| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Before Harlem: The Black Experience in New York City before World War I. By Marcy S. Sacks. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006. 231 pp. $49.95, ISBN 978-0-8122-3961-4.)
Marcy S. Sacks's Before Harlem offers a much needed back story to the growth of that African American inner city, which has been written about so extensively regarding the Harlem Renaissance. What is so important about this story is how the first generation of freed blacks came to the city and grappled not only with the pervasive white prejudice but also the opposition of northern blacks and, in some cases, Afro-Caribbeans. Discussion of the latter group is a particularly intriguing touch, as histories of Harlem seldom address the migrations of West Indian blacks to the United States, especially New York; yet they played an important role in shaping the texture of Harlem's social, cultural, and political life.	1
Another important aspect of the black experience in New York before World War I was how racial unity was an immense challenge. Given the disparate identities that black people brought to the city, there was a reluctance to shed them when faced with either intraracial hostilities or hostility from whites. Sacks wisely does not try to weigh which hostility was greater, but she does carefully draw out that blacks in the city saw their situation as having mixed blessings.	. . .

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