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HARLEM ON MY MIND

I was selected to go because I had car fare to go downtown and because I could sketch better than anyone else in her class. So, since she made an offer I could not refuse, I went.

I loved the play the "Green Pastures" but I was not too impressed with the cold atmosphere of the Mausaleum which the Met signified to me. As soon as my sketch sessions were over I believe I was the first one out of the Met. My age at that time was 14 years.

The second time I went to the Met—and I testified before the Board of Estimate on behalf of Tom Hoving who was having some opposition from some folks on the upper East side and especially from a City councilman named Carter Burdin, who had spent over a million dollars to be elected to the City Council over Hilda Stokely, a Black woman from the upper East Harlem, was, when a reporter, for the "Courier" I went to the Met in the early fifties because the folks there had bought a small impressionistic painting from "Spinkey Alston", a Negro painter. 

The third time I entered this building was to join, by invitation, a group of Black citizens whom Tom had asked to join a committee to help him sell the show "Harlem On My Mind", to the City but more specifically to the Harlem community and the Harlem Cultural Council which for some valid reasons had objected to the show.

The main objectives to the show was voiced by my good friend Ed Taylor, who in all sincerity, thought he should have been the person to put a Negro show in the Met and not the folks from out of town who were doing it; namely Allon Schooner, a producer of Jewish art exhibits from Cleveland and two young Negro chaps, Donald Harper, an electronic expert and Reggie McGhee, a great photographer from Chicago and Milwaukee respectively.

The committee I joined included Hilda Stokely from our office, Arnold Johnson of Harlem Small Business Association; Regina Andrews, James Vanderzee, great Negro photographer, Jean Blackwell Hutson, Curator at the Stromberg library, John Henry Clarke, the Negro historian and L'lelia Nelson, grand daughter of great Madame Walker.

I first met Tom Hoving when in his role of Park Commissioner for John Lindsay would come to Harlem to ask us what we wanted in our Parks. Tom was a city official who really wanted to help.

When Tom left the Park Department to go to the Met as its director, he took Arthur Rosenblatt, a young architect and one of our Planning Board members with him as his assistant. Arthur was known to us in the Beeps office because in the fights we had trying to raise funds in the capital budget for restoration of some of our Park projects, Arthur had drawn all of our maps and provided us with the factual materials we needed to make our argument valid.

The Harlem Cultural Council which we also supported was headed by Ed Taylor who tried to turn the planning board from Harlem against the project.

Ed's argument was simple if there was to be a show on Negro culture at the Met it should be presented and done by Negroes from Harlem and it should have been in another form and not photographs and electronics, but pure art. The folks Ed lined up on his side were a group of Harlem artists, playwrights, painters, and even Romere Bearden. He included some good photographers and one man who told me he was walking around Harlem for twenty-five years with plans for a show at the Met in his pocket. However, he conceeded, he had never thought of contacting Tom Hoving to tell him about it.

The show after a year of turbulent opposition came off and then the politicians got into the act.

The white folks who lived in the eighties on the blocks across the street from the Met led by Carter Burdin objected strongly to the project. Their opposition was founded in dislike for Hoving and accused him of down-grading the Met by bringing in this Negro show. More fearful were the nasty things said. It boiled down to the simple fact that the folks in those blocks objected to Negroes and Hispanics walking through their nighborhood [[neighborhood]] to get to and from the Met at night.

Their objections were so blatant that Borough President Sutton had to have a session with the Police Commissioner Codd to warn him that he would not tolerate any violation of the law by the local citizens when Negroes walked through those city streets. 

And Oh Yeah—in the attempt to sabotage the show some Jewish folks objected to the distribution of the catalogue of the show that was prepared for sale on the grounds that the introduction piece written in the catalogue by a 17 year old student was anti-semitic. 

In the piece the young lady quoted some facts she got from Patrick Moynihan who at that time was a Harvard college professor and was the fellow who advised President Nixon to go slow on Negro rights with a benign neglect policy. 

The young ladies' forward piece to the catalogue said that intergroup relationships to be examined is that of Afro-Americans and Jews in Harlem. The young lady, Cardice Van Ellison also said, "Anti Jewish feelings is a natural result of Black northern migration.

Miss Ellison also wrote that "That Blacks in North Eastern industrial cities are constantly coming in contact with Jews. Behind every hurdle that the Afro-American has yet to jump stands a Jew who has already cleared it". Jewish shop keepers are the only remaining "survivors" in the expanding Black ghettos. This is especially true in Harlem, where almost all of the high-priced delicatessens and other small food stores are owned by Jews. The lack of competition in this area allows the already badly exploited Blacks to be further exploited by Jews. 

And because of this introduction pressure was placed and Lindsay conceded and told Tom that he could not distribute the catalogue.

At a press conference called on the afternoon of the show, Mayor Lindsay acquisced to the pressure from the Upper East side and denounced Tom Hoving but was one of the first to cross a picket line set up by Ed Taylor and some of the followers coming into the Met for opening night ceremonies. 

Incidentally, the night the show opened it rained "cats and dogs" so Ed's group gave a token walk around the Met and when no one was looking sneaked in one of the side doors to enter the building to join the Blacktie affair. The show "Harlem On My Mind" reawakened the world to James Vandereze the great Negro photographer whose camera vividly chronicled life in Harlem from 1900 to 1968.

The show opened up the Met to the world as the top tourist attraction in the U.S. The show opened the Mets Board of Directors to Negro membership and Arnold Johnson was the first Negro elected to its Board. The show opened up the Met to Negro employment other than being janitors in the building. It was one of Tom Hoving's desire to set up a teaching scholarship at some Negro colleges to train Negroes as curators but for some reasons or the other Negro colleges were not ready to put in this type of study in their curriculums in 1968.

The show also started the Met off on a program of setting up satellite Museums around New York with community people in charge. And this is why I remember that Tom Hoving put on an exhibit at the Met called "Harlem On My Mind".

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