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As early as the seventeenth century, Africans enslaved by Dutch settlers in New Amsterdam created roads leading to what was then known as Nieuw Haarlem. Situated at the northern end of Manhattan, Harlem remained a white rural village for centuries, and became a wealthy, segregated suburb--Manhattan's first--by 1900. As New York City expanded, railroad lines and then subway lines were extended to Harlem, creating a major real estate boom that eventually attracted speculators, who overbuilt in the area. When an abundance of empty apartment buildings resulted, African American realtor Philip Payton formed the Afro-Am Realty Company and was able to convince white owners to lease empty apartment buildings to Blacks. Although the influx of Blacks into Harlem began slowly, the Great Migration soon drew large numbers of southern and Caribbean Blacks. Between 1920 and 1930, 180,000 Blacks resided in Harlem, representing two-thirds of all Black New Yorkers. Harlem resident James Weldon Johnson, a writer, civil rights leader, foreign diplomat, lawyer, and teacher explained, "In the make-up of New York City, Harlem is not merely a Negro colony or community, it is a city within a city, the greatest Negro city in the world." As such, Harlem developed businesses, organizations, and institutions. The NAACP, major churches, and the Amsterdam News were headquartered there. Marcus Garvey's cultural, political, and economic nationalism, represented in his international Universal Negro Improvement Association movement, paved the way for the so-called Harlem Renaissance, a period of cultural flowering that lasted until the Great Depression. It brought to national notice a wide array of African American writers, publishers, musicians, actors, and artists that included Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Alain Locke, Countee Cullen, Charles H. Johnson, Duke Ellington, and Augusta Savage. Harlem remained a vital cultural source and was still considered the "capital of Black America" in this respect during Malcolm X's era. His political legacy deeply informed the Black Arts movement that was born in Harlem in his wake.
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