RADICAL RADICAL BLACK WOMEN OF HARLEM TOUR BLACKWOMEN CREATED BY ASHA FUTTERMAN + MARIAME KABA RADICAL BLACK WOMEN OF HARLEM TOUR CREATED BY Asha Futterman Mariame Kaba MAPPED BY Arrianna Planey DESIGNED BY Neta Bomani 7TH AVE RADICAL BLACK WOMEN OF HARLEM TOUR MAP NICHOLAS AVE FREDERICK DOUGLASS BLVD LENOX AVE REGINA ANDERSON ANDREWS DREAM HAVEN W 135 ST AUDRE LORDE FAMILY HOME E 135 ST HURSTONS NIGGERATI MANOR WHITE ROSE MISSION BILLIE HOLIDAY, HOME AT AGE 15 THE W 3TH STREET BRANCH YWCA AMY ASHWOOD GARVEY LIBERTY HALL AMY ASHWOOD GARVEY RESIDENCE HARLEM HARLEM WORKERS SCHOOL WALKER HOME ELLA BAKER RESIDENCE NEW YORK AMSTERDAM NEWS HARLEM HOSPITAL CLAUDIA JONES HARLEM BRANCH LIBRARY SPEAKERSʼ CORNER ON 135TH STREET HURSTON RESIDENCE LIBERATION BOOKSTORE HARLEM WORKERS SCHOOL LOCATION LINCOLN HOUSES E 139TH ST 7TH AVE LENOX AVE E 130TH ST 5TH AVE 7TH AVE NICHOLAS AVE FREDERICK DOUGLASS BLVD LENOX AVE REGINA ANDERSON ANDREWS DREAM HAVEN W 135 ST AUDRE LORDE FAMILY HOME E 135 ST HURSTONS NIGGERATI MANOR WHITE ROSE MISSION BILLIE HOLIDAY, HOME AT AGE 15 THE W 3TH STREET BRANCH YWCA AMY ASHWOOD GARVEY LIBERTY HALL AMY ASHWOOD GARVEY RESIDENCE HARLEM HARLEM WORKERS SCHOOL WALKER HOME ELLA BAKER RESIDENCE NEW YORK AMSTERDAM NEWS HARLEM HOSPITAL CLAUDIA JONES HARLEM BRANCH LIBRARY SPEAKERSʼ CORNER ON 135TH STREET HURSTON RESIDENCE LIBERATION BOOKSTORE HARLEM WORKERS SCHOOL LOCATION LINCOLN HOUSES E 139TH ST 7TH AVE LENOX AVE E 130TH ST 5TH AVE KEY • TOUR STOP ESRI, HERE, GARMIN, ©OPENSTREETMAP CONTRIBUTORS, AND THE GIS COMMUNITY RADICAL BLACK WOMEN OF HARLEM Tenant’s League focused on how poor housing led to dispropor- tionately high death rates among Black residents and mobilized hundreds of Black women in the Harlem community. From 1933 to 1934, Burroughs ran the Harlem Worker’s School. In 1934, Bur- roughs ran for Lieutenant Gover- nor of New York with communist party organizer Israel Amter. Al- though she and Amter didn’t win, they received more votes than any other communist leader has ever received in a gubernatorial elec- tion. She died in 1945. WILLIANA JONES BURROUGHS 200 WEST 135TH ST 415 LENOX AVE Williana Jones Burroughs (1882- 1945) was a Black Communist leader. She was born in 1882 to a formerly enslaved woman in Petersburg, Virginia and moved to Manhattan when she was five years old. After she graduated from Hunter College, Burroughs started a teaching career that led her into the world of Black Harlem intellectuals and elites, and introduced her to communism. She joined the New York Teachers’ REGINA ANDERSON ANDREWS Union and wrote for the Daily 103-105 WEST 135TH ST Worker and organized within the 580 ST. NICHOLAS AVE Communist Party around the “Negro Regina Anderson Andrews (1901- Question.” In 1928, Burroughs was 1993), born in Chicago in 1901, chosen as one of two Black commu- defied the stereotypical image nist leaders to go to Moscow to of the bookish, spinster li- attend Communist International’s brarian. In addition to being a (Comintern) Sixth Congress. She librarian, Andrews was a radical also worked with Louise Thompson activist, playwright, and enter- Patterson on the campaign for tainer. Regina began working as a defense of the Scottsboro Boys, librarian in the Chicago Public and organized within the Har- Library system making up half lem community with the Harlem of one percent of Black librar- 6 Tenant’s League. The Harlem ians in the U.S. When she moved A WALKING TOUR to New York, she worked at the ing Committee (SNCC); Baker was 135th Street Harlem branch of the both the organization’s mentor New York Public Library system and its fervent supporter. To (NYPL), which was the only branch her, it was “crystal clear that that hired Black librarians. At the current sit-ins and oth- the Harlem Branch, Andrews set er demonstrations are concerned aside workspace for famous Black with something bigger than a writers, like Langston Hughes and hamburger... The Negro and white Claude McKay. Andrews also devel- students, north and South, are oped a theatre in the basement seeking to rid America of the of the Harlem Library Branch and scourge of racial segregation co-founded the Krigwa Players and discrimination – not only at with W.E.B. Du Bois. The Krig- the lunch counters but in every wa Players, later known as the aspect of life.” Baker served as Negro Experimental Theatre, was a director of branches of the NAACP groundbreaking theatre company, and as the first executive di- instrumental to the Little The- rector of the Southern Christian atre Movement in Harlem. Andrews Leadership Conference (SCLC). As went on to to become the first an advisor to SNCC, she helped Black supervising librarian at to organize voter registration the previously all-white, 115th projects and was pivotal in Street branch of the NYPL. forming the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in 1964. Baker believed in democratic, grass- roots activism that stressed the role of many ordinary people, not of individual leaders. She lived this philosophy, inspiring a generation of young people in the civil rights movement to do the same. CLAUDIA JONES ELLA BAKER SPEAKERS’ CORNER ON 135TH STREET 103-105 WEST 135TH ST 452 NICHOLAS AVE Born in Trinidad, Claudia Cumberbatch Jones’s (1915-1965) In 1960, Ella Baker (1903-1986) family immigrated to New York called for a student confer- when she was just nine years ence to organize the spontaneous old. In Harlem, Jones’s family sit-ins spreading throughout the lived in poverty, and her mother South. Those who gathered formed died working an un-unionized the Student Nonviolent Coordinat- factory job when Claudia was 7 RADICAL BLACK WOMEN OF HARLEM just 12 years old. The Scottsboro Boys case drew Jones’s atten- tion to the work of the Communist Party USA. At 18, Jones joined the Young Communist League and quickly rose through the ranks of the Harlem Communist Party to become one of the few Black women leaders in the Party. Jones wrote in the Daily Worker about the struggles of poor Black life. For instance, she wrote a col- umn titled “Half of the World,” which tackled what the communist party called “the woman ques- tion.” Jones’s most cited work is her essay titled “An End to the Neglect of the Problems of Negro Women,” which was published in LORRAINE HANSBERRY Political Affairs in June 1949. SPEAKERS’ CORNER ON 135TH STREET In the essay, Jones suggested an journal. While she did write, that Black women experience tri- Hansberry was mainly a full-time ple discrimination as workers, as activist. She was known for giv- Black people, and as women. Jones ing speeches at speakers corner was sent to prison four times for and was an active organizer and being a member of the communist protester. In 1951, Hansberry party and for her writings. In covered and participated in a December 1955, she was deported gathering billed as a “Sojourn to London. While in London, she for Truth and Justice.” A group founded the West Indian Gazette of 14 Black women leaders issued and started a carnival at Notting “a call to Negro women to convene Hill which millions of British in Washington, D.C. for a So- Caribbeans attend every year to journ for Truth and Justice.” The this day. Jones died at the age manifesto was a response to the of 49 from a heart attack stem- wave of repression that they were ming from her lifelong struggle living under. The conveners were with tuberculosis. She is buried concerned about many issues in- in Highgate Cemetery to the left cluding racial terrorism (lynch- of Karl Marx. ings, police violence, wrongful convictions, etc.) and ending the Korean war, colonialism, South African apartheid, poverty, Lorraine Hansberry was born and more. Later, after marrying and raised on the South Side of Robert B. Nemiroff, who gave her Chicago. She moved to New York space and financial support to in 1950 to study under W.E.B. Du write, Hansberry wrote A Raisin Bois, who said Hansberry was his in the Sun and became the first favorite student. In New York, Black woman to produce a show on Hansberry published a few Broadway. After Raisin, Hansberry 8 poems and wrote for a lesbi- A WALKING TOUR wrote two other plays. Although She supervised white nurses and she was married to Nemiroff for treated Spanish civilians and most of her adult life, Hansber- wounded volunteers of all nation- ry self-identified as a lesbian, alities. When she returned to the wrote about homosexuality, and U.S. in May 1938, she went on a had many women partners in her national speaking tour about her lifetime. She died of cancer at experiences in Spain. She died in 34 years old. Akron, Ohio on May 18, 1990. MADAME C.J. WALKER 108-110 WEST 136TH STREET Madame C.J. Walker (1867-1919) was born Sarah Breedlove in Delta, Louisiana in 1867. She was raised on farms in Delta SALARIA KEE and in Mississippi, was married HARLEM HOSPITAL ON 506 LENOX AVE by age 14, and was widowed at Born in Milledgeville, Georgia 20. Walker went on to become a in July 1917, Salaria Kee (1917- successful hair and cosmetics 1990) grew up to become “the most entrepreneur – and, by the early prominent black woman in the 20th century, the richest self- international campaign to defend made woman in America. Walker saw Republican Spain (p.104, McDuff- her personal wealth not as an ie).” In 1933, Kee led a demon- end in itself but as a means to stration against segregationist help promote and expand economic policies at the Harlem Hospital opportunities for others, espe- with five other Black nurses.