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The Documentary Podcast

One Block in Harlem - Part Two

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Documentary, Society & Culture

4.32.7K Ratings

🗓️ 9 February 2011

⏱️ 24 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Michael Goldfarb traces the iconic neighbourhood's story by telling the history of a single street in Harlem from 1910 to the present day.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Thank you for downloading from the BBC.

0:04.0

The details of our complete range of podcasts and our terms of use

0:08.0

go to BBCWorldService.com slash podcasts.

0:14.0

Harlem in New York has been going through some dramatic changes in the last decade.

0:19.0

Michael Goldfab continues his exploration of the most dynamic African-American neighbourhood in the USA.

0:30.0

For me, a New Yorker, born and bred, who left the city a quarter of a century ago.

0:35.0

The changes in Harlem go way beyond my ability to describe them.

0:39.0

They are simply jaw-dropping.

0:42.0

I knew Harlem in the 1970s, when I earned a living as a taxicab driver.

0:46.0

I worked Harlem, and the police who saw me doing so used to tell me to get downtown where I belong.

0:53.0

Harlem streets back then were overrun with filth, and today their pristine.

1:04.0

Houses were abandoned and decaying.

1:06.0

Today they have been renovated and are occupied.

1:09.0

An electric current of frustrated hatred directed at me, crackled off the sidewalks.

1:14.0

But today...

1:16.0

Today, the folks around 120th street between 5th and Glenux avenues, the block I'm talking about,

1:28.0

are downright hospitable to an outsider like me.

1:32.0

A white tiptoe around the subject.

1:34.0

I'm white.

1:35.0

Harlem has for most of the last 80 years been an African-American neighbourhood, the ghetto of ghettos.

1:41.0

But that's changing, and changing fast.

1:47.0

Although the main commercial area, 125th street around Glenux avenue,

...

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