Harlem: the Making of a Ghetto
Negro New York 1890-1930
Ivan R. Dee · Print & ebook · February 1, 1996
A great many books have been written about Harlem, but for social history none has surpassed Gilbert Osofsky's account of how a pleasant, pastoral upper-middle-class suburb of Manhattan turned into an appalling black slum within forty years.
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- Who it’s for
- Readers interested in Harlem's social history and changing race relations
- Themes
- Harlem's transformation, Racial segregation, Black life in New York
- Genres
- Urban Life, African American Studies, Social History
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A great many books have been written about Harlem, but for social history none has surpassed Gilbert Osofsky's account of how a pleasant, pastoral upper-middle-class suburb of Manhattan turned into an appalling black slum within forty years. Mr. Osofsky sets his chronicle against the background of pre-Harlem black life in New York City and in the context of the radical changes in race relations in America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
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He traces Harlem's change to the largest segregated neighborhood in the nation and then its fall to a slum. Throughout he neatly balances statistics and humanly revealing details. "A careful and important study.... Osofsky at once takes his place alongside James Weldon Johnson, Claude McKay, and others who have looked at Harlem at close range."—John Hope Franklin. "A pioneering scholarly achievement.... Although the subject engages his compassion, his presentation is rigorously straightforward and unsentimental and therefore all the more valuable as social analysis."—New York Times Book Review
Where it sits
| Social History | 37% |
|---|---|
| Urban Life | 32% |
| African American Studies | 27% |
Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.
Publisher categories
- History
- U.S. State & Local History
- Authors
- Gilbert Osofsky
- Publisher
- Ivan R. Dee
- Published
- February 1, 1996
- Format
- Print & ebook
- Theme
- Harlem's transformation · Racial segregation · Black life in New York
- Reading lane
- History