[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 150 (Tuesday, December 20, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: December 20, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                      A SPECIAL HARLEM HOMECOMING

                                 ______


                         HON. CHARLES B. RANGEL

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, December 20, 1994

  Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I'd like to share with you and my colleagues 
here in the House, a story which appeared in the October 19, 1994 
edition of the New York Daily News. The story is about a homecoming, a 
very special homecoming of friends, neighbors, and acquaintances from 
years past coming together for the annual gathering of residents of the 
Harlem River Houses.
  It was the best of times and gives true meaning to what we term today 
as the good ol' days:

                        Their Harlem Homecoming

                          (By Lenore Skenazy)


          a project's alumni return to celebrate the old nabe

       It could have been a Harvard reunion. The judge from 
     Detroit greeted the cardiologist from California who joshed 
     with the official from the UN who hugged the executive from 
     CBS who called over the deputy commissioner of the NYPD * * *
       Except it wasn't a Harvard reunion. It was a housing 
     project reunion in a church basement on 151st St.: The annual 
     gathering of folks lucky enough to have grown up in the 
     Harlem River Houses--New York's first federally funded 
     housing development.
       ``I don't think you'll find too many communities where 
     folks will come back from the far corners of the nation for a 
     reunion.'' says Don Matthews, a city housing honcho. ``But I 
     grew up here with a bevy of friends. This is truly the 
     personification of community.''
       As it was born to be. In 1936, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia 
     helped break the ground for a great New Deal experiment: A 
     housing complex straddling Seventh Ave. at 152d St. for low-
     income New Yorkers anxious to escape Harlem's tenements.
       The project would be four stories high, sturdy and 
     attractive. The apartments would overlook a courtyard, making 
     it easy to keep an eye on the kids. The application process 
     would be lengthy, affording a superselect tenant base: Only 
     two-parent, stable-income, churchgoing families need apply.
       And 11,000 did.
       For 433 places.
       ``This was an experiment,'' explains Rodney Saunders, now 
     an architect. ``The idea was: If they were going to build 
     more [public housing], this one had to work.''
       It did better than that. It became a lovely place to live.
       ``We were poor, but we didn't know it,'' recalls David 
     Scott, now second in command at the NYPD. ``It just felt so 
     secure!''
       It was secure, thanks, in great part, to the fact that all 
     the adults looked out for all the kids. ``If you were 
     crossing the street and someone saw you, they'd call your 
     parents and say, `What's your son doing crossing the street?' 
     Then some parent or your own parent would come and get you,'' 
     says Don Fitzpatrick, who went on to become Andrew Young's 
     policy affairs officer at the United Nations.
       The shopkeepers--and there were 24 stores in the project 
     back then--did the same thing. Buy a box of cigarets, ``and 
     before you got home they'd have called your parents to let 
     them know you're smoking,'' recalls Peggy Grant Baylor, now a 
     judge in Detroit.
       ``You were given very little room to do wrong,'' sums up 
     George Edwards. ``You really had to work to be a bad egg.'' 
     If, somehow, you succeeded, you did not escape unpunished. 
     The project's one and only security guard would give you a 
     whack. And then your parents would do the same.


                           The best of times

       ``I wish I could've grown up there,'' pines Joe Bourne, a 
     former Harlem Globetrotter, who grew up on 144th St. He used 
     to play ball against the Harlem River Houses kids and, the 
     everyone else in the neighborhood, he considered them rich. 
     ``They had the best housing,'' he says. ``the best 
     everything!''
       They even had some of the best athletes: John Carlos, who 
     won the bronze medal for the 200-meter dash at the 1968 
     Olympics (and raised his hand in a black power fist at the 
     awards ceremony)--he used to race from one end of the 
     courtyard to the other. ``And I'll tell you something,'' 
     confides Saunders, the architect. ``He wasn't even the 
     fastest guy in the project!''
       The Apaches, one of the five local baseball teams thriving 
     at the time, became the first black team to win the citywide 
     Police Athletic League championship. That was back in '49 or 
     '50--no one can remember for certain. But they do remember 
     what happened:
       ``Being from a poor neighborhood,'' says Emmett Baylor (now 
     special assistant to the mayor of Detroit), he and his 
     teammates were very attracted to the jackets worn by their 
     opponents. ``They were big, bulky, wool fleece jackets that 
     the P.A.L. champions always got,'' Baylor recalls. ``We said, 
     `Man, we will win those jackets!''' And they did win.
       But they didn't get the jackets.
       ``They gave us runnerup windbreakers that they stitched 
     `Winner' across,'' says Baylor, shaking his head. ``This was 
     not too long after Jackie Robinson [had broken the baseball 
     color barrier]. The system could not stand a black team 
     winning.''


                         look back in non-anger

       The system could not stand too many blacks doing too well 
     at anything, back then. But strangely enough, despite the 
     rampant discrimination of the era, Harlem River's alums still 
     remember a halcyon childhood.
       ``In the `50s and `60s, no one locked their doors,'' says 
     Saunders. On sunny days, the kids played in ``The Pit,'' a 
     playground in the central courtyard. Rainy days, they'd chase 
     each other through the tunnels connecting all the buildings.
       ``We'd play Wild Bill Hickok or Roy Rogers,'' Saunders 
     recalls. ``It was very clear in those days: Good guys versus 
     bad guys. Nowadays you have a lot of anti-heroes. Kids are 
     really confused about who the good guys are.''
       True, life in the 1990s is not simple. Drugs and violence 
     pollute too many projects. Too few parents peer out the 
     window. But to this day, the Harlem River Houses look good. 
     There's a branch of the public library still operating in one 
     of the buildings. Lots of trees--and little graffiti--grace 
     the project. The Pit still beckons to kids.
       If the early alums no longer live here, it's mostly because 
     they've moved up and on.
       ``This was nice in the beginning,'' says Don Fitzpatrick, 
     pointing to the project. ``It's still nice. But now I have an 
     apartment on Fifth Ave.''
       Thanks to a solid childhood in Harlem.

                          ____________________