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African American NYC

African American NYC is citywide, but traditionally in Harlem and Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. Take the “A” train between these two really cool places in NYC.

African American isn’t necessarily Latin, but much of who we are, both as Latins of the Americas and Americans of the United States, originates in the African Diaspora. Much of what we cover throughout New York Latin Culture Magazine is actually African Diaspora culture.

Manhattan has had many Little Africas. Currently it is on 116th St west of Fifth Avenue. The Malcolm Shabazz Harlem Market is a great place to buy West African products. East of Fifth Avenue, 116th St becomes one of the main streets of El Barrio Spanish Harlem. Black and Latin are two sides of the same coin.

A lot of American food is West African food. In the Caribbean and Latin America, African Diaspora drum, song and dance traditions have survived as core culture. When they took away the drum in the United States, we got the Blues; AND Jazz, Swing, Country, Rock, R&B, Rap/Hip-Hop, and Trap.

“New York is a secret African city.”

Robert Farris Thompson, American historian at Yale University

American Culture is Black Culture, and a lot of Latin Culture is Black Culture too. We have a lot to be proud of.

African American Culture

Most American popular culture originates in the African Diaspora.

NYC African American Restaurants

  • Buunni Inwood in Inwood. 🇪🇹
  • Cecil Steakhouse in Harlem
  • Dizzy’s Club on Columbus Circle *
  • Ginny’s Supper Club in Harlem 🇪🇹🇸🇪
  • Safari in Harlem. 🇸🇴
  • Simple Cafe & Restaurant in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. 🇫🇷🇩🇿
  • Red Rooster in Harlem 🇪🇹🇸🇪
  • Sylvia’s Restaurant in Harlem 🌍🇺🇸
  • Tsion Cafe in Harlem. 🇪🇹

African American Festivals

  • African American Day Parade
  • African Restaurant Week
  • Afropunk
  • Black History Month
  • BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn
  • Our Lady of Candelaria
  • DanceAfrica
  • Harlem International Film Festival
  • Harlem Silent Parade
  • Harlem Week
  • Juneteenth
  • Juneteenth Parade & Street Fair
  • Kwanzaa
  • Martin Luther King Day
  • Memorial Day

African American New York City

  • 1520 Sedgwick Avenue
  • Africa Center
  • African Burial Ground National Monument
  • Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
  • Apollo Theater
  • Audubon Ballroom
  • Brooklyn Museum
  • Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute *
  • Dance Theater of Harlem
  • Dizzy’s Club *
  • Harlem Stage *
  • Hotel Theresa
  • Jazz at Lincoln Center *
  • Lewis Latimer House
  • Louis Armstrong House
  • Malcom Shabazz Harlem Market
  • Minton’s Playhouse
  • National Jazz Museum in Harlem
  • Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture 🇵🇷
  • Seneca Village (Central Park)
  • Studio Museum
  • Wall Street
  • Weeksville Heritage Center

* Thank you for sponsoring New York Latin Culture Magazine!

African American NYC News

African American NYC Archive

April 2023

HISTORIC MET OPERA PREMIERE
The Metropolitan Opera opens a new Met production of Terence Blanchard’s groundbreaking Jazz Opera “Champion,” the story of African American boxer Emile Griffith, at the Metropolitan Opera House in Lincoln Center on Monday, April 10, 2023 at 8pm. From $49.50. 🇺🇸

Dance Theatre of Harlem presents New York premieres by William Forsythe and Tiffany Rea-Fisher, George Balanchine’s “Allegro Brillante,” and works by Resident Choreographer Robert Garland at New York City Center in Midtown, Manhattan, Wednesday-Sunday, April 19-23, 2023. From $35. 🌍🇺🇸🇧🇷🇨🇺🇭🇹

December 2022

American Emmy, Grammy and Tony-winner Audra McDonald brings her operatic and Broadway vocal magic to Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage on Saturday, December 3, 2022 at 8pm. From $134. 🇺🇸

Winter Wonderland at The Apollo brings Santa under the marquee for picture taking and holiday activities at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, on Saturday, December 10, 2022 at 2pm. Free. 🇺🇸

Big Band Holidays with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis and guest singer Samara Joy is a family concert of big band Jazz holiday favorites at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater, Wednesday-Sunday, December 14-18, 2022. From $41. 🇺🇸

At the Kwanzaa: A Regeneration Celebration, Stephanie Berry hosts Abdel R. Salaam’s Forces of Nature Dance Company and friends at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, on Friday, December 30, 2022 at 7:30pm. From $25. 🇺🇸

November 2022

World Ballet Day 2022 is a streaming behind-the scenes look at a day in the life of a ballet company including American Ballet Theater, Alvin Ailey American Dance Company, and many leading global ballet companies on Wednesday, November 2, 2022. 🇺🇸 🇧🇷 🇨🇺 🇫🇷 🇮🇹 🇲🇨 🇵🇷 🇿🇦 🇪🇸

Leyla McCalla joins Rhiannon Giddens, Amythyst Kiah, and Allison Russel for a banjo quartet of African American women’s music in “Songs of Our Native Daughters” at the Carnegie Hall Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage on Friday, November 4, 2022 at 8pm. From $32. 🇭🇹 🇺🇸

DOC NYC 2022, America’s largest documentary film festival, is at IFC Center in Manhattan’s West Village, SVA Theatre and Cinépolis Chelsea, Wednesday, November 9-17, 2022. It continues online to November 27. 🇧🇷 🇨🇺 🇩🇴 🇨🇦 🇮🇹 ✡️ 🇻🇪 🇺🇸

NYC’s Complexions Contemporary Ballet dances diverse and forward-looking contemporary ballet at the Joyce Theater in Chelsea, NYC, for two weeks, Tuesday-Sunday, November 22 – December 4, 2022. From $20. 🇺🇸 🇨🇴 🇮🇹

Pulitzer Prize-winning drama “Between Riverside and Crazy,” by New York playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis (“The Get Down”), starts Broadway previews at the Hayes Theater in the Times Square Theater District on Wednesday, November 30, 2022 at 7pm for a Monday, December 19, 2022 opening. The show will be simulcast live from January 31 – February 12, 2023. From $69. 🇺🇸 🇩🇴 🇮🇪 🇮🇹 🇵🇷

October 2022

Xaviera Simmons: Crisis Makes a Book Club, an exhibition of the Harvard University Solomon Fellow’s monumental mixed media projects about how the art world and U.S. power are built on intertwined capitalism and institutional racism, is at the Queens Museum in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, Queens, from October 2, 2022 to March 5, 2023. She makes you think. 🇺🇸

The Roy Hargrove Big Band plays The Jazz Gallery (which he cofounded) in NoMad, Manhattan on Thursday, October 6, 2022 at 7:30 & 9:30pm. From $35. 🇺🇸

States of Becoming, an art exhibition on the cultural assimilation experience of African artists living and working in the United States, is at Africa Center in “El Barrio” East Harlem from October 14, 2022 – February 26, 2023. 🇬🇭🇪🇹🇨🇮🇰🇪🇱🇷🇲🇷🇳🇬🇸🇳🇸🇱🇸🇩🇹🇹🇹🇳🇿🇼

New York African Restaurant Week is Saturday, October 15, 2022. eventbrite.com

Opera and musical theatre producer Beth Morrison Projects presents song cycles by three great African and Diaspora singers: Zimbabwean gwenyambira (musical storyteller & healer) Tanyaradzwa Tawengwa-Nzou Mambano, New York Rocker Yaz Lancaster, and electronic film score composer Tamar-kali whose roots are in the South Carolina coastal islands, to Harlem Stage in Manhattanville, West Harlem on Friday-Saturday, October 28-29, 2022 at 7:30pm. From $25. 🇿🇼🇺🇸

New Orleans drummer Morgan Guerin plays The Jazz Gallery in NoMad, Manhattan on Saturday, October 29, 2022 at 7:30 & 9:30pm. From $30. 🇺🇸

September 2022

Hear Me Now: The Black Potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Central Park, September 9, 2022 – February 5, 2023. metmuseum.org 🇺🇸

The Afropunk music festival is at Commodore Barry Park in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, Saturday-Sunday, September 10-11, 2022. From $110. 🇺🇸

The 53rd NYC African American Day Parade 2022 marches on Adam Clayton Powell Jr Blvd (Seventh Avenue) between 111th St and 137th St in Harlem on Sunday, September 18, 2022 at 1pm. The Pre-Parade Show is on Adam Clayton Powell Jr Blvd & 125th St from 11am – 1pm. The Pre-Parade Children’s Community Literacy Event is fun for kids with a free book giveaway on Adam Clayton Powell Jr Blvd at 127th St from 9am – 1pm. Free. 🇺🇸

August 2022

August is important because the Haitian Revolution began on August 21, 1791. It changed everything and spread Haitian Creole culture around the Caribbean, including to Eastern Cuba (where what becomes Changüi, Cuban Son and Salsa suddenly appeared), Mayagüez Puerto Rico (where Bomba Puertorriqueña appeared), Trinidad (the mother of Caribbean Carnival) and New Orleans (Blues, Jazz and all the popular music of the United States).

August 28 marks:

  • The Feast of St Augustine, the commemoration of the death of the North African Berber (354-430) who was one of Christianity’s most influential thinkers.
  • The lynching of Emmett Till, a 14-year old boy in Mississippi in 1955.
  • Rev. Dr Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963.
  • The death of Chadwick Boseman, the Black Panther, in 2020.

June 2022

Juneteenth is a national holiday that celebrates freedom for all Americans on Jun 19. 🇺🇸

February 2022

February is Black History Month.

Langston Hughes, the Harlem Renaissance Jazz poet, was born in Joplin, Missouri on Feb 1, 1901. 🇺🇸

The feast of Our Lady of Candelaria, patron saint of the African Diaspora, is Feb 2.

Rosa Parks, the Mother of the Freedom Movement, was born in Tuskegee, Alabama on Feb 4, 1913. 🇺🇸

Frederick Douglass, the writer, speaker and statesman perhaps most responsible for our American self-concept, celebrated his birthday on Valentines Day, February 14. 🇺🇸

Mother Africa

Africa is Mother, the mother of all humanity. The New York Latin Culture Magazine project opened our eyes to how African we are both as Latins and Americans – regardless of our personal heritage. The persistence of African Diaspora culture and its dominance of American popular culture are extraordinary.

It’s true that American history is African history, but also that American popular culture is mostly African Diaspora culture. The Diaspora built the United States; England, France, Holland, Portugal and Spain; the Caribbean and Latin America.

Colonial thinkers cannot grasp the diversity of Mother Africa and the Diaspora, but African, African American, Afro-Caribbean, Afro-Latin, Afro-European and Afro-Asian are all unique. “Different branches, same root.”

Where we live defines us more than our heritage, so we cover African Diaspora culture by country. For us, Afro-Cuban is just Cuban, and the West Indian Day Parade is Trinidadian. But most of what we cover is originally African culture.

“You may write me down in history
with your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.”

Maya Angelou, from “Still I Rise,” 1978

African NYc

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