a Healthy Black Harlem is part of a larger corpus of academic research in the field of African American studies. It combines methods of social scientific inquiry, the humanities, and regional studies to consider