When did Harlem become black?

By 1920, central Harlem was predominantly black. By the 1930s, the black population was growing, fuelled by migration from the West Indies and the southern US. As more black people moved in, white residents left; between 1920 and 1930, 118,792 white people left the neighbourhood and 87,417 black people arrived.



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Harlem became an area that held a portion of New York City's population that was relatively well-off. While the area had a wealthy white population, it also held a small black population since a few blacks had stayed from the time of slavery. New blacks moved in with the whites as domestic servants.

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As early as the 1800s, it was home to Native Americans and later African American farmers and German and Irish immigrants. The area was predominantly Italian until after World War II, when a wave of Puerto Ricans arrived, transforming it into El Barrio – Spanish for “neighborhood” – also known as Spanish Harlem.

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