BACKGROUND

One of the world’s best-known centers of black culture, Harlem is a community of 400,000 in the northern part of Manhattan. It has nurtured such major literary figures as Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston and James Baldwin. In the 1930s, Harlem’s Cotton Club was a mecca for such musicians as Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington and Count Basie. Its Apollo Theater was a showcase for Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan.