May 24, 2020Karen StrikePeople of Harlem, New York in July 1970

“In Harlem, Negro policemen are feared more than whites, for they have more to prove and fewer ways to prove it”― James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son

Jack Garofalo (1923 – 2004) was on assignment for Paris Match magazine when he took these photo of Harlem, New York City in July 1970. These photos show Harlem “way before 8th avenue was deemed ‘Restaurant Row’ and closer to the Harlem Riot of 1964,” write Rosie Sellers. “During the late 1960s and early 1970s Harlem had seen some of its worst times historically. The drug addiction rate in Harlem was 10 times the average rate of NYC and many middle class Harlemites moved out to other boroughs and suburbs for better schools and safer streets.”

“Since 1970, an exodus of residents has left behind the poor, the uneducated, the unemployed. Nearly two-thirds of the households have incomes below $10,000 a year. In a community with one of the highest crime rates in the city, garbage-strewn vacant lots and tumbledown tenements, many of them abandoned and sealed, contribute to the sense of danger and desolation that pervades much of the area.”

– New York Times, July 1991