Harlem and the Great Migration
How Harlem became the capital of Black America, and how it is changing again.
Harlem, 1910
In 1910 these blocks were mostly German, Irish and Jewish. About 20,000 Black New Yorkers lived here, most of them in a few streets around 135th Street.
The migration arrives, 1920
The Great Migration from the South and new arrivals from the Caribbean more than tripled Harlem's Black population in ten years, to about 73,000.
Black Harlem, 1930
By 1930 seven in ten people mapped here were African American. This was Harlem of the Renaissance: Langston Hughes, the Savoy Ballroom, the Apollo soon after.
Harlem today
Today African Americans are about half of those mapped here. Dominicans, about 16,000, and people of African birth or ancestry, about 9,000, are the fastest-growing groups.
Where New York Came From: a map of NYC immigration and ancestry, 1910 to today