US here we come

I took the camera to Harlem but the vibe just wasn’t right to be the obvious tourist taking photos. There were great photo opportunities, mostly the local people and shops and stalls, but also street signs: Frederick Douglass Boulevarde, Martin Luther King Drive, etc. And, of course, the historic Apollo Theater.

There was no sense of danger; just a (very subjective and possibly false) sense of what is acceptable to the local (black Americans) on the part of (white) visitors.

125th Street, the main road, is vibrant with all sorts of shops and heaps of people using them. However, as Joan said, the guys in the ‘Roman Imperial gladiatorial’ costumes (they were meant to be serious uniforms) were scary. We stopped to listen to their sidewalk speech – the only white faces in the crowd – and it was angry, militant, the Bible-is-literally-true, you’ll-burn-in-hell-unless-you-agree-with-us, type of stuff.

A portion of 125th Street has the street stalls Joan described. Few were political but those that were political tended to be overtly racist, promoting books and DVDs by the likes of Louis Farrakhan and Elijah Muhammad. None were left-wing – which I believe is the reason why the black racists/nationalists have filled the vacuum for those strongly wanting change. Gone are the days of the W.E.B. Dubois and Paul Robesons or the Martin Luther Kings who knew that the future lay with the unity in struggle of all people, black or white.

In Harlem I kept thinking of Eric Burdon’s song “New York 1963-America 1968”, as Joan said, but it’s been on my mind this whole trip. Burdon says that when he visited New York with the Animals in the mid-1960s, he would sneak off to Harlem to sit in at gigs in the local black music venues. Very brave of him back then, I’d say, but he was passionate about blues music and, no doubt, he would have had black American friends or associates with him, which would have made a difference.

“When I got to America, I say it blew my mind”!

Barry

Tags: Travel

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