Blog 13 – ‘Harlem on My Mind’ and ‘The Bronx Slave Market’

In “Harlem on My Mind,” author Lawrence Otis Graham attempts to immerse himself in Harlem in the early 1990s as a poor black man. His purpose, I believe, is to expose the levels of “blackness” in America through the voice of Harlem. In this essay, Graham bounces from setting to setting, noting, perhaps, what he finds to be the most interesting or telling exchanges during his one-month stay in Harlem. The plot, as such, is Graham’s attempt to blend in with others in Harlem as he strolls through the streets, looks for jobs, and tries not to get too involved in the daily lives of others around him. In addition to scene-by-scene construction, Graham uses the following literary journalism techniques: dialogue, status details, and expressiveness. Graham appears to be attempting to capture the dialect, using his own voice with those in Harlem, as he sets a scene and then uses himself to tie the reader from one arc to the next. Themes for this essay include: race and privilege; a racially polarizing world; class division; a longing for a better life; blacks’ demand for justice and respect; and a quiet resolution to the black situation.

The following quote (during the second trial of the officers accused of beating Rodney King in 1993) is symbolic of blacks’ demand for equality in the legal system:

“So tell me, Lekeisha,” one of the other stylists said to a coworker nearby while combing gobs of white relaxer onto a client’s scalp. “You think we should go on and burn our own neighborhood down? Just to show the white people that we can’t be walked on? (This was during the second Rodney King trial.)

Lakeisha clipped away at a woman’s bangs. “Girl, I don’t know. I mean how are we going to get some justice, some respect?”

The next quote is representative of both racial polarization and Graham’s inability to “pass” in Harlem:

“Look,” he said with a wrinkled brow. “You and your white boys come in here from Jersey suburbs to buy stuff all the time. Well, if you’re gonna come here, then you’re gonna buy it our way.”

In terms of the themes of varying levels of “blackness” and racial polarization, the following two quotes nicely capture the purpose:

“They don’t tell you that to live in a rooming house, you better dress like a hood, but if you want to get into the more respectable Harlem establishment, you better not dress like a hood.”

“My clothes, while ideal for helping me fit in on my block, were a problem in this other world, the one in which blacks wore business suits and carried briefcases.”

Graham describes, also, a sort of quiet resolution to the black situation in Harlem, captured well by the following two quotes:

“For whatever reason, no one interferes. Tenants either just listen in and get further caught up in the lives of the people who sit outside their building day after day or they turn up the television volume and get further caught up in the lives of the soap operas and talk shows they watch from ten in the morning to five in the afternoon.”

“One quickly gets a sense of the boredom, which soon turns into lethargy and, eventually, hopelessness.”

The author, Lawrence Otis Graham, was born and raised in “an affluent New York suburb, educated at Princeton and Harvard Law School, a practicing attorney and widely published author.” Graham also wrote 14 non-fiction books on the subjects of politics, education, race and class in America and has published work in The New York Times, Reader’s Digest, Glamour, US News & World Report and Reader’s Digest. For this essay, Graham lived a month in Harlem in a one-room apartment on an assignment from New York magazine to pass as a poor black man.

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“The Bronx Slave Market,” by Marvel Cooke, captures the author’s attempt to pass as a domestic day laborer in 1949 on the New York street corners. The purpose of this essay, I believe, is to argue that not much has changed for working class black people. Clear from the title, “The Bronx Slave Market,” Cooke is also referring to the former slave markets where blacks were traded like cattle. And, she argues, here we are so many years later, and the situation is no less bleak than it was then.

Unlike, Graham, Cooke already lives Harlem and had witnessed first-hand what it was like to be a disadvantaged black person living in Harlem. Also, unlike Graham, Cooke fully embraces her role, losing her “identity entirely” as a member of the “paper bag brigade.” Cooke dives straight into the racial issues, immediately identifying the women as “slaves” for which white women bargained on the street corners and uses words such as “madam” and “bought.” The themes in this essay are: social identity; exploitation of blacks; empowerment of blacks; and anger at the black situation. Literary journalism techniques include the following: dialogue, status details, third-person narration, and, at times, plain style.

Cooke captures well the feeling of anger at the black situation (and subsequent empowerment felt), as evidenced in the following two quotes:

“Suddenly I was angry – angry at this slave boss – angry for all workers everywhere who are treated like a commodity. I slipped under the window and faced the old woman. The moment my feet hit the floor and I dropped the rag into the pail of water, I was no longer a slave.”

“I no longer felt ‘new.’ But I was not at peace. Hundreds of years of history weighed upon me. I was the slave traded for two truck horses on a Memphis street corner in 1849. I was the slave trading my brawn for a pittance on a Memphis street corner in 1949. As I stood there waiting to be bought, I lived through a century of indignity.”

One major difference between Graham’s essay and “The Bronx Slave Market” is Graham’s quiet resolution to blacks’ situation. As outlined above, Graham is content to simply describe the indignities of the life of a Harlem native, while Cooke is ready to light the fire under her reader and decry the outlandishness that is the working class black situation.  Both tackle the themes of race and privilege and stark class division as they aim to unveil something about their race while immersing themselves in the surrounding. And although Cooke and Graham use a lot of the same literary journalism techniques, their outcomes (in terms of how it affects the reader) are very different.

Marvel Cooke (1903-2000) was a journalist, writer and civil rights activist who was born in Minnesota and graduated from the University of Minnesota. In Harlem, Cooke worked as secretary for W.E.D. Du Bois, editor of the NAACP magazine, The Crisis. Cooke was the first African American and first African American woman to work at The Daily Compass. For this essay, part of a five-part series for The Daily Compass in 1950, Cooke attempts and succeeds at passing on several New York Street corners where black women would gather in the hopes of being hired as domestic day laborers.

Discussion question:

How did you feel about Graham’s efforts to go undercover? Do you think he just personally wasn’t cut out for the role of passing as a poor black man, or do you think class division is branded on one’s soul, so to speak? [Or, perhaps you thought he was more successful than I did at his efforts.]