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Thanks to @MelArch3 for flagging this. The @NatUrbanLeague seems ready to rise in #Harlem, on what I'd argue is the most interesting block in the history of the Civil Rights Movement. It tells a story and this is a fitting next chapter. 1/ https://twitter.com/MelArch3/status/1291676989733122048
At the corner of 125th and Seventh at midcentury, you would find African Square, aka Harlem Square, a pulpit of Black radical thought. Kwame Nkrumah spoke there. So did Malcolm X, here in 1960. 2/
Behind Malcolm is the National Memorial African Bookstore, run by Lewis Michaux, and also known as the "House of Common Sense and Home of Proper Propaganda." With 100k books, it was a bookstore but also a library for African American intellectuals seeking radical ideas. 3/
In the mid 1960s, New York State proposed a state office building for this site. What goes around comes around: Urban League director Whitney Young had proposed that the WTC should be in Harlem. Nelson Rockefeller didn't do that, but gave Harlem its own tower. 4/
This project was emblematic of the racial liberalism of the CRM at this time: a promised boost to Harlem through government action, backed by local power brokers. It was designed by a Black firm, Ifill, Johnson & Hanchard (the low part was by Philip Johnson's firm. Yup.). 5/
By the time the project started in 1967, Harlem had changed. Radical positions were ubiquitous and this, a project that followed urban renewal orthodoxy, was seen as a threatening imposition on 125th Street, a middle-class-backed clearance that would lead to Harlem's demise. 6/
What happened next is one of the iconic movements in Black Power urbanism: activists took over the block in June 1969, occupying it to September. They renamed it Reclamation Site #1. They turned it into a community that enacted their principles of self-determination. 7/
Residents of Reclamation Site #1 built homes for one another, cooked and ate together, held rallies, hosted jazz concerts (Milford Graves) and theatrical performances associated with the Black Arts Movement, including Amiri Baraka's Spirit House Movers. 8/
In telling the story of urbanism in the Black Power era, Resurrection City, DC gets plenty of attention. But I'd argue that Reclamation Site #1 was more successful both in its endurance and its consequences. Still, the state cleared it in September 1969. 9/
Activists had worked with the Architects' Renewal Committee in Harlem to create alternate plans for the site. They were mixed use, with affordable housing, commercial offices, cultural programming, social services. Here is the first of those schemes. 10/
While the state got their office bldg, they started the Harlem Urban Development Corporation to develop the rest of the site w/ community participation. One outcome was a plan by Max Bond's firm, Bond Ryder, that carried fwd the idea of mixed use centered on Harlemites' needs.11/
What followed is too complicated to summarize. Read it in The Roots of Urban Renaissance! But HUDC became a conduit for a different idea of community dev't: the notion that officially "community" centered orgs participating in commercial devt were acting in Harlem's interest. 12/
This took many forms. The most prominent was the big project proposed for the east side of the site: the Harlem International Trade Center, a project that was backed especially by Rep. Charles Rangel. 13/
In my book, I have a photo of Rangel w/ the model, smiling broadly. It says it all. HUDC's history is super interesting. I argue it was a much narrower idea of community development, tho one still founded on a vision for Harlem's future: one middle-class, commercially driven. 14/
HUDC declined, in part due to self-interest. A new generation of community orgs rose. Abyssinian Development Corporation was among the most prominent in U.S., and in 90s they turned to this site. In joint project w/ Forest City Ratner, the outcome was Harlem Center. 15/
Harlem Center finally filled in the empty lot east of the State Office Building. Where Reclamation Site #1 once stood rose an office bldg and storefronts. Was this community participation in dev't? I think so. But it raised major questions abt distribution of power in Harlem. 16/
See the book and this piece for more on Abyssinian Development Corporation, which in following years also faced major questions about whose interests it was serving. 17/ https://www.aaihs.org/who-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-gentrification/
So now, the @NatUrbanLeague is filling in the center of the site, which had been an H&M, parking, & storefronts. In some ways, it completes the circle: a project that promises affordable housing, offices for community orgs, & cultural programming. 18/ https://ny.curbed.com/2019/7/22/20701447/harlem-national-urban-league-affordable-housing
In other ways, it follows the trajectory I've traced: orgs with civil rights aspirations, now national in scale, getting involved in large-scale real estate devt as one of their strategies. I'm definitely willing to reserve judgement and would love to see this one do it all. 19/
It's always complicated in Harlem, though, where 125th Street is symbolic not just of Harlem's role in Black history but is effectively the main street for all of Black history. Any big project raises big worries about losing it all. 20/
So I'll be watching this one w/ much interest. The devil will be in the details. At very least, @MARCMORIAL, I hope very much that the @NatUrbanLeague can include the full story of Reclamation Site #1 and the radical history of this very block in the museum you will build. 21/
And yes, read all about it in _The Roots of Urban Renaissance_, where the block that held African Square, the Home of Proper Propaganda, the "SOB," Reclamation Site #1, the Int'l Trade Ctr, Harlem Center, and now the Urban League HQ is one of the featured players. 
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