Octavio Blanco (00:41)
I'm joined with by my partner in crime, Lead Black, the indefatigable Lead Black here for episode 21 of ⁓ Uptown Voices. Can you believe we've been doing this since...

Led Black (00:54)
21 wow

Octavio Blanco (00:55)
Since the last

week of May and we're still at it and we've been having some great great conversations about What's going on in uptown? We've been talking to some of the movers and shakers uptown people that are really, know spending the time to make our communities better, which is ⁓ What uptown voices is all about we want to give our listeners and our viewers? Introduce them to these ⁓ great people that oftentimes don't get enough coverage and don't get enough

light shined upon them by traditional media. For the traditional media to come uptown, something pretty bad has to happen apparently. But we're not about that. We're all about the good. We're all about spreading love. And that's why we're shining the light on our neighbors and on the wonderful people uptown. And today we have a very interesting guest. Her name is Claudette Brady. She is the executive director of Save Harlem Now.

Led Black (01:30)
you

That's right.

Octavio Blanco (01:51)
with an exclamation point at the end. And Safe Harlem Now is a really, really interesting organization. I met Claudette a couple weeks ago at an event.

in Harlem, a daffodil bulb giveaway where I was collecting some daffodil bulbs. And Claudette was there explaining what she, who she was and what her organization was about. And she had quite a few people at her table who were also explaining. But Claudette, welcome to Uptown Voices. It's so good to have you.

Led Black (02:24)
Welcome Claudette

Octavio Blanco (02:24)
Absolutely,

you know.

Claudette M Brady (02:26)
Thank you. Thank you for having me. And I'm looking forward to planting my daffodils myself.

Octavio Blanco (02:28)
Yes, yes, we plant them now and we see them bloom

And that's sort of like the work that we all do in our real lives. We plant the bulbs now

and we hope to see that our work comes to fruition and shows its results in the future. And I think that the work that you're doing is so crucial ⁓ with Save Harlem Now. Before I start talking about the work that you do, Claudette, tell me a little bit about your

Save Harlem Now and what it's all about.

Claudette M Brady (03:05)
So Save Harlem Now is a preservation organization. Our mission is the preservation of Harlem's architectural and cultural heritage, which are tied together. Because of the great migration to Harlem, so much of what happened in those buildings that we're trying to preserve.

And when we preserve those buildings, we're not just preserving them because of their architectural beauty, but because they give people a tangible touchstone to events of the past our people of the past. You know, we have like the Langston Hughes House, which is open to the public on some days. You can actually go and be in that space where Langston Hughes created so much of his great work. Or, you know, a few years ago,

We did a plaque at 170 West 130th Street, which was where the March on Washington was planned with Bayard Ruskin, A Philip Randolph and others. So, you know, to just say it happened here, when the building is gone, you lose the perspective, you lose that tangible touchstone to that event. But, you know, if the building is there and the space is

there, you can somewhat embody that space and that time.

Octavio Blanco (04:26)
Yeah, and you know, it's so interesting because ⁓

when we think of Harlem, we think history. Harlem equals history. People come to Harlem for the culture. They come to Harlem for the history. And if the buildings are erased our...

Claudette M Brady (04:38)
Mm-hmm.

Octavio Blanco (04:43)
removed and only the idea of what used to be here remains, the history can be erased too, right? So that's why it's so important for the work that you're doing.

Claudette M Brady (05:00)
And we see that all across the country, right? The erasure of history because of the erasure of space, of the space, right? The world knows about Tulsa now because of certain events, but that place was erased and most people forgot about it. know, one of the projects that we're working on right now is the Harlem African Burial Ground in conjunction with others. And that space was literally erased. ⁓ There was...

you know, a bus currently there's still an MTA bus depot on that space, but it's just through sheer luck that that space was rediscovered, but it had been erased. So, you know, when we keep those spaces, we ensure their continuance in our historical narrative.

Led Black (05:50)
And if I may, Claudette, you know, this I could tell is going to be a good conversation because I love history. So I love where you're going with it. ⁓ And you mentioned Tulsa. And it's a fun fact that I learned about Tulsa that the gap band, the song you dropped a bomb on me was actually about the bombs that were dropped on Tulsa. And people don't know that. People think it's just a song. But they were from they were. Yeah, they were. They have they have people from there. So that's fascinating. But, know, you're so right, like.

Claudette M Brady (05:55)
you

Octavio Blanco (06:04)
⁓

Claudette M Brady (06:05)
Mm-hmm.

I didn't know that.

Led Black (06:18)
I was a kid, a poor kid from Washington Heights going to Bronx Science and I didn't know I was poor until I went to Bronx Science and I was like, wow, I'm poor, you know what mean? And it was a kid from Harlem, his name is Benjamin Talton, his father was, he lived on Convent, his father was a minister and on the board of Howard and he gave me the Malcolm X book.

Claudette M Brady (06:26)
Mm-hmm.

Led Black (06:37)
Right. And that changed my life. The Autobahn changed my life at 13. It gave me meaning. made me, it took me from like an angry kid to a kid that like wanted to know more. And then when I found out that Malcolm was assassinated in my community, right, not too far from where I grew up. And then I knew that I could walk in the steps, right? That I could go to Harlem and I could go to the places I could go by miles number seven. You know what mean? So, so just thank you for the work you do. And I love the tagline that you have where it says preserving our past for our future.

Claudette M Brady (06:37)
Yep.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Led Black (07:05)
Can you expound on that and what that means to you? Because I can tell it means a lot to you.

Claudette M Brady (07:05)
Yeah, bye.

So, and I'm just gonna digress with the Audubon ballroom. And I wasn't involved in it, but that was saved through efforts of the community. The building was going to be torn down and there was a fight to at least keep some of it intact. So the main lobby is still there and upstairs is still there. But most of that building is gone, but at least we still have that space where we can go into and say, this is where Malcolm

Led Black (07:20)
That's right.

Claudette M Brady (07:39)
delivered his messages at least one of the spaces where it did so. The are you know saving our past for our future is is important across you know history in general people we say you know if you don't learn from from from from history you'll repeat it our something to that effect I don't remember the exact quote but understanding history and understanding what happened.

previously and having a knowledge of that allows us to build on where we go in the future. Just from that standpoint, understanding history as African Americans our people of the African diaspora actually for us instills a knowledge that sort of broadens our individual perspective.

of who we are as a people. If we don't know about our ancestors, we don't know about the people who came before us and the struggles that they went through for us to be here our the victories that they had, we really don't understand what our place is in society today.

Octavio Blanco (08:41)
Yeah, it's, I'm obviously,

I'm Latino of Mexican origin, not African American, obviously, but I think about your experience a lot because, and I want to say your experience, mean, your community's experience, because to me, it just seems like it's ⁓ a history of constant fighting to preserve your history. If you go all the way back to the

Claudette M Brady (08:57)
Mm-hmm.

Octavio Blanco (09:08)
origins of African Americans in this country brought from Africa, cut off from their history. And then once here as indentured people, their families being erased and...

Claudette M Brady (09:10)
Mm-hmm.

Octavio Blanco (09:22)
And so for me, I always find it so crucial to remember just what this experience must have been like and why for your community, especially for the African-American community, it's gotta be like so much more difficult, but then also rewarding when you do preserve and recapture that history that you're actively, that others are actively trying to erase.

Claudette M Brady (09:50)
Well, know, so for, for, you know, African American history, and we always say that is American history. And you cannot tell the full narrative of American history without the African American experience, our for that matter, other immigrant group experience. The greatness of this land, which some don't seem to believe is the fact that there is a diverse group of individuals from around the world.

Octavio Blanco (09:52)
Yes.

Claudette M Brady (10:14)
who has for the most part managed to live together in harmony, for the most part, okay? I'll leave it at that. For me as a member of the African diaspora, I'm originally from Jamaica, the history of enslavement, of what I would say rebirth is for me,

showing the resilience of my people. And, you know, people talk about other people have been enslaved around the world, but the difference is as as a people, we were actually taken from a place across the ocean to a place that was completely unfamiliar to us. We were stripped of our names our language our gods. But who we are, I always say remains in that heartbeat. Right. And you see it across the diaspora.

whether you're Jamaican, whether you're Puerto Rican or Dominican or you're from Brazil, there it is. You see it in the music. You see it in our spoken language. You see it in our poetry that there's this connection that could not be erased or taken from us through this enslavement process. And for me, that is resilience. For all intents and purposes, we should not have survived.

but not only were we resilient, we have created a culture through music and art that really fuels the world. right? I mean, when I travel, people, you know, they hear them from Brooklyn, our I used to live in Bed-Stuy or Harlem, and they are interesting, they're intrigued, they want to know, they come, they visit, they want to...

You know, I have a friend who, I just had a, she's written a book called Hamilton Heights and Sugar Hill, Davidus Ciswa James, and it captures 400 years of the history of Hamilton Heights and Sugar Hill. And one of things that she says about it is that Harlem would not be Harlem without black people. And you know, I sort of thought that, but when she said it,

Led Black (12:01)
.

That's right.

Claudette M Brady (12:17)
it solidified that thought in my mind. And if you think about it, people come from all around the world and to visit New York City. And when they go, they go to site specific places. They go to the Empire State Building or they go to the World Trade Center.

People come to Harlem because we are here. People come to Harlem because what we as a people have created here, yes, there is beautiful architecture, but if it was beautiful architecture without the African-American community, it would be the Upper East Side or the Upper West Side or any other historic neighborhood.

What makes Harlem special is the creativity and the people and that synergy and that rhythm in the streets that you find nowhere else.

Led Black (13:08)
Yeah, I agree 100%. I like to say Harlem is a black mecca still, right? Because it's a pull, right? It's without a doubt that it has lost, black people have left Harlem, but it's still a black mecca for the entire world, right? For people in the South and for people in Africa, right? Because you have a whole contingent of people in Africa that they know Harlem for black excellence.

Claudette M Brady (13:14)
It is still, yeah.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Led Black (13:35)
You know, and one thing I want to go back to both of my daughters, two of my daughters, I should say, were, they were, they did a program at the studio museum. And I remember one of my, one of my, my middle child, she, she was, ⁓ her topic for that semester for the program was James Vanderzee, right? The photographer, right? What's amazing though about those pictures, right? So this is, this is, this is.

Claudette M Brady (13:56)
Mm-hmm, yep.

Led Black (14:02)
full on during segregation, right? And the people look so fly. So maybe there was misery, right? I'm not gonna lie, there was misery in Harlem, but there was flyness in Harlem. There was black people doing for black people, Without saying, know, the white society don't care about us, but we're gonna do us. And what I see in those pictures, and it's not just one or two, right? It's not one or two. It's...

Claudette M Brady (14:08)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yep.

Yep.

Led Black (14:27)
You know, they have these beautiful, like, you know, social clubs, all this intent, like this woven fabric of beauty. And you see it in the pictures. And another thing that I'm, interesting fact about James Vanerzee, which is just an aside, what he would do with his pictures is he would layer his pictures and almost put like a filter on it by doing like the technique of the time. So in a way he was the first Instagram.

But if you could speak to the elegance and just the glory of Harlem, right? Because I think people forget what Harlem really, really, like you said, there is no Harlem without black people. You know what mean? And Harlem has become this global beacon of arts, culture, and resilience. So if you could talk a little bit more about that,

Claudette M Brady (15:07)
Yeah.

And just as a side, ⁓ last year at ORR, we have an annual gala where we actually celebrate people who have been instrumental in preserving Harlem's history. one of our honorees last year was Donna Van Der Zee, the wife of James Van Der Zee, who for years, you know, cataloged his work and kept his work safe. And last year, she donated a major portion of that work to them.

to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And, you know, so how we are as people is that, you know, we rise to the occasion, we find our joy in our churches, in our style, in our fashion. We create something for us that is different from everybody else. is a ⁓ pride in who we are and it's reflected in

in how we dress, we keep our homes. You look at Harlem and people want to, you know, there's been conversations about, you know, how about the state of Harlem and its decay. But Harlem was standing because of the people who lived in Harlem, who stayed, who did not leave, who took care of their homes in a time when

They couldn't go out and get a mortgage to refinance and do renovations, but they manage, again, the word resilience. Through redlining and planned shrinkage, Black people have managed to remain resilient and survive and maintain our homes, our neighborhoods, without assistance from outside sources.

Octavio Blanco (16:49)
I want to get back to

we spoke about when we met is the idea of what Harlem is. And Harlem actually always ran from...

I guess, know, 116th Street our wherever you want to put the southernmost border, all the way to the end of the island, to Marble Hill sometimes. Originally, that was Harlem. you know, nowadays we know it as Inwood, we know it as Washington Heights, and then we have Harlem. But originally, the whole thing was Harlem. And I think even further south maybe than 116th Street. So.

Led Black (17:10)
Uh-uh.

Claudette M Brady (17:13)
Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

It was further south and I don't remember the exact boundary, it was I think down to like 79th Street, the diagonal line from 79th Street to I think like 127th Street. historically, let's start with Harlem. So we had, know, we know that this was the Dutch colony. The English were now in the financial district, the lower Manhattan area, and the upper area.

which was New Harlem, right, which was the Dutch area, which as I said, I think, but it was fairly low. think 79th Street, a diagonal line going uptown, and that was New Harlem. And that line got pushed and pushed and pushed with the takeover of the British from the Dutch. And now it's shrunk.

I remember it used to be 96th Street, right? When I was younger, it was 96th Street, and now it's 110th, I think. And most people don't know about Marble Hill, ⁓ which, I'll just say what Marble Hill is. So Marble Hill was the tip of Manhattan and a canal, it was cut off from the main island.

Led Black (18:24)
Yeah.

Right.

Claudette M Brady (18:38)
because of a canal connecting the two rivers when they built I think it was the triboro bridge I don't remember which bridge the landfill actually kind of stuck it to the Bronx so it is technically geographically part of the Bronx but legislatively it is part of Manhattan so ⁓ yeah that used to be Harlem too so we're taking it back ⁓

Led Black (18:50)
You

Right.

Octavio Blanco (18:57)
But the burial ground that you were talking about,

Led Black (18:58)
Right.

Yeah.

Octavio Blanco (19:02)
you said that that's your current.

Led Black (19:04)
Yeah.

Claudette M Brady (19:07)
So the burial ground, and ⁓ we were working with ⁓ bridge, we were a sub of Bridge Philanthropic who were engaged by the New York EDC to do community engagement around the Harlem African Burial Ground, which is at 126th Street between First and Second Avenue. So going back to the Dutch,

Octavio Blanco (19:28)
I see.

Claudette M Brady (19:34)
The New Harlem was incorporated in the 1600s and in order to be incorporated there needed to be a church. the church and the town or the community of New Harlem were incorporated in the same year, the same date, and it was the Lowcountry Dutch Church, the descendant church of which is Elmendorf Reform Church.

which is on 121st Street, right across from the Harlem Courthouse. So the church had two burial grounds, one called God's Acre and one called the African Burial Ground. With the incorporation of Harlem into New York City, the church contacted the descendants of all the white people who were interred in God's Acre.

Got their permission and those people were re-interred at Woodlawn. The black people were left there. The church originally leased the land as grazing grounds. So let's think about this. You have animals grazing and doing their business on the site where people are buried. Subsequent to that,

Led Black (20:42)
Uh-uh.

Claudette M Brady (20:44)
There was a movie studio, there was a casino, a few other things, and then the city built the burial ground there. During the, I mean the bus depot there, by happenstance, there was some work with the Willis Avenue Bridge, some human remains were found. Somebody contacted the church.

Octavio Blanco (20:51)
The bus depot,

Claudette M Brady (21:08)
And the church did have these records proving that there was a burial ground. And there was a subsequent, you know, years of negotiating with MTA. Melissa, this was reverend, the reverend of the church at the time was Patricia Singletary. Patricia Singletary, they formed a task force which included Sharon Wilkins, who was the deputy borough historian.

Melissa, Mark, Viver, Rito and others. And they finally got them to do some drilling where they actually found some human remains and subsequently got the bus depot decommissioned. So they just finished the archeological work on the burial ground last week sometime. And they also did find some remains of Native Americans there as well. And there

their remains will have been given over to the Lenape people for their proper burial or celebration of their lives. So, are several burial grounds. there's one in Inwood, there are a in the Bronx, is Flatbush, there's several

Led Black (22:11)
That is a fascinating history. I'm sorry, go ahead. Sorry, Claude.

Claudette M Brady (22:22)
African burial grounds and Native American burial grounds throughout the city that are under parks, under bus depots, under apartment buildings, you know, they have been forgotten and erased. Some have been newly discovered.

Led Black (22:37)
Yeah, it's it

Yeah, and there's there's there's one also in lower Manhattan in the financial district that that's

that actually the right thing there, because there is a monument that's actually very pretty. It's like no one knows about it. It's kind of like in a, like a, like this kind of, you know, this kind of out of the way street, but it's beautiful. But you know, a lot of times, you know, they tell people want to make slavery like a thing of the South, you know, but it wasn't, you know, like slavery at a certain time was very prevalent, you know, in the North, you know I mean? I mean, you could make the argument that outside of any major city in this country, it is the South, right? If we go North to New York.

Claudette M Brady (22:47)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yep.

Yeah.

So

New York City had the largest number of slaves second to Charlotte, North Carolina. It was the second largest slave trading port in the country, second to North Carolina.

Led Black (23:22)
Right. Yeah.

And even like, so the Dyckman family, they're very important up here and Inwood They owned slaves, right? Like it was part of, and even when after we were eclipsed by other ports know, New York was eclipsed. New York was still like the financial capital of slavery, right? Like the money for slavery happened in New York. So what does your organization do? What do you guys do to preserve the legacy? know, what are some of the things you're doing?

Claudette M Brady (23:47)
Yep ⁓

Yeah

So we are actually working on a series of programs for next year. We were waiting for this engagement with EDC to finish because we did not want to work in conflict with them. We were chartered to do this work with them. So once this is done next year, we're going to be starting our own series of programming, not just about the Harlem African Burial Ground.

but about the history of African Americans in New York City. Everybody knows Harlem. One thing that a lot of Americans don't know is that the first non-Native American resident of New York, of Manhattan Island, was a black man. he, Juan Rodriguez, yes, yes.

Led Black (24:43)
Rodriguez, Juan Rodriguez,

Claudette M Brady (24:45)
Originally from Hispaniola, what is now the Dominican Republic side, was here as a fur trader. Not much is known of him. It is thought that he did marry a Native American woman and settled on Manhattan, in Manhattan Island. We will discuss a lot of the free people. People forget that a lot of the original people also were free people. There's this misconception that everyone was enslaved.

There were also free people. We are going to talk about, you know, the founding of churches like Abyssinian and one of the oldest churches in New York City our Mother A.M.E. Zion, another, know, A.M.E. Zion, the first African-American church established in the country and those churches and other communities.

There is Manuel Plaza, which a lot of people don't know about, downtown. It was a free our a half free community under the Dutch. A land granted to the Dutch, think by Peter Stuyvesant, granted to five guys named Manuel, okay, by Peter Stuyvesant, which was a free, half free community. the British,

Octavio Blanco (25:50)
You

Claudette M Brady (26:00)
took over, managed to take that land back. So, and you know, there were communities in Tenderloin, there was a large African American and Puerto Rican community in San Juan Hill, ⁓ which no longer exists because of Robert Moses. So we are going to do some history, not just about Harlem, but other communities in Harlem.

Octavio Blanco (26:15)
Yeah.

Led Black (26:15)
Yep.

Claudette M Brady (26:26)
that had strong African American presence. The Tenderloin was almost like Harlem when it came to businesses and clubs back in the day, and it's forgotten.

Octavio Blanco (26:36)
Mm-hmm. I don't know. Where was the tenderloin? I'm not even

familiar with that

Claudette M Brady (26:45)
you have to think about the Tenderloin if you know like cow parts. Where the Tenderloin is on the, okay. The Tenderloin is west side roughly 20th Street to 50th Street.

Led Black (26:49)
Yeah

Octavio Blanco (26:54)
⁓ gotcha, gotcha.

Led Black (26:57)
you brought up, yeah, so you brought up Juan Rodriguez and I think Juan Rodriguez is a perfect example of African genius, right? Because here's this man, right? He learned to speak Dutch.

Claudette M Brady (27:04)
Yep.

Led Black (27:09)
I mean, he grew up speaking Dutch, right? But he learned to speak Lenape, right? And then became like this master facilitator, right? And then, you know, when he said, you know what, I don't want to go with you Europeans. I'm going live this indigenous life. And he left here. And again, he must have left, you know, a mark that we don't know, right? But there's a...

Claudette M Brady (27:09)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yep.

Mm-hmm.

Led Black (27:30)
there's a biological mark and genes there somewhere. So I think he's a perfect example of African genius, Where we, cause I'm Dominican. I consider myself part of the African diaspora. Like I think that we make things out of, we're resilient and where we make things out of nothing. And it's funny cause growing up in Washington Heights, know, our people don't know Washington Heights was also very African American, right? So, you know, when I would grew up, Dominicans, of course we were the biggest group.

Claudette M Brady (27:53)
Yep.

Led Black (27:58)
But for me, the second biggest group was black Americans. Like some of my earliest best friends were black kids because we were in the same block. were in the, like, you know, if you on my block, we don't care what you are on the other block. We don't like you who aren't regardless, but you're my block. So my best friend was Sean Jones when I was growing up, right? We had a big African-American presence uptown in the Heights and people tend to forget that. You know I mean? And can you talk a little bit about that? about how, how.

Claudette M Brady (28:01)
Mm-hmm.

Led Black (28:24)
Harlem really extended all the way up here. Like 164th between Edgecombe and Amsterdam is still a very black block, still. You know what saying? You have those. When I was growing up, 189th on Wadsworth, and Wadsworth Terrace was a very black block. But the Black Americans were the second biggest group when I was growing up. So most of my friends were either Dominican or Black, and there were other Latinos, but Black folks were really prevalent in Washington Heights of my youth.

Claudette M Brady (28:33)
Yep.

Well, know, so the thing is that neighborhoods change for varying various reasons, right? We're seeing a migration out of out of Harlem in general with with black folks now and not just black people, but people of color because we we can no longer afford to live here. Right. And and the migration tends to be, you know, a lot of what I call middle income people who have the means.

and the education to relocate. Because relocating is not cheap, right? You have to be able to find a place to live. You have to move your stuff. You have to have, you know, find a new job or being in a position where you can transfer. So you have to have some resources. You know, I see it in the neighborhood I grew up in, in the Bronx. When I was growing up, it was pretty much African American and Puerto Rican. Now it is...

Led Black (29:26)
Mm-hmm.

Claudette M Brady (29:47)
Ecuadorian and Mexican and other South American, Guatemalan, other South American people. And a lot of that I know with a lot of the friends that I grew up with, their parents left New York City. They went to Pennsylvania. A lot of them went to Pennsylvania or Long Island looking for that home ownership opportunity.

and you know a place for their kids to play with that they could not find in the Bronx our in New York City.

a lot of times neighborhoods change because people are moving for greater opportunities. So I think over time, we'll see Washington, it's probably become less Dominican because, you know, those folks will be leaving and going to places.

where they have more opportunities specifically about housing and schooling for their

Octavio Blanco (30:39)
Yeah, and we are already seeing that happen. We are seeing

a lot of people are leaving Washington Heights, going to the Bronx, and I guess the same thing in Harlem. People are leaving Harlem, going to the Bronx, and further out, further out to Westchester. I've heard of people, I've heard people going to Pennsylvania, our going down south, yeah.

Claudette M Brady (30:57)
And for and

our going down going down south. Yep. And a lot of African Americans are going down south, right? Because that's where their roots are. And, you know, I have several friends. I remember in the 90s, most of my friends who I went a lot of my friends who I went to college with went to Atlanta. They got married.

They had really good jobs and they moved to Atlanta because they could get a house and their kids could go to a good school. So the out migration happens because the city cannot provide them with what they need for themselves and their families. You you can go to Atlanta, you can get like, you know, a house with a bonus room and have a space for mom downstairs. You can't do that in New York City.

Octavio Blanco (31:42)
Yeah. I

Led Black (31:42)
Right,

Octavio Blanco (31:43)
want to talk a little bit about preservation

Led Black (31:45)
Yup.

Octavio Blanco (31:46)
and whether and how Harlem compares with the rest of the city. My understanding is that only a fraction of the buildings that could be preserved in Harlem are actually

being preserved our actually in the, being recognized as preserved compared to Upper East Side and other places. So number one, can you please.

Tell us a little bit about that. And then also tell us a little bit about the process of actually having a property be designated as a historical landmark. How difficult is it? Does it cost money? And is there a miss, are there misapprehensions from homeowners and building owners about the process?

Claudette M Brady (32:34)
Okay, so I'll just use Community Board 3. 3.6 % of Community Board 3 is designated by the New York City Landmarks Commission. In the Village, I think it's about 27 % of the Village. Overall, it could be higher in the Village. Overall, 27 % of Manhattan is designated.

So Harlem, know, there is that period of disenfranchisement in Harlem. And we saw that, you know, in the 70s and the 80s at one point by the end of the 80s, about 80 % of the properties in New York City, in Harlem was owned by New York City, right? And the city was a...

destructive force when it came to buildings. The city sort of takes these knee-jerk reactions to things. A cornice fell off one building, so they decided to knock the cornices off hundreds of buildings, right? Rather than do the work of making sure that those buildings were...

the cornices were secured or doing any work to remediate a problem that might be with that building. We just had another city-owned building, the building where Billie Holiday lived at a time in Harlem was vacant and there was a major fire. So, you know, city policies throughout the year has affected neighborhoods, Harlem.

⁓ I don't know if you guys remember the Bronx is burning in Fort Apache. I mean, a lot of that was based on city, the disinvestment in those neighborhoods, the closing of firehouses, the closing of police stations, redlining the lack of home ownership opportunities, which creates, you know, grounded stakeholders in the neighborhood, right? So,

Just based on that, designation in Harlem did not move forward as it did in other communities prior previously. The designation process, so let's talk about that. There are two avenues for designation. There is state and national registry. So we have a good percentage of Harlem that is state and national registry.

State and National Registry is for the most part honorarium, right? It does not provide any protection against demolition or for the most part changes to the exterior of the building unless it is sort of an interior landmark or something that's significant because of its interior. Now, New York City landmarks designation does provide protection

against demolitions, changes to the exterior, and if it's an interior landmark, changes to the interior. And including in New York City, historic designations are also scenic designations like Central Park is a scenic landmark. Marcus Garvey Park has just been added to the State National Registry of Historic Places.

The process is, hmm, the process is community driven, right? When the Landmarks Preservation Commission first started in 1965, they actually did go out and survey pretty much the entire city and made some early designations. Strivers Row in Harlem.

Brooklyn Heights, couple of other designations throughout the city. However, it is community driven. It is their process of education of the homeowners to what their responsibilities will be if the property is designated. Before the property is designated, LPC holds public meetings. Then there is a public

hearing at LPC, Landmarks Preservation Commission, where anybody and everybody can speak for against this designation. And it is calendared after calendaring the commission completes this research on the buildings, which include just not the history of the buildings, but the history of who lived in them, any significant organizations that were founded in them. I will tell anybody right now.

Go to our, and it's like one of my favorite districts, go to our website and look at the designation report for the Central Harlem West 130th to 132nd Historic District because so many significant figures in history, in Harlem history and in African American history and American history lived in those buildings or organizations.

were founded in those buildings. So I'll read the report. So that's...

Led Black (37:33)
Claudette, if I may,

is the website so people know? Tell us the website.

Claudette M Brady (37:37)
www.saveharlemnow.org. Yeah. So you have people like UB Blake living there. You have the founding of the International Brotherhood of Porters being founded there. You have New Amsterdam Musical Association, which is 125 years old, the oldest African American musical association in America. Hundreds of doctors, lawyers, at just about every

Led Black (37:41)
Thank you.

Claudette M Brady (38:03)
building there was somebody who had made some significant contribution to you know the cultural historic musical fact James James Reese Europa which most people have forgotten the Harlem Hellfighters bandleader who brought jazz to France and Europe during World War II because those because of segregation

that regiment was assigned to be with the French. So it's just the designation reports gives you a great knowledge on the history of the people and the buildings in the historic districts. So the process going on, they do the designation report and then there is another hearing where they vote to designate. After that, the designation is ratified by the New York City Council.

I've never seen them not ratify a designation. then the mayor has like 60 days to veto our not, to veto it our not veto it. And I've never seen a mayor not veto a designation. So now when it comes to the owners of historic properties, they have certain responsibilities and...

when when maintaining their house. So generally speaking, if they're doing just ordinary repairs, fixing a stoop, etc., they can do it on their own. And then they are what are called fast track permits. If you're going to be changing a door, excuse me, changing windows, those permits are fast tracked by ⁓ the Landmarks Preservation Commission. And they have certain rules and guidelines and there's

⁓ materials online which explains to you what those rules and guidelines are. You know, the restrictions are not as great. can build, you can add a story on top, However, there's restrictions on visibility from the street, how tall it can be, et cetera. You can add to the back of your house, but there are restrictions on how high, how deep that restriction could

can be. You can change the front of your house, the stoops, etc. if you need or add to them if you need to make your building handicapped accessible. So they're not casting the buildings in amber. You can do changes, but those changes require approval by the Landmarks Preservation Commission. And part of what we do at Save Harlem Now,

is if people need some help and guidance, we will provide that for them. We also do a series of workshops with our homeowners in the historic districts about financial assistance that they can get either from, you know, tax credits from the state, state homeowner tax credits, their grants available.

through the Landmarks Preservation Commission, there are grants available through the Landmarks Conservancy, which is a nonprofit organization. And we also include other programs which are not specific to historic buildings that are run by HPD and other agencies where homeowners can get low cost our low interest loans to rehab their apartments. There are generally some

restrictions on how much rent they can charge, right? But there are rent affordability requirements with most of these programs. So we try to give people as much advice and as many tools to agencies.

and organizations that can help them in maintaining those historic buildings.

Octavio Blanco (41:47)
So Claudette, my understanding from when I

you did this type of work also in Brooklyn, right? In Bed-Stuy, I think is where you were doing it. So what brought you to this type of work? What's your background? I mean, this is specialized work, I'm telling you.

Claudette M Brady (43:45)
Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Purely, totally by chance. So I'm going tell you this. So I lived on on Hancock Street and the 26 bus ran down Halsey Street and they were redoing the street and they rerouted the bus on Hancock Street. But there was nobody to talk. I mean, we knew it was going to happen, but we didn't know when it was going to happen. And literally the bus stop was in front of my house.

Octavio Blanco (44:21)
You

Claudette M Brady (44:25)
But I didn't see that little bus stop sign. I got up and I double parked my car as I usually do on alternate side of the street parking day. I go down now to move my car back and there's a hundred dollar ticket on my car. So I got really mad and I got my neighbor, Arthur, who got a ticket and we made some flyers and we wound up flying like four blocks.

Octavio Blanco (44:41)
Hahaha!

Claudette M Brady (44:52)
of all the people who got tickets and that we got our tickets resended, but that led to us restarting the block association, which had been defunct for a little while. And at, think our second block association meeting and at that time, so at that time was when Bill Clinton had deregulated the banks and everybody was building in any, every infill lot they could find.

Octavio Blanco (45:13)
Mm-hmm.

Claudette M Brady (45:16)
I don't know if you remember those days, So, luckily we didn't, well we had, but that's a whole other story. But one of my neighbors said, hey, why don't we landmark our block?

Led Black (45:17)
Yeah.

Claudette M Brady (45:33)
And one of the block association members introduced us to the folks at Crown Heights North who were in the process of getting like three major districts designated in Crown Heights. And they introduced us to Historic Districts Council, the citywide advocate for historic districts. I have to say that. And with meeting them, we found out that

we got the original landmarks preservation survey of Bedford-Stuyvesant, which had already carved out districts in Bedford-Stuyvesant. So we realized that it wasn't just our blocks. It was, I think, a total of eight blocks. And me and a bunch of neighbors went on the next block or the next couple of blocks and said, hey, do you guys have a block association? Which most blocks in Bedford-Stuyvesant do.

and who's your president? It's like, ⁓ her name is so-and-so. She lives right there. And we go knock on the door and say, hey, we're from over there, and this is what we're doing. And we formed a coalition, and we put together, I think, our first meeting. had 150 people. ⁓ then I read everything. I'm a product of educators. So then I read everything that I could about the process.

Octavio Blanco (46:32)
Wow.

Led Black (46:36)
Wow.

Octavio Blanco (46:42)
you

Claudette M Brady (46:48)
and went and like bugged a bunch of people who were doing this already. I spoke to the people at Landmarks West and Village Preservation and got some advice. And of course, the ladies from Crown Heights and really sort of crafted a Bedstuy specific sort of campaign on how we do this. Along the way, I then found out that the Stuyvesant Heights Historic District expansion

was already calendared back in 1994 and it was just sitting there. So of course we had to go over there and talk to those people too. And then, you know, God bless his rest. Council Member Vann was like our champion. He was our, you know, Don Quixote. And, you know, we called him up and we're like, we need to get this done. And he was on it. I'm like, we need a meeting with LPC. And so he, you know, we had...

Octavio Blanco (47:15)
Ha ha ha!

Claudette M Brady (47:38)
At that time, Hakeem Jeffries was our assembly person, Velma and Annette Montgomery, all the electives, Marty Markowitz, you know, they were in our corner. And so LPC came out. I think that meeting we had 450 people. And LPC, their minds were blown. And I remember I was in the bathroom and somebody was talking about, oh yeah, there was some, you know, institutional memory.

Octavio Blanco (47:50)
Whoa.

Led Black (47:54)
Wow.

Claudette M Brady (48:07)
about the meeting that they had in 1994, right? Which was quite contentious. And I was like, no, it's we're all cumbaya Cause you know, and LPC walked out of there and they were like, this is the best meeting we've ever had. Cause these folks know, you know, what's going on. We had like 20 community meetings and we went door to door and we spoke to just about everybody. You know, the good, the bad and the ugly. So, I mean, this was like, you know, major grassroots.

Octavio Blanco (48:26)
Wow.

I love it.

I love

That is a great

story. mean, lead, lead. This is what we've been talking about. This is what we talk about every single episode. One of the learnings that comes out of every single episode when we talk about, when we talk to the people that are on the ground making things work.

Claudette M Brady (48:37)
that we did to get it done.

Led Black (48:38)
Yeah.

Yeah, that's a, that's yeah, yeah.

Claudette M Brady (48:44)
Yeah

Octavio Blanco (48:51)
they always talk about community. They always talk about talking to your neighbors. It's almost as simple as that. I mean, it's not, there's a lot of legwork that you put into it. So I don't wanna diminish the work that you did, but at the crux of it, at the crux of it, it's talking to your neighbors. And I think that that is such a beautiful story. The fact that this didn't come out of your like...

Led Black (48:58)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Claudette M Brady (48:58)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Led Black (49:15)
Yeah.

Octavio Blanco (49:17)
I mean, I'm sure that you had a love for history because without a love for history, I don't see this happening. But at the same time, it came out of a necessity and it came out of a conversation with your neighbor and the block association. like, yeah, I don't think that we have enough of that. I always Led you you've been doing a lot of work in that in that regard.

Claudette M Brady (49:24)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Led Black (49:38)
Yeah.

But I think the thing that, that Octavio and I always get back to is community is the answer, right? And we'd say that, but they hear you come along, right? And then, you you're fighting that fight unbeknownst to us. And again, what I realize you are, you are like a warrior against the erasure, right? And fighting that fight, because if you look at Brooklyn, Brooklyn in a lot of ways has been erased.

Claudette M Brady (49:48)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Led Black (50:05)
Right? ⁓ You know, and like, for example, you know, I was when I was a kid, like I said, let me go back to my Malcolm story. Right. Malcolm, Malcolm changed my life. Right. Because he that my name, my name is, you know, led black because of Malcolm. You know, Malcolm put the black and you know, I mean, because I was so blown away. But but but it's interesting, right. Because one of the things I used to do as a kid when I became very militant, a black nationalist, I used to go to the slave theater on No Shanaev in Bed-Stuy.

Claudette M Brady (50:06)
Yep.

Mm-hmm.

⁓

yes, mm-hmm.

Led Black (50:33)
Right?

You know, and I remember it's so funny, right? Because every time you went to the slave theater and Octavio may not know this, but the slave theater was this amazing place in Brooklyn, right? Where you will have the greatest black leaders and thinkers come in and speak every Wednesday.

Octavio Blanco (50:47)
Wow.

Claudette M Brady (50:50)
Mm-hmm.

Led Black (50:51)
So you will see Khaled Muhammad, you will see, every Wednesday was just this beautiful display of black excellence and just intelligence every week, every week. And I remember going there and then being blown away by being in theater, because the theater was full of murals of great black leaders, Marcus Garvey, who lived and was from Harlem, not from Harlem, but he made Harlem the first headquarters of the UNIA.

Claudette M Brady (51:09)
Mm-hmm.

Octavio Blanco (51:18)
Like you were in history.

Led Black (51:20)
felt like the presence there of black greatness. You were history. only that, I'm sorry, but one of the things that I loved about this, before they started the program, they would sing, lift every voice and sing. And it would always bring me to tears, But the slave theater is gone, right? It's no longer a thing.

Claudette M Brady (51:24)
Mm-hmm

Mm-hmm.

It's gone

and we actually tried to save the theater. We had originally tried to get it designated, but that didn't happen because there was a whole bunch of murky things going on with the title. mean, there was a whole lot of controversy there. And then it was in foreclosure and we had tried to...

Octavio Blanco (51:49)
you

Led Black (51:52)
Right.

Claudette M Brady (52:01)
I had a friend who had started a theater company and we were looking at them. We were trying to raise money to save it. But out of that coalition, we did mount a fight to save Interfaith Hospital, which we did do. So we weren't able to save the slave theater, which is still, there's nothing built there yet. ⁓

Led Black (52:18)
It's amazing.

Claudette M Brady (52:24)
lots of other controversy there. But we did, with Jonathan, Solaris, myself and other folks, were able to, with the help of our elected officials again, able to save ⁓ Interfaith Hospital from closure. So.

Octavio Blanco (52:35)
And you know, when you hear things like that and

more power to you for the work that you're doing, and of course in every war some battles will be lost. But what I feel is so short-sighted is whoever decided to raise that, raise it to the ground, and it's still nothing built there. It's like...

Claudette M Brady (52:47)
Mm-hmm.

Octavio Blanco (52:58)
think about all of the good that could have come from that locality over the years. We had here in Uptown Cougans, which was what was it called? was the Uptown City Hall, which was shut down. And it's still empty. Nobody's doing anything in the...

Claudette M Brady (53:05)
Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Well, well, the gentleman who the company who bought it initially, they were building and they have some in London. had I think he was originally out of England and they were building these dormitory type housing where people would have like a cubby that they live in a shared kitchen and all of that stuff. And then COVID happened. Oops.

that idea was no longer working. So I think the company went bankrupt because that facility wasn't built. I know that what a large chunk in Williamsburg Williamsburg. And then, of course, their existing facilities were no longer occupied because nobody wants to live in a dorm and share a kitchen with a bunch of other people. Right. And they sold it to somebody else. And right now, I'm not quite sure.

Octavio Blanco (54:02)
You

Claudette M Brady (54:13)
I haven't looked at it recently, ⁓ but I haven't heard. Usually I have a friend who lives behind it, so she usually updates me on stuff and I haven't heard from her, so think all's quiet for now.

Octavio Blanco (54:21)
⁓ You get the T. Well, that's fair. I never

heard of that lead. So thank you for.

Claudette M Brady (54:28)
Yeah, well, it's it's it's it's it's right. It abuts the Bedford Historic District. So there are ramifications to that district and protections that those homeowners are entitled to if somebody tries to build there. So ⁓ if something happens, she's going to call me.

Octavio Blanco (54:46)
Yeah, but you know, to your point, Led I

never knew about the Slave Theater. It sounds fascinating. I would have loved to be there. I would have loved to go and be a part of that. And the fact of the matter is that if I drove by that or rode the bus by that empty lot, I would have no idea that that ever existed if not because I know you, Led, and you educated me, you know?

Led Black (54:50)
Yeah

Claudette M Brady (54:59)
Yeah.

Led Black (55:01)
Yeah.

Claudette M Brady (55:11)
Yeah.

Led Black (55:13)
Yeah, you know, it's interesting. No, go ahead, Claudette. Let's talk, go ahead.

Claudette M Brady (55:15)
There were actually two of them, I'm sorry. There were

actually two of them, Slave Theater One and Slave Theater Two, they were owned by Judge Wright, remember Judge Wright?

Led Black (55:25)
Yep, yep, for sure.

But it's also interesting, right, that in a lot of ways, and this is maybe not, you know, I feel like in lot of ways Brooklyn.

Claudette M Brady (55:27)
remember right, yeah.

Led Black (55:36)
was targeted because it was this center of black militancy. I think that Brooklyn was the home of black thought and this kind of like, and I think it was done on purpose. I think Bloomberg said, hey, let's get, there's too many important black people here. Let's push them out. That's one of my theories. What do you think?

Claudette M Brady (55:40)
Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Well, you know, something Brooklyn is interesting because, and I'm not sure if there's, I think for the most part, Bed-Stuy probably survived better through the down New York City years than Harlem did, right? Because ⁓ there was a really large homeowner population there.

Led Black (56:15)
Mm-hmm.

Claudette M Brady (56:20)
what has happened throughout Brooklyn and I think it's not just Bedford Stuyvesant. I was at the Morris Jamel dinner two weeks ago our last week and I sat next to a couple who from Carroll Gardens in Brooklyn and I think they were

She grew up in the neighborhood. know if I remember correctly in the house that she now lives in and she and her husband had been married for 50 years. So that tells you how long right. But they were also lamenting. The change right in Brooklyn and how the neighborhood has changed. And you know, we have these conversations surrounding gentrification and.

people sort of really focus on gentrification when there's an apparent change in the racial or ethnic makeup of a neighborhood. But across Brooklyn, I hear the people in Carroll Gardens, which was a mostly Italian neighborhood, pretty much saying the same things that we're saying in Bedford-Stuyvesant, right?

with the change, there is this loss of community, right? There's this loss of community identity, right? In preservation, people talk about neighborhood character and sense of place, and they usually talk about it in terms of the built environment. But what gives neighborhoods, particularly in New York, is character or a sense of place.

is who lives there, right? You know, I, know, in New York City, you can blindfold somebody, right, and drop them on, where's Chinatown now? Is it Murray now? It's like one block, right?

Led Black (58:05)
Yeah, right.

Claudette M Brady (58:07)
And you're like, I'm in Chinatown, right? Or you can put me on Bleecker and I'm like, yeah, I'm in Little Italy, right? Because I mean, there was a point like you'd go through in Little Italy and you you'd smell the garlic and the coffee roasting and all, you know, and you'd hear the little old ladies, you know, there were all those little old ladies with the black dresses and the sensible shoes whose husbands been dead for 50 years and they're still wearing the black dress, okay?

Octavio Blanco (58:27)
Yeah.

Claudette M Brady (58:35)
you go to Washington Heights, you're gonna hear the banging of that dominoes, right? So that is what gives that neighborhood that rhythm, that cadence, that sense of place. And we lose it all through neighborhood change, because I don't like the word gentrification, because none of those people are gentry.

Led Black (58:40)
Mm-hmm.

Octavio Blanco (58:51)
Yeah. ⁓ But it's.

Led Black (58:57)
Yeah.

And it's funny because you did the work in Brooklyn and now you're doing it Harlem. How was that? What was that transition like? Why was that transition?

Claudette M Brady (59:02)
Yeah.

So I had, I was sort of, I was sick for a bunch of years ⁓ and I had some major surgery and I sold my brownstone in Bed-Stuy I'm still really connected to that community to this day. And I was a board member of Historic Districts House, so the city-wide advocate for Historic Districts.

And one of the board members and founding members of Save Harlem Now, who I've known for a few years, was also on the board of Historic Districts Council. we were at an event. had, so after, you know, after I sort of retired from work, I had a yarn shop in Bedford-Stuyvesant and was kind of running around teaching knitting around the country and crochet around the country and going to sheep and wolf festivals. So Angel Ayon

who is a preservation architect and a board member. We were at this event and he says, save Harlem. Now I was looking for an executive director. So I went home and I thought about it for a month. And I spoke to my mother and I called a couple other preservation people. like, should I do this? And they're like, yeah, you should do it. So I said, okay, I think I should do this. So that's how I wound up here.

Led Black (1:00:14)
It seems perfect.

It seems perfect though. It seems like the synergy is you and the fact that you did it in historically black neighborhood in Brooklyn right now you're doing in Harlem. You know, thank you for your work though, right? Like I think sometimes people like you don't get the thanks for the heavy lifting of community. So thank you. And before we, I think we need to do a part two because we need to keep you, you need to keep us abreast of what you're doing. But

Claudette M Brady (1:00:16)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Thank you.

Uh-huh.

Led Black (1:00:40)
But what drives you to do this work? Why are you doing this? What's the why?

Claudette M Brady (1:00:45)
I think the why is that you gotta love community. You gotta love people. You know, I was talking to somebody yesterday and they were talking about, you know, something that they were doing and how it didn't work out. And I'm like, because you didn't have community. And I said, you know, and it had something to do with the block. I said, well, you just can't talk to homeowners. It was about putting one of those halfway houses for whoever on the block. And I said,

Octavio Blanco (1:00:46)
Yeah.

Claudette M Brady (1:01:09)
Look, you're talking to homeowners, their tenants will be affected by that, right? So you really have to care about your community and you have to be inclusive with everybody in your community because what happens is going to affect everybody. If a school is closing, it's not just affecting people with school-age kids. The long-term ramifications of a school closing in your neighborhood is going to affect your neighborhood.

your entire neighborhood. So we have to start thinking about our brosder a community and we really, really have to, you really gotta love your, you gotta love people. You gotta like people to go knock on people's doors, trust me. Yeah.

Octavio Blanco (1:01:45)
Hahaha!

that's great. And that's really in line with what we're all about. And so

we really appreciate you ⁓ coming to talk to us Before we let you go, give us all of the contact info that people need to know about and let us know about if there are any events our anything coming up so that we can make sure they share it.

Claudette M Brady (1:02:14)
So we contact information is ⁓ www.savharlemnow.org. You can email us at info at saveharlemnow.org. We are going to be doing, we have a couple of programs coming up, but the, I think the closest one will be, we're doing a tour in conjunction with historic district council. We're tentatively scheduled. for October. It's a two part tour. It's called Take the A train.

And it is about two neighborhoods, ⁓ speculatively built neighborhoods that were built for wealthy white individuals that became the two historic black neighborhoods in New York City and how the A train, the extension of the A train connected those two neighborhoods. So part one will be in Bed-Stuy on the

25th of October time. We haven't, as I said, we haven't solidified that. And then part two will be early November. And we're in the process of figuring out the logistics and the date for that one. So we have that one coming up and let me see what else. I have so much stuff rattling around. We have a couple of things, but if you join our mailing list, we'll welcome you and we will, you know, we'll send out an email when these things are happening.

Octavio Blanco (1:03:24)
Hahaha.

Claudette M Brady (1:03:37)
We do have, when you go to our website, we do have a membership program and we invite people to become members. Part of the membership is that you, depending on your membership level, you get free tours and you get discounts and you get a Save Harlem Now button. You got the button right, Octavio?

Octavio Blanco (1:03:51)
I think I did. Actually, I don't think I took,

I don't think I have a button. I need to get a button. I want a button.

Claudette M Brady (1:04:00)
Okay, all right. Okay, you get a safe heart now, but I should have been wearing one, right? ⁓ And other goodies. We get goodies. You know.

Led Black (1:04:00)
So do I, so do I, I want a button as well.

Octavio Blanco (1:04:02)
You

Awesome. Well, thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. We do need to have you

Led Black (1:04:11)
Awesome. Claudette, thank you so much.

Octavio Blanco (1:04:13)
on again.

Led Black (1:04:14)
This was such an amazing conversation. And it's just so funny. Yeah, it was so funny. The world you brought me back to, it's my world as well. The slave theater, all these things. So thank you for being a guest and thank you for the work you do. I really, really appreciate it. Thank you.

Claudette M Brady (1:04:16)
Alright.

Mm-hmm.

Okay, so before

you go, have one for you. Did you ever go to the Linux lounge?

Led Black (1:04:34)
I went to the Lennox Lounge once, because I was a little too young to be going to the Lennox Lounge, you know what mean? But I remember it. I remember existing. I remember passing right in front of it on

You know what I mean? Like, oh wow. So I do know, do, yeah. There's actually a great photographer named Peter Cooper. He took a picture of the Lennox Lounge like right before it went away. You know, so, yeah.

Claudette M Brady (1:04:45)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, so when I was younger, that was our thing. It's like, we couldn't wait to be old enough to go to the Lenox Plounge, and we managed to get in there before, you know, when we were of age. So yeah, that was my Harlem place that I got to go to.

Led Black (1:05:06)
That's hilarious.

Really, was that, you know what's so funny about Harlem though? It's funny because I grew up, you know, in the Heights, right? And then I went to Bronx Science.

Claudette M Brady (1:05:16)
Mm-hmm.

Led Black (1:05:17)
Right. But it was kids from it was kids from Harlem that put me onto so much, you know, like going to the Rucker tournament and the Polo grounds, you know, like Harlem has always been this like this hub of culture and it still is no matter what it still is. And it's just it just attracts everyone. And it's funny because you brought up we didn't get to even talk about the great migration. Right. But I think that's so important. One of my favorite authors and one of my favorite books is One for Other Sons by Isabel Wilkerson, you know, and the great migration

Claudette M Brady (1:05:23)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Led Black (1:05:47)
shaped everything, right? Even the civil rights movement that came afterwards. You know what I mean? Because so many black people left the South that the remaining black people have much more power than they had before. So it's fascinating. can you tell us a little bit about just a little bit about the Great Migration and how it affected Harlem?

Claudette M Brady (1:05:49)
Mm-hmm.

Yep.

Yep.

I think it was that moment in time, this convergence of intellectual and creative power, right? Just coming together. It's almost sort of like biblical, like in the biblical creation, right? Coming together in this space and this time, right? Because here you have folks coming from the South.

Led Black (1:06:22)
Mm-hmm. Right, right.

Claudette M Brady (1:06:31)
We have folks coming from the Caribbean and...

Led Black (1:06:34)
Right.

Claudette M Brady (1:06:36)
And because of who we are as a people, we engage and embrace each other, right? And we exchange ideas. It's that synergy that just happens once every couple of hundred years or something like that. Yeah, yeah.

Led Black (1:06:43)
Right.

Yeah, I agree. Harlem is that special. Yeah, I agree. Because something

special was built here, for sure.

Claudette M Brady (1:07:00)
Yep. And without that, know, people even look at the South and talk about, you know, the civil rights. you know, people talk about like, you know, the boycotts in the South and they forget about, you know, Adam Clayton Powell leading the boycott against Blumstein's and

Octavio Blanco (1:07:01)
Can you guys hear me? Because I cannot hear you.

Led Black (1:07:08)
We can hear you. We can hear you. We can hear you.

Claudette M Brady (1:07:21)
You know, that movement, you know, the silent march in Harlem. So the planning of the march on Washington, so much of the civil rights movement, that engagement started in Harlem. People tend to look at the South specifically because of Jim Crow and forget the impact that Harlem had on those movements, right?

on social justice movements, on the civil rights movement.

Led Black (1:07:50)
Look at Baldwin, right? How important Baldwin was, right? Like, you know, he was the voice of that whole milieu, you know, in certain ways. And it's funny, you also talk about the Caribbean aspect, that's something we didn't even get to talk about, but it's very important, right? Like, Malcolm's mother was from Grenada, you know what I mean? Marcus Garvey's Jamaican, right? You know I mean? Yeah, you know.

Claudette M Brady (1:07:56)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yep.

Yeah, I mean, Marcus Garvey, Jamaican. We can start with, yeah. Then

we have like Conte Cullen, who is, I think he's Caribbean. He might've been ⁓ Jamaican. So, then we have ⁓ Arturo Schomburg Puerto Rican, you know, so yeah, yeah. So, and people, think what happens to because of

Led Black (1:08:19)
Right.

After the Schomburg, that's right. Carlos Cooks. Carlos Cooks was the Dominican Republic too.

Claudette M Brady (1:08:34)
our colonial masters, right? We get separated, right? We get separated and we forget that we are all from one place. know, one of the conversations that I've been having specifically around the African burial ground, the Harlem African burial ground, EDC has defined the the descendent community for the burial ground as

people who are lineal descendants, descendant churches, but also people who are members of the African diaspora whose ancestors were part of the transatlantic slave trade, which is all of us here, right? So, and if you really think about it, right, we all have that

Led Black (1:09:15)
fascinating.

Claudette M Brady (1:09:24)
we all share the same DNA. One of the tactics during enslavement was dehumanization. So for all I know, my great-great-grandmother's sister wound up in the Dominican Republic. We could be right. So if we start to really look at who we are and where we came from and look at the things that bind us,

Led Black (1:09:26)
That's right.

right.

Claudette M Brady (1:09:49)
you know, our drums our congas our, you know, look at those and we will see that we are, even though we've been told for so long, you know, as a Jamaican, I know that that was part of the thing when I got here. Well, you're not like those, those people here, right? You Jamaicans are, yeah, right? So once we start getting that white gaze, that white noise out of our heads, we are able to see how we are together and that as

Led Black (1:09:53)
Yep.

Right, right.

Claudette M Brady (1:10:18)
a people across the diaspora and with our brothers in Africa that we are stronger.

if we fight together and we struggle together. We have been sort of programmed to think that we are minorities in this world. We are not.

Led Black (1:10:38)
That's You're 100 % correct. And Malcolm was the one that first put that in my head, the idea of that the diaspora is one. ⁓ it's interesting how important Garvey was, right? Because there is no Malcolm without Garvey, right? His father was a follower of Garvey, you know what mean? So it's fascinating. And Harlem has always been...

Claudette M Brady (1:10:43)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yep.

Led Black (1:11:02)
the epicenter of that, you know what mean? What was the name of the person that had the black bookstore? Lomax was his last name, I think he was. had the black bookstore on 125th. And it's amazing how important Harlem has been. So thank you so much, Claudette. This has been such a great conversation. I think that we will do this again.

Claudette M Brady (1:11:04)
Yep.

Okay.

Led Black (1:11:20)
That's our legacy.

Claudette M Brady (1:11:20)
Mm-hmm.

Led Black (1:11:22)
And I'm just, this has been such a great conversation and I love the joy you bring to it. You know what I mean? Like you could be not smiling, you know, cause it's heavy work, but you smile, you know what I mean? So your thoughts on that.

Claudette M Brady (1:11:29)
Yeah

Yeah.

You gotta find joy. I think to do certain kind of work you have to love the work you do and you have to love the people you work with, I was at a, I think I was speaking at NYU school and somebody says, do you become a community activist? And I said, well, know,

They're those people who actually go to school to become community activists. But in my community, I think most of us become community activists because we're pissed off about something, right? So I was pissed off about my $100 ticket, right? Martin Luther King and the others were pissed off about the state of America, right? But if you're just pissed off, you can't, you know,

Led Black (1:12:05)
Hahaha

Claudette M Brady (1:12:20)
doing the work effectively is not enough, I think Malcolm loved his people. Martin loved his people. All right? I think people who do this work, you have to love your people our love people in general. You have to have, you have to embrace community in order to do any, any of this work.

Led Black (1:12:24)
Bye.

Right.

And it's funny because ⁓ you could do so much other things. You're brilliant, I could tell. But you do this because of love, right? That's what's...

Claudette M Brady (1:12:43)
So.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

And you know, there, I mean, there, I'm telling you, there are moments I have cried, but you know, at the end of it, you've got to find, you know, the moments of joy, the moments of triumph are all worth it. You know, sometimes just the people you meet, sometimes you've got like, that was a great day. I just met like a whole bunch of really fabulous people, you know? I I went to,

I went to a conference yesterday with the African American Cultural Fund, which is part of the National Trust for Historic Places and the National American Heritage Cultural Heritage Fund. that was Darren Walker from the Ford Foundation, Brent Leggs, Felicia Rashad and others. And, you know, just to be in the room in the company of other people doing this work.

who love community, who are looking to preserve history, who are looking to uncover history, you know, gives you that extra push that you need, gives you that drive, you know, that little pick me up to keep striving to keep going forward, because you also know that you're not alone, right? You know that there's a collective of people who share the same values, who want the same.

results and there's always somebody you can call and say, hey, I need a little advice. need a little, I need, I need, I need, I need a pick me up talk, right? I need, I need somebody to tell me to get up this morning. So, you know, community is what fuels the work.

Led Black (1:14:18)
Hehehehe

Yeah, and it's interesting that you say that, you're like perfectly suited for your role, alright? So it's like it led you to this place to work you were already doing, right? Like there's this synergy, this, you know, I will say God, right? Like that you feel in a way you're being led.

Claudette M Brady (1:14:37)
Mm-hmm.

Led Black (1:14:46)
Do agree with that or you think, what are your thoughts?

Claudette M Brady (1:14:47)
Yeah, I

agree with that. do agree with that. Yeah, because I mean, like most of the work, you know, I did it in Bed-Stuy was, you know, I wasn't it wasn't a job. I wasn't paid and my mother would be like, why are you doing this? Why are you doing this? You know, because I like my, you know, and the thing is, is that, you know, when you have, when you are in a place where you know that

you are also loved right when you're in a place where you know that

There are people who you can count on. When you're in a place where you know that everybody is, you we all have our own different stuff, But where you know that collectively, we're all looking to be better, that's important.

Led Black (1:15:36)
Right.