Photo: Sikhulu Shange. Photo credit: Gilberto Tadday/City Limits
Harlem’s cultural significance and storied streets, coupled with the past and present pressures of gentrification, make the stakes in this fight against change astronomically high for those who oppose it. If their fears are realized, there will be widespread displacement of residents, businesses and cultural institutions. Many also perceive a threat to the political power that Harlem has wielded. Some even see the plan as part of a broader scheme to remove people of color from New York City and other urban centers in the country.
Ask Sikhulu Shange, owner of the long-threatened Record Shack on 125th Street, and he will shoot off a list of social movements that began on the same street where he’s struggling to stay. Malcolm X, black nationalist Marcus Garvey and pioneering pan-Africanist Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana all have come to Harlem, he says. Shange, who sells music from Africa and the African diaspora, has been battling to hold on to his store for more than a decade, and is now fighting to maintain Harlem’s character too.
“Harlem has been a focal point of liberation activities for Africa as well as for human rights and civil rights here in America,” said Shange, a South African in business in Harlem for decades. He now chairs the recently formed Coalition to Save Harlem.
Read the article on CityLimits.org
Bingo!
April 9, 2008
Please go away, the IPOD and the internet have made your “Shack” obsolete. Stop interfering with the progress for Harlem. Step aside and let history take its course.
Signed,
Long time Harlemite wanting to see a better Harlem for everyone!