Let’s get one thing straight, Harlem is not a college town and it never should be. The vibrant neighborhood is full of history, culture and community with strong African-American roots embedded in everything it has to offer. The region in recent years has consistently faced the threat of land developers that want to (and have done so on many occasions) push locals out.
With New York being one of the most expensive cities in the world to live in, you can imagine the difficulty to obtain property in your own name and this can make room for displacement. While there are certain tenant rights to protect renters in New York City, there are also loopholes in policy that can throw these rights out the window and tenants out of their homes. Columbia University found a loophole and is quite literally plotting on Harlem right now. It is imperative to organize against the University’s plan to expand deeper into Harlem because Harlem is culture. It’s community. It’s history. Harlem has an essence you can’t find anywhere else, and the people that have been there-and whose ancestors were there before them-deserve to stay regardless of what a ridiculously rich university wants.
What’s more troubling about this is the fact that there’s too common of a trend where private universities take over Black neighborhoods, kick residents out and try to erase the history. In the study, “Voices of Black Leadership: Town-Gown Relationships and the Black Community,” researchers follow this troublesome relation between Black communities and universities. The study highlights the notions of racism and classism universities associated with Black communities and how following World War II, changes to the economy and the introduction of the GI Bill brought more students to college, creating a need for schools to expand. Schools would zone in on expanding in Black communities-basically justifying it as renovating the “slums,” yet at the same time they would not invest in the same community they were invading. This is because they don’t want them there.
“Simultaneously, universities regarded adjacent Black communities as threats to safety and recruitment and aimed to ‘maintain…a space of whiteness’ through urban renewal (Kahler & Harrison, 2020, p.62),” the study says.
The study then referenced the University of South Carolina and their sneaky expansion initiatives over two Black neighborhoods. Basically, they took over the areas, displaced residents, lied to them by promising all these positive outcomes and then exponentially raised the cost of living and turned the area into a rich white neighborhood.
Christopher Newport University in Norfolk, Virginia sits on top of Shoe Lane, a once promising Black neighborhood during the 1960’s. White country clubbers nearby didn’t like Black people in such a close vicinity to them and decided to build a college over their homes.
Brownsville, an old neighborhood in Maryland, was established by emancipated slaves looking to start a life for themselves. In the 1920s, Normal School-now known as Frostburg State University-expanded into the neighborhood with the city buying residents homes for $10 (one month’s rent at the time).
More schools that engaged in similar behavior are The University of Pennsylvania, The University of Oklahoma, The University of Georgia and certainly more.
Columbia, which sits on Morningside Heights, unveiled a 30 year plan in 2003 to expand through West Harlem. This plan was approved by New York City council in 2007 and included building an 18-acre science and arts complex, a business school, housing for students and faculty, labs, an underground pool and more. The loophole they use to acquire all the land to achieve this is called “eminent domain.” Eminent domain translates to state governments using their authority to take over private property for public use. Since Columbia has labeled itself a “not-for-profit” college, the school uses eminent domain to grow across Harlem in order to create ‘the best institutions for their students’-or something like that. What’s ironic about this is due to eminent domain, the school repeatedly practices “privatization” which means private (non-government) institutions taking over government-owned property-i.e, they can (and are) wiping out public housing Harlem.
The University is one of the richest schools in America and is also New York City’s largest private land owner. In Columbia’s 30 year plan, they noted funding $170 million worth of community benefits over 36 years-this averages to a little over $4 million a year. Coincidentally, the Columbia Spectator highlights that the school faces about also $170 million in tax exemptions yearly. This means that after pushing out people from their homes, disenfranchising locals and raising the cost of living in the area, this filthy rich school allocates a teeny tiny fraction of their money to invest back into Harlem.
Many of us trace the legacy of Harlem back to the Harlem Renaissance, which encompassed an era of explosive art, music, literature, activism and more amongst the Black communities of the area spanning from the 1920s to the 1930s. This time was integral to American history because it highlighted self-determination and success amongst Black creatives and intellectuals. It also shed a different light on Black Americans who were often subject to being viewed from a patronizing and racist white lens.
Since the Harlem Renaissance, the region has birthed and been home to countless public figures and pillars of society. A Columbia University article even cited how the upper Manhattan area is internationally known as “The Black Mecca of the world.” Could this be why the institution is so relentless on tearing this region down?
While Columbia loves to boast their cultural, diverse location, they are trying to turn Harlem into an extension of the Upper West Side for their students, alumni and faculty-Columbia Town.
On November 30, 2023, New York Interfaith Commission for Housing Equality held a community meeting at Mt. Olivet Church in Harlem to plan how to combat both private land developers and Columbia’s initiatives. Amongst many leaders of the community was New York State Senator and fellow Harlemite, Cordell Cleare. At the meeting, she broke down Columbia’s plan, the threat of developers in Harlem and the necessity to organize. She also highlighted that she and her team are working on legislation to combat the takeover of Harlem.
“This is not an anti-Columbia thing, this is anti-displacement,” Cleare said at the meeting. “Columbia’s motives for success should not be at the expense of the people of this community.”
“I was raised in this community. I watched my parents fight for this housing-stay here when others left,” she continued. “Black flight took place and those that could leave went to Westchester or Long Island or New Jersey. But there were some of us who could not leave, and some who didn’t want to leave because they thought [Harlem] was worth fighting for. And as soon as things started getting good, we became victims of our own success.”
If you believe in this cause, please sign New York Interfaith Commission For Housing Equality’s petition to save Harlem below:
https://www.change.org/p/save-harlem
