Mar 16 2013
Faces in the crowd
While the cultural movement erupting in Harlem distinguished many influential individuals, most African-Americans living there were not artists, writers, musicians, or political thinkers by trade. Most did not even work in Harlem, but rather travelled to all varieties of locations throughout New York daily. Many women were domestic servants, and they did housework for their received wages. Because women were often married and had families, they did not live in with their employers. They travelled from Harlem down to the wealthy and white Upper West Side, or to Midtown. Hours were long, and the job status was low. Women would frequently change jobs, or even begin new work in beauty parlors, in an effort to receive higher wages.
Women displaying the prominent “flapper” fashion of the 1920s. Source: Addison Scurlock Collection, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.
The prospect of work for unskilled labourers drew many men to the city. Although much of the work was far from Harlem, the neighbourhood’s cost of living was appealing. By the 1920s, West Indian immigrants, and migrants from the South worked on the many construction sites throughout New York. Men too would travel great distances from Harlem for a day’s work (for example, it is about 20 miles from Harlem to East Flatbush in Brooklyn, which is a long commute for a New Yorker). Construction laboring was grueling work, and injuries occurred often. The job could support a family, sometimes even with a domestic servant, but injury could easily prevent a labourer from returning to work.
Families were usually composed of multiple wages earners. A mother may have worked as a janitor or housekeeper, the father as a labourer, and the children as workers in some factory, for example. This provided residential stability to many families in the 1920s. However, the commute was virtually inevitable for African-Americans in Harlem, because white folk ran the majority of the local businesses. The resulting work-home dynamic predictably filled the streets, white-driven subways, busses, and elevated trains every morning and every evening, as the sea of black faces ebbed and flowed for Harlem.