Caribbean-Americans Impact on HARLEM

Born Gilberto Calderon in New York in 1931, and originally a conguero, Cuba and his band were part of a pivotal generation of NY-raised Puerto Rican Americans (Nuyoricans) who helped define the city’s Latin music styles following the mambo-era of the 1960s - including the popular boogaloo craze, and then became an elder in the salsa scene during the 1970s and beyond. He was the director of the Museum of La Salsa in Spanish Harlem, which celebrated New York’s Puerto Rican community.

Celia Cruz was a singer and recording artist born and raised in Havana, Cuba. When she lost her life to cancer nearly 16 years ago, Cruz left behind an incomparable legacy. Today, the “Queen of Salsa” (a title she earned after rising to fame in Cuba during the 1950s as a singer of guarachas) lives on in radio stations, television programs and internet memes. Not to mention in the hearts of fans from around the globe who find joy, solace and pride in her music - one of the iconic artists of the 20th century.

The Jamaican-born Wilfred Adolphus Domingo was part of an influential community of West Indian radicals active in Harlem’s New Negro movement in the early 20th century. In the 1930s Domingo became increasingly focused on his homeland and the issue of Jamaican independence. In 1936 he confounded the Jamaica Progressive League in Harlem, which agitated for Jamaican self-rule, universal suffrage, unionization, and the organization of consumer cooperatives.

Amy Jacques was Marcus Garvey’s second wife and his principal lieutenant during his incarceration in an Atlanta penitentiary from 1925 to 1927. She became involved in the Universal Negro Improvement Association the following year, after hearing Garvey speak, and then his personal secretary and traveling companion, as well as the office manager at U.N.I.A. headquarters and secretary of the Negro Factories Corporation, in 1920. She was major propagandist for her husband.

Huiswoud, having edited the magazine The Negro Worker (1928–1937) and traveled the world for the Communist International (Comintern), would later become an active voice for the Caribbean-Dutch community, notably through her close connection with artists from the Harlem Renaissance. Her approach in her respective area of specialization were through the ideals and practices associated with the early years of the Soviet Socialist Republics.

Maymie De Mena’s grandparents were from Martinique. She joined the UNIA in Chicago and in 1924 was sent as a delegate to the annual convention in Harlem. At the convention, she asked the leadership to recognize the Daughters of Ethiopia, an honorary group making contributions to racial improvement, as an official auxiliary of the UNIA. She has been credited with keeping the organization alive after Marcus Garvey’s conviction for mail fraud and deportation from the United States.

Marcus Garvey was a Black leader who organized the first important American Black nationalist movement (1919–26), based in New York City’s Harlem. He taught that Blacks would be respected only when they were economically strong, and he preached an independent Black economy within the framework of white capitalism. To forward these ends, he established the Negro Factories Corporation and the Black Star Line (1919), as well as a chain of restaurants and grocery stores, laundries, a hotel, and a printing press.

John Raymond Jones, also known as the Harlem Fox, was a Harlem politician and the first African American to lead New York City, New York’s Tammany Hall. He became involved in politics in Harlem in the early 1920s, just as it was rapidly becoming the largest African American community in New York City. He taught political skills to Harlemites, including voter registration, political campaigning, and effective petitioning efforts. He ran the most powerful Democratic organization in the nation from 1964 to 1967. At the time, he was the highest ranking African American party official in the country.

Renowned Researcher

Arturo Alfonso Schomburg was a noted historian, bibliophile, academic, and chronicler of the Black experience. He made it his life’s mission to seek out artifacts, historical records, and information about the history of Black people both on the African continent and throughout the African diaspora. Over the years, he collected literature, art, slave narratives, and other materials of African history, which were purchased to become the basis of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, named in his honor.

A key figure of the Harlem Renaissance, Johnson was a man of many talents. Not only was he a distinguished lawyer and diplomat who served as executive secretary at NAACP for a decade, he was also a composer who wrote the lyrics for “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” known as the Black national anthem. He served as the UC consul in Venezuela and Nicaragua. He joined the NAACP, became executive secretary, and fought against segregation and voter disenfranchisement in the South.

Poet

Claude McKay poet best known for his novels and poems, including “If We Must Die,” which contributed to the Harlem Renaissance. In addition to giving a voice to black immigrants, McKay was one of the first African-American poets of the Harlem Renaissance. As such, he influenced later poets, including Langston Hughes. He paved the way for black poets to discuss the conditions and racism that they faced in their poems.

Pioneer Writer

The 1926 collection of short fiction Tropic Death by Eric Derwent Walrond (1898-1966) was one of the most lauded “New Negro”/”Harlem Renaissance” books. Walrond, who was born in Guyana and raised in Barbados and Panama, resided in the US between 1918 and 1929. Most of the fiction he wrote, including all eight (of the total ten) stories from Tropic Death included by Louis J. Paranscandola in his collection of Walrond writings, are set in the Caribbean (including coastal Panama).