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African American New York

African American New York is citywide, but traditionally in Harlem and Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. Take the “A” train.

We aren’t necessarily Latin, but a lot of who we are as both Latins and Americans, originated in the African Diaspora. We have lot to be proud of.

“African” has many meanings. We are different branches with the same root.

Many countries call us Africans – even though we are culturally more of our respective countries.

Africans live in Africa, a bigger and more diverse continent than most Americans understand.

There is a very big African Diaspora in the Americas and Europe.

We cover African Diaspora culture by place, because where we live defines us more than anything else.

Black Lives Matter launched the Harlem Renaissance 3.0 in 2020.

Thank you for sponsoring African American culture at New York Latin Culture Magazine!

AFRICAN AMERICAN features, news, art, books, comedy, cultural centers, dance, fashion, festivals, film, food, music, parades, sports, theatre, about

“New York is a secret African city.”

Robert Farris Thompson, American historian at Yale University

Thompson’s statement is true. Once you learn to read the signs, you see the parallel universe of the African Diaspora, everywhere. To preserve our heritage culture, we hid it in plain sight.

African American New York Features

African American New York Archive

African American New York News

Ongoing

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. 🇬🇭🇪🇹🇨🇮🇰🇪🇱🇷🇲🇷🇳🇬🇸🇳🇸🇱🇸🇩🇹🇹🇹🇳🇿🇼

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. 🇺🇸 🇩🇴 🇮🇪 🇮🇹 🇵🇷

February 2023

February is Black History Month.

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

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

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

Complexions Contemporary Ballet performs “Woke” (2019), and “Love Rocks” (2020) to Lenny Kravitz; at the Purchase College Performing Arts Center in Purchase, New York (next to White Plains); on Saturday, February 4, 2023 at 8pm. From $14. 🇺🇸 🇨🇴 🇮🇹

March 2023

Maurya Kerr (Alonzo King LINES Ballet, ODC) from the Bay Area, brings her contemporary dance to the 92nd Street Y Buttenwieser Hall in Manhattan’s Upper East Side; on Thursday-Friday, March 9-10, 2023. From $20. 🇺🇸

In “Indigenous Connections,” Rhiannon Giddens leads women of the Silkroad Ensemble with Tuscarora/Taíno (Indigenous American/Caribbean) singer and lap-steel player Pura Fé, in an evening of Indigenous folk music in Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall on Friday, March 10, 2023 at 7:30pm. 🇺🇸

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. 🌍🇺🇸🇧🇷🇨🇺🇭🇹

May 2023

Memorial Day, a commemoration of fallen soldiers, has many origins including African Americans honoring those who fought and died for freedom in 1865.

June 2023

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

August 2023

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.

September 2023

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

The 54th African American Day Parade celebrates African American culture in Harlem on Sunday, September 17, 2023. Marching bands and drill teams are the American version of Carnival parades.

October 2023

New York African Restaurant Week is usually in October (Saturday, October 15, 2022).

December 2023

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

Big Band Holidays with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis is a family concert of big band Jazz holiday favorites at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater (Wednesday-Sunday, December 14-18, 2022). 🇺🇸

Kwanzaa, the African American holiday tradition defined in California in 1966, is December 26 – January 1.

Watch Night, the African American tradition of gathering in church on the eve of the Emancipation Proclamation (1863), is New Year’s Eve, December 31.

New York African American Culture

American popular culture originates in the African Diaspora.

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.

New York African American Art

New York museums are producing many exhibitions of African American contemporary art.

  • Brooklyn Museum has a great African and African American art collection.
  • The Bronx Museum of the Arts collects art of The Bronx, which includes many African American artists.
  • The Metropolitan Museum of Art has produced many great African American permanent exhibitions.
  • The Studio Museum in Harlem focuses on African American contemporary art.

New York African American Books

  • The Black Comic Book Festival
  • Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture holds one of the world’s leading Black Arts collections. Arturo Schomburg was Puerto Rican. 🇵🇷

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New York African American Cultural Centers

  • Africa Center
  • African Burial Ground National Monument

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New York African American Dance

  • Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
  • Audubon Ballroom

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  • DanceAfrica is a festival of African Diaspora dance at the Brooklyn Museum.

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  • Dance Theater of Harlem is America’s premiere African American ballet company.

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New York African American Fashion

  • Malcom Shabazz Harlem Market sells West African textiles and clothes.

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New York African American Festivals

  • African Restaurant Week
  • Afropunk
  • Black History Month
  • BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn

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  • Our Lady of Candelaria
  • DanceAfrica
  • Harlem International Film Festival
  • Harlem Week

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  • Juneteenth
  • Juneteenth Parade & Street Fair
  • Kwanzaa
  • Martin Luther King Day
  • Memorial Day

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New York African American Film

  • African Diaspora Film Festival

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  • Maysles Cinema

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  • New York African Film Festival

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New York African American Food

A lot of American food has West African and Central African origins.

  • Buunni Inwood in Inwood. 🇪🇹
  • Cecil Steakhouse in Harlem
  • Dizzy’s Club on Columbus Circle

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  • Ginny’s Supper Club in Harlem 🇪🇹🇸🇪
  • Safari in Harlem. 🇸🇴
  • Simple Cafe & Restaurant in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. 🇫🇷🇩🇿

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  • Red Rooster in Harlem 🇪🇹🇸🇪
  • Sylvia’s Restaurant in Harlem 🌍🇺🇸
  • Tsion Cafe in Harlem. 🇪🇹

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New York African American Music

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, the root of American popular music including: jazz, swing, country, rock, R&B, rap/hip-hop, and trap.

  • 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in Morris Heights, The Bronx, is where DJ Kool Herc (Clive Campbell) ran the first Hip-Hop party on August 11, 1973.
  • Apollo Theater

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  • Leyla McCalla is a New Orleans Haitian classical and folk musician.
  • Minton’s Playhouse in Harlem is where bebop jazz was born.
  • National Jazz Museum in Harlem
  • Rhiannon Giddens is a great folk musician.

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New York African American Parades

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  • Harlem Silent Parade

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New York African American Seasons

SPRING

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SUMMER

  • Black August celebrates freedom fighters. There were many. We fought back at every opportunity.

FALL

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WINTER

  • February is Black History Month. It’s also the Feast of Our Lady of Candelaria, patron saint of the African Diaspora. Carnival, the only time we were allowed to celebrate our own traditions is usually in February.

If You’re Not African, You’re Not Human

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. Our culture survived 500 years in secret, at home.

If you’re not African,
You’re not human.”

Keith Widyolar, Editor-in-Chief, New York Latin Culture Magazine

It’s true that American history is African history, and 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. The “original sin” allowed the accumulation of capital which is the foundation of capitalism.

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 much of what we cover is originally African Diaspora culture.

Black Lives Matter triggered a new Harlem Renaissance:

Harlem Renaissance 1.0
1920s – 1930s

Harlem Renaissance 2.0
Black Arts Movement
1960s – 1970s

Harlem Renaissance 3.0
2020s – hopefully forever

Whatever happens in the Black community, ripples into the Latin community shortly thereafter.

These are historic African American places in New York.

  • Hotel Theresa
  • Lewis Latimer House
  • Louis Armstrong House
  • Seneca Village (Central Park)
  • Africans built the wall on Wall Street. There was a human market at Wall St and Pearl St.
  • Weeksville Heritage Center

Promote African American New York

“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

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