Scarce African American James Weldon Johnson Signed Book Harlem Renaissance

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Seller: memorabilia111 ✉️ (808) 100%, Location: Ann Arbor, Michigan, US, Ships to: US & many other countries, Item: 176277816043 SCARCE AFRICAN AMERICAN JAMES WELDON JOHNSON SIGNED BOOK HARLEM RENAISSANCE. Author: Johnson, James Weldon Title: Saint Peter relates an incident of the resurrection Book Description: 14p., one of 200 copies of the limited first edition, signed and numbered by Johnson, major chips, of one and two inches, on spine lacking slipcase. The author of "Lift Every Voice and Sing" (often called "the Negro National Anthem"), James Weldon Johnson had a long career as a creative writer, black leader, teacher, lawyer, diplomat, and executive secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Through his writing he protested racial injustice, encouraged black achievement, and added immeasurably to the wealth of American literary art. A native of Jacksonville, Florida, Johnson attended Atlanta University through graduate school. In 1901 he became the first African American admitted to the Florida Bar, but he did not re-main in Florida very long. Forming a creative partnership with his younger brother Rosamond, a writer of popular music, he began to write lyrics. They moved to New York and found fame as the ragtime songwriting team of Cole and Johnson Brothers. While in New York, Johnson befriended Charles Anderson, a black Republican leader and confidant of Booker T. Washington. In 1906, through this connection, Johnson was appointed United States consul to Venezuela and subsequently to the same post in Nicaragua. During these six years, he wrote and published The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912). He then wrote the column "Views and Reviews" for the black weekly paper the New York Age, addressing such issues as residential segregation, lynching, and the necessity of racial pride. In 1916, Joel Spingarn, chairman of the NAACP, asked Johnson to serve as a field secretary for the seven-year-old organization. In four years Johnson helped increase the NAACP membership from 9,000 to approximately 90,000. Johnson in turn was appointed head of the NAACP in 1920, and for the next ten years he led the organization in its fight for racial equality. In 1930 he retired and spent the eight remaining years of his life writing and teaching. Waring's unique background, in her posthumous portrait of Johnson, recalls the imagery in Creation, the bestknown and most often recited of the poems in his most famous literary work, God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse (1927).

James Weldon Johnson (June 17, 1871 – June 26, 1938) was an American writer and civil rights activist. He was married to civil rights activist Grace Nail Johnson. Johnson was a leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), where he started working in 1917. In 1920, he was chosen as executive secretary of the organization, effectively the operating officer.[1] He served in that position from 1920 to 1930. Johnson established his reputation as a writer, and was known during the Harlem Renaissance for his poems, novel, and anthologies collecting both poems and spirituals of black culture. He wrote the lyrics for "Lift Every Voice and Sing", which later became known as the Negro National Anthem, the music being written by his younger brother, composer J. Rosamond Johnson. Johnson was appointed under President Theodore Roosevelt as U.S. consul in Venezuela and Nicaragua for most of the period from 1906 to 1913. In 1934, he was the first African American professor to be hired at New York University.[2] Later in life, he was a professor of creative literature and writing at Fisk University, a historically black university. Life Johnson was born in 1871 in Jacksonville, Florida, the son of Helen Louise Dillet, a native of Nassau, Bahamas, and James Johnson. His maternal great-grandmother, Hester Argo, had escaped from Saint-Domingue (today Haiti) during the revolutionary upheaval in 1802, along with her three young children, including James's grandfather Stephen Dillet (1797–1880). Although originally headed to Cuba, their boat was intercepted by privateers and they were taken to Nassau, where they permanently settled. In 1833, Stephen Dillet became the first man of color to win election to the Bahamian legislature.[3][4] James's brother John Rosamond Johnson became a composer. The boys were first educated by their mother, a musician and a public-school teacher, before attending Edwin M. Stanton School. Their mother imparted to them her great love and knowledge of English literature and the European tradition in music.[1] At the age of 16, Johnson enrolled at Atlanta University, a historically black college, from which he graduated in 1894. In addition to his studies for the bachelor's degree, he also completed some graduate coursework.[5] The achievement of his father, a preacher, and the headwaiter at the St. James Hotel, a luxury establishment built when Jacksonville was one of Florida's first winter resort destinations, inspired young James to pursue a professional career. Molded by the classical education for which Atlanta University was known, Johnson regarded his academic training as a trust. He knew he was expected to devote himself to helping black people advance. Johnson was a prominent member of Phi Beta Sigma fraternity.[1] Johnson and his brother Rosamond moved to New York City as young men, joining the Great Migration out of the South in the first half of the 20th century. They collaborated on songwriting and achieved some success on Broadway in the early 1900s. Over the next 40 years, Johnson served in several public capacities, working in education, the diplomatic corps, and civil rights activism. In 1904, he participated in Theodore Roosevelt's successful presidential campaign. After becoming president, Roosevelt appointed Johnson as United States consul at Puerto Cabello, Venezuela, where he served from 1906 to 1908, and then to Nicaragua, where he served from 1909 to 1913. In 1910, Johnson married Grace Nail, whom he had met in New York City several years earlier while he was working as a songwriter. A cultured and well-educated New Yorker, Grace Nail Johnson later collaborated with her husband on a screenwriting project.[6] After their return to New York from Nicaragua, Johnson became increasingly involved in the Harlem Renaissance, a great flourishing of art and writing. He wrote his own poetry and supported work by others, also compiling and publishing anthologies of spirituals and poetry. Owing to his influence and his innovative poetry, Johnson became a leading voice in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s.[7] Civil rights activism He became involved in civil rights activism, especially the campaign to pass the federal Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, as Southern states did not prosecute perpetrators. He was a speaker at the 1919 National Conference on Lynching. Starting as a field secretary for the NAACP in 1917, Johnson rose to become one of the most successful officials in the organization. He traveled to Memphis, Tennessee, for example, to investigate a brutal lynching that was witnessed by thousands.[8] His report on the carnival-like atmosphere surrounding the burning-to-death of Ell Persons was published nationally as a supplement to the July 1917 issue of the NAACP's Crisis magazine,[9] and during his visit there he chartered the Memphis chapter of the NAACP.[10] His 1920 report about "the economic corruption, forced labor, press censorship, racial segregation, and wanton violence introduced to Haiti by the U.S. occupation encouraged numerous African Americans to flood the State Department and the offices of Republican Party officials with letters" calling for an end to the abuses and to remove troops.[11] The United States finally ended its occupation of Haiti in 1934, 16 years after the threat of Germany in the area had been ended by its defeat in the First World War. Appointed in 1920 as the first executive secretary of the NAACP, Johnson helped increase membership and extended the movement's reach by organizing numerous new chapters in the South.[7] During this period, the NAACP was mounting frequent legal challenges to the Southern states' disenfranchisement of African Americans, which had been established at the turn of the century by such legal devices as poll taxes, literacy tests, and white primaries. Johnson lived here in the Logan Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C., while serving as national organizer for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). While attending Atlanta University, Johnson became known as an influential campus speaker. In 1892, he won the Quiz Club Contest in English Composition and Oratory. He founded and edited the Daily American newspaper in 1895. At a time when Southern legislatures were passing laws and constitutions that disenfranchised blacks and Jim Crow laws to impose racial segregation, the newspaper covered both political and racial topics. It was terminated a year later due to financial difficulty. These early endeavors were the start of Johnson's long period of activism. In 1904, he accepted a position as the treasurer of the Colored Republican Club, started by Charles W. Anderson. A year later he was elected as president of the club. He organized political rallies.[12] During 1914, Johnson became editor of the editorial page of the New York Age, an influential African-American weekly newspaper based in New York City. In the early 20th century, it had supported Booker T. Washington's position for racial advancement by industrious work within the racial community, against the arguments of W. E. B. Du Bois for development of a "talented tenth" and political activism to challenge white supremacy. Johnson's writing for the Age displayed the political gift that soon made him famous. In 1916, Johnson started working as a field secretary and organizer for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which had been founded in 1910. In this role, he built and revived local chapters. Opposing race riots in Northern cities and the lynchings frequent in the South during and immediately after the end of World War I, Johnson engaged the NAACP in mass demonstrations. He organized a silent protest parade of more than 10,000 African Americans down New York City's Fifth Avenue on July 28, 1917, to protest the still frequent lynchings of blacks in the South. Social tensions erupted after veterans returned from the First World War, and tried to find work. In 1919, Johnson coined the term "Red Summer" and organized peaceful protests against the white racial violence against blacks that broke out that year in numerous industrial cities of the North and Midwest. There was fierce competition for housing and jobs.[13][14] Johnson traveled to Haiti to investigate conditions on the island, which had been occupied by U.S. Marines since 1915, ostensibly because of political unrest. As a result of this trip, Johnson published a series of articles in The Nation in 1920 in which he described the American occupation as brutal. He offered suggestions for the economic and social development of Haiti. These articles were later collected and reprinted as a book under the title Self-Determining Haiti.[6] In 1920, Johnson was chosen as the first black executive secretary of the NAACP, effectively the operating officer position.[1] He served in this role through 1930. He lobbied for the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill of 1921, which was passed easily by the House, but repeatedly defeated by the white Southern bloc in the Senate. Throughout the 1920s, Johnson supported and promoted the Harlem Renaissance, trying to help young black authors to get published. Shortly before his death in 1938, Johnson supported efforts by Ignatz Waghalter, a Polish-Jewish composer who had escaped the Nazis of Germany, to establish a classical orchestra of African-American musicians. Education and law careers In the summer of 1891, following his freshman year at Atlanta University, Johnson went to a rural district in Georgia to teach the descendants of former slaves. "In all of my experience there has been no period so brief that has meant so much in my education for life as the three months I spent in the backwoods of Georgia," Johnson wrote. "I was thrown for the first time on my own resources and abilities."[1] Johnson graduated from Atlanta University in 1894.[12] After graduation, he returned to Jacksonville, where he taught at Stanton, a school for African-American students (the public schools were segregated) that was the largest of all the schools in the city. In 1906, at the young age of 35, he was promoted to principal. In the segregated system, Johnson was paid less than half of what white colleagues earned. He improved black education by adding the ninth and tenth grades to the school, to extend the years of schooling. He later resigned from this job to pursue other goals.[12] While working as a teacher, Johnson also read the law to prepare for the bar. In 1897, he was the first African American admitted to the Florida Bar Exam since the Reconstruction era ended. He was also the first black in Duval County to seek admission to the state bar. In order to be accepted, Johnson had a two-hour oral examination before three attorneys and a judge. He later recalled that one of the examiners, not wanting to see a black man admitted, left the room.[12] Johnson drew on his law background especially during his years as a civil rights activist and leading the NAACP. In 1930, at the age of 59, Johnson returned to education after his many years leading the NAACP. He accepted the Spence Chair of Creative Literature at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. The university created the position for him in recognition of his achievements as a poet, editor and critic during the Harlem Renaissance. In addition to discussing literature, he lectured on a wide range of issues related to the lives and civil rights of black Americans. He held this position until his death. In 1934, he also was appointed as the first African-American professor at New York University, where he taught several classes in literature and culture.[2] Music Famously performed in the film Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), the song "Under the Bamboo Tree" was written by the Johnson brothers and Bob Cole for the Broadway show Sally in Our Alley (1902) As noted above, in 1901 Johnson had moved to New York City with his brother J. Rosamond Johnson to work in musical theater. They collaborated on such hits as "Tell Me, Dusky Maiden", "Nobody's Looking but the Owl and the Moon," and the spiritual "Dem Bones", for which Johnson wrote the lyrics and his brother the music. Johnson composed a poem which was later set to music to become "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing" to honor renowned educator Booker T. Washington who was visiting Stanton School, when the poem was recited by 500 school children as a tribute to Abraham Lincoln's birthday.[15][16] This song became widely popular and has become known as the "Negro National Anthem," a title that the NAACP adopted and promoted. The song included the following lines: Lift ev'ry voice and sing, 'Til earth and heaven ring, Ring with the harmonies of liberty; Let our rejoicing rise, high as the list'ning skies, Let it resound loud as the rolling sea. Sing a song full of faith that the dark past has taught us, Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us; Facing the rising sun of our new day begun, Let us march on 'til victory is won. [17] "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing" had influenced other artistic works, inspiring art such as Gwendolyn Ann Magee's quilted mosaics.[18] "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing" contrasted with W.E.B. Du Bois's exploration in Souls of Black Folk of the fears of post-emancipation generations of African Americans. After some successes, the brothers worked on Broadway and collaborated with producer and director Bob Cole. Johnson also collaborated on the opera Tolosa with his brother, who wrote the music; it satirized the U.S. annexation of the Pacific islands.[19] Thanks to his success as a Broadway songwriter, Johnson moved in the upper echelons of African-American society in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Aged around 30 at the time of this photo, James W. Johnson had already written "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing" and been admitted to the Florida bar. Diplomacy In 1906, Johnson was appointed by the Roosevelt Administration as consul of Puerto Cabello, Venezuela. In 1909, he transferred to Corinto, Nicaragua.[12] During his stay at Corinto, a rebellion erupted against President Adolfo Diaz. Johnson proved an effective diplomat in such times of strain.[12] His positions also provided time and stimulation to pursue his literary career. He wrote substantial portions of his novel, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, and his poetry collection, Fifty Years, during this period.[20] His poetry was published in major journals such as The Century Magazine and in The Independent.[21] Literary writing Johnson's first success as a writer was the poem "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing" (1899), which his brother Rosamond later set to music; the song became unofficially known as the "Negro National Anthem." During his time in the diplomatic service, Johnson completed what became his best-known book, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, which he published anonymously in 1912. He chose anonymity to avoid any controversy that might endanger his diplomatic career.[22] It was not until 1927 that Johnson acknowledged writing the novel, stressing that it was not a work of autobiography but mostly fictional. In this period, he also published his first poetry collection, Fifty Years and Other Poems (1917). It showed his increasing politicization and adoption of the black vernacular influences that characterize his later work.[23] Johnson returned to New York, where he was involved in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. He had a broad appreciation for black artists, musicians and writers, and worked to heighten awareness in the wider society of their creativity. In 1922, he published a landmark anthology The Book of American Negro Poetry, with a "Preface" that celebrated the power of black expressive culture. He compiled and edited the anthology The Book of American Negro Spirituals, which was published in 1925. He continued to publish his own poetry as well. Johnson's collection God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse (1927) is considered most important. He demonstrated that black folk life could be the material of serious poetry. He also comments on the violence of racism in poems such as "Fragment," which portrays slavery as against both God's love and God's law. Following the flourishing of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s, Johnson reissued his anthology of poetry by black writers, The Book of American Negro Poetry, in 1931, including many new poets. This established the African-American poetic tradition for a much wider audience and also inspired younger poets. In 1930, he published a sociological study, Black Manhattan (1930). His Negro Americans, What Now? (1934) was a book-length address advocating fuller civil rights for African Americans. By this time, tens of thousands of African Americans had left the South for Northern and Midwestern cities in the Great Migration, but the majority still lived in the South. There they were politically disenfranchised and subject to Jim Crow laws and white supremacy. Outside the South, many faced discrimination but had more political rights and chances for education and work. Film At least one of Mr. Johnson's works was credited as leading to a movie. Go Down, Death! was a Harlemwood Studios production, directed by Spencer Williams. In the film credits, it states, "Alfred N. Sack Reverently Presents...." (the film), with hymns playing in the background. The film opens: "Forward: This Story of Love and Simple Faith and Triumph of Good Over Evil was inspired by the Poem "GO DOWN, DEATH!" from the Pen of the Celebrated Negro Author James Weldon Johnson, Now of Sainted Memory." The film featured an all African-American cast, including Myra D. Hemings, Samuel H. James, Eddie L. Houston, Spencer Williams and Amos Droughan, among others. It also included a dancing and band sequence, depicting a fun-looking, middle-class oriented club with drinks and gambling, as its opening backdrop. Death Johnson died in 1938 while vacationing in Wiscasset, Maine, when the car his wife was driving was hit by a train. His funeral in Harlem was attended by more than 2,000 people.[7] Johnson's ashes are interred at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York. Legacy and honors 1904: Honorary master's degree from Atlanta University.[12] 1925: Spingarn Medal from the NAACP for outstanding achievement by an American Negro.[24] 1928: Harmon Gold Award for God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse (1927).[24] 1929: Julius Rosenwald Fund Grant.[24] 1933: W. E. B. Du Bois Prize for Negro Literature.[24] Honorary doctorates from Talladega College (1917) and Howard University (1923).[24] 2007: Emory University in Atlanta established the James Weldon Johnson Institute for Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies in his honor, later renamed the James Weldon Johnson Institute for the Study of Race and Difference.[25] The James Weldon Johnson building at Coppin State University in Baltimore, Maryland, is named in his honor. The James Weldon Johnson Middle School in Jacksonville, Florida, the city of his birth, is named in his honor. The James Weldon Johnson Community Library in St. Petersburg, Florida, is named in his honor and to commemorate his birth in nearby Jacksonville. On February 2, 1988, the United States Postal Service issued a 22-cent postage stamp in his honor.[26] On August 11, 2020, the Jacksonville, Florida City Council renamed Hemming Park to James Weldon Johnson Park.[27] In 2021, the Maine Legislature designated June 17 James Weldon Johnson Annual Observance Day. The bill also created a task force of civil society organizations and Wiscasset residents to "develop methods to educate the public on James Weldon Johnson’s life and legacy in order to continue his work to end systemic racism."[28] Books Poetry Fifty Years and Other Poems (1917) God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse (1927) Saint Peter Relates an Incident: Selected Poems (1935) Anthologies The Book of American Negro Poetry (1922, editor), anthology (Link via HathiTrust) The Book of Negro Spirituals (1925, editor), anthology The Second Book of Negro Spirituals (1926, editor) Other works The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912/1927, novel) Black Manhattan (1930, study) Negro Americans, What Now? (1934, essay) Johnson, James Weldon (1968) [1933]. Along This Way: The Autobiography of James Weldon Johnson (Viking Compass ed.). New York: Viking Press. The author of "Lift Every Voice and Sing" (often called "the Negro National Anthem"), James Weldon Johnson had a long career as a creative writer, black leader, teacher, lawyer, diplomat, and executive secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Through his writing he protested racial injustice, encouraged black achievement, and added immeasurably to the wealth of American literary art. A native of Jacksonville, Florida, Johnson attended Atlanta University through graduate school. In 1901 he became the first African American admitted to the Florida Bar, but he did not re-main in Florida very long. Forming a creative partnership with his younger brother Rosamond, a writer of popular music, he began to write lyrics. They moved to New York and found fame as the ragtime songwriting team of Cole and Johnson Brothers. While in New York, Johnson befriended Charles Anderson, a black Republican leader and confidant of Booker T. Washington. In 1906, through this connection, Johnson was appointed United States consul to Venezuela and subsequently to the same post in Nicaragua. During these six years, he wrote and published The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912). He then wrote the column "Views and Reviews" for the black weekly paper the New York Age, addressing such issues as residential segregation, lynching, and the necessity of racial pride. In 1916, Joel Spingarn, chairman of the NAACP, asked Johnson to serve as a field secretary for the seven-year-old organization. In four years Johnson helped increase the NAACP membership from 9,000 to approximately 90,000. Johnson in turn was appointed head of the NAACP in 1920, and for the next ten years he led the organization in its fight for racial equality. In 1930 he retired and spent the eight remaining years of his life writing and teaching. Waring's unique background, in her posthumous portrait of Johnson, recalls the imagery in Creation, the bestknown and most often recited of the poems in his most famous literary work, God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse (1927). Songwriter, poet, novelist, journalist, critic, autobiographer, lawyer, diplomat, and civil rights activist, James William Johnson, much like his contemporary W. E. B. Du Bois, was an individual whose life spanned several historical and literary periods. Born during the era of Reconstruction on June 17, 1871, in Jacksonville, Florida, Johnson was imbued with a diverse set of talents. The second child and first son of the three children born to James and Helen Louise Dillet Johnson, his given middle name was William, which he changed to Weldon in 1913. Johnson inherited his ancestors' amalgamation of productive energy and service to community, as exhibited by his maternal grandfather's longevity in Bahamian public service, where he was a member of the House of Assembly for thirty years. His father, James, Sr., worked as the headwaiter of the St. James Hotel in Jacksonville, and his mother taught in the Jacksonville public schools for many years. After completing the eighth grade at Jacksonville 's Stanton Grammar School, James W. Johnson entered the preparatory school and later the college division of Atlanta University, from where he was graduated in I 894. In 1895, the same year that Booker T. Washington delivered his Atlanta Compromise speech, Johnson founded the Daily American in Jacksonville, a weekly newspaper committed to reporting on matters relevant to African Americans. Although the paper was extant for only a year, the Daily American addressed racial injustice and stressed a self-help philosophy that echoed Booker T. Washington's ethos. Johnson then became principal of Stanton School, and at the same time studied law; in 1898 he became the first African American to pass the bar exam in Florida. While at Stanton, he and his brother, musician and composer J. Rosamond Johnson, wrote the words and music to "Lift Every Voice and Sing," commemorating the birthdate of Abraham Lincoln. The song was first performed by Stanton schoolchildren in 1900, and would later be adapted by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), subsequently becoming known as the "Negro National Anthem." "Lift Every Voice and Sing" was not the only song on which the Johnson brothers collaborated. Jn 1899, they spent the summer in New York City; there they sold their first popular song, "Louisiana Lize," and began writing and composing in earnest. Jn 1902, James Weldon Johnson resigned his position as principal of Stanton School and the brothers left their hometown to join Bob Cole, a young songwriter they met while in New York. The trio became the successful Broadway songwriting team of Cole and the Johnson Brothers. Over the next few years, Johnson was largely responsible for the lyrics of such hit songs as "Nobody's Lookin' but de Owl and de Moon" (1901), "Under the Bamboo Tree" (1902), and "Congo Love Song" (I 903 ). While in New York, Johnson became involved in politics and sought to further his education. In 1904, he served as treasurer for the Colored Republican Club. Around the same time, he began to study literature at Columbia University, under professor, critic, and novelist Brander Matthews, and he ended his role in the Cole/Johnson musical partnership to pursue a life as a writer. Actively involved in the Harlem Renaissance as an author and as a supporter of young talent, Johnson emboldened writers and other artists to look at and draw upon the life experiences in American Black communities for their artistic ingenuity. Two years later, Theodore Roosevelt appointed him as the United States consul in Puerto Cabello, Venezuela through the influence of Booker T. Washington. Fluent in Spanish and French, Johnson was the first American Black to serve as the United States consul to Venezuela and Nicaragua. Johnson married his wife, Grace Nail, in New York City in 1910, and she joined her husband at his post in Nicaragua. In 1912 revolution broke out in that country, and Johnson 's role in aiding U.S. Marines in This publication is a project of the 2014 Nashville Conference on African American History and Culture. The author compiled the information. The Metropolitan Historical Commission edited and designed the materials. Image courtesy of Fisk University, John Hope and Aurelia E. Franklin Library, Special Collections. defeating the rebels drew high praise from Washington. It was during his tenure in the consul corps that Johnson wrote The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man, published anonymously in 1912. Johnson 's novel grabbed renewed attention when he revealed in 1927 the book as a work of fiction. Because the reading public associated the novel 's hero with Johnson, he deemed it necessary to pen his autobiography Along this Wery, in 1933. Johnson 's political life fused with his creative curiosities and personified his life as an artist and activist. Because he felt there would be little opportunity for an American Black in the newly elected Democratic administration of Woodrow Wilson, Johnson left the Consular Service in 1913. He joined the staff of the NAACP in 1915, and just one year later became the first African American to serve as field secretary and later as executive secretary of the NAACP. He advanced his own ideas on reducing the maltreatment of minorities in America. As executive secretary of the NAACP, Johnson organized the Manhattan Silent March of 1917 to protest lynching. During his tenure with the NAACP, Johnson Jed a national campaign against lynching that garnered significant congressional support in the form of the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill of 1921, a bill that would have made lynching a national crime. However, because of the lack of support in the U. S. Senate, the Anti-Lynching Bill failed. Johnson continued writing throughout the 1920s, editing the first anthology of African American poetry, The Book of American Negro Poetry in 1922, followed by The Book of Negro Spirituals in 1925, a two-volume collection of sacred songs he co-edited with his brother J. Rosamond. The Book of Negro Spirituals also contained an introductory essay in which the Johnsons traced the origins and importance of this earliest of African American art forms. Johnson also adapted Black preaching in verse form, publishing God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse in 1927. Stepping away from poetry and song, Johnson chronicled the history of African American life in New York City in his 1930 book Black Manhattan. After retiring from the NAACP in 1930, Johnson joined the faculty of Fisk University as the Adam K. Spence Professor of Creative Writing. Commenting on his decision to go to Fisk, Johnson said, "I feel that on this favorable ground I shall be able to help effectively in developing additional racial strength and fitness in shaping fresh forces against bigotry and racial wrong." Students often met in the Johnson home for spirited discussions of literature and Blacks role in America. James Weldon Johnson 's life ended on June 28, I 938, at the age of sixty-seven, when he was killed in an automobile accident in Wiscasset, Maine. Fifty years after his death, on February 2, 1988, the U.S. Postal Service released a commemorative stamp honoring the songwriter, poet, novelist, journalist, critic, autobiographer, lawyer, diplomat, and civil rights activist, and educator. The first day of issue ceremonies were held at Fisk University, where Johnson had taught creative literature. In 1991, the Tennessee Historical Commission approved the placement of the James Weldon Johnson Home historical marker on the campus of Fisk University. Fisk University restored the James Weldon Johnson Home in 2004. Linda T. Wynn Sources Used: Don Cusic. James James Welton Johnson was truly a “renaissance man,” a person of broad talents and ability, who lived a life that was defined by his accomplishments. Born in Jacksonville, Florida in 1871, Johnson grew up in a middle-class home. His father worked as a headwaiter in a hotel and his mother was a teacher at Jacksonville’s segregated Stanton School, where he also attended. James grew up in cultured and economically secure surroundings that were unusual among Southern Black families at the time. Under his mother’s guidance he developed a love of reading, poetry, and music. Johnson attended and graduated from Atlanta University in 1894 with a bachelor of arts (BA) degree. He returned to the Stanton School as its Principal and at the same time began studying law. In 1898 he became the first African American lawyer in the state of Florida. Working both as a principal and lawyer, he found time to write poetry and songs. Johnson, collaborated with his brother, John Rosamond Johnson, in setting one of his poems to music. The resulting song, “Lift Every Voice and Sing” is known today as “Black National Anthem.” Explaining how the song took on a life of its own, he wrote: “A group of young men in Jacksonville, Florida, arranged to celebrate Lincoln’s birthday in 1900. My brother, J. Rosamond Johnson, and I decided to write a song to be sung at the exercises. I wrote the words, and he wrote the music. Shortly afterwards my brother and I moved away from Jacksonville to New York, and the song passed out of our minds. But the school children of Jacksonville kept singing it; they went off to other schools and sang it; they became teachers and taught it to other children. Within twenty years it was being sung over the South and in some other parts of the country. Today the song, popularly known as the Negro National Hymn, is quite generally used. The lines of this song repay me in an elation, almost of exquisite anguish, whenever I hear them sung by Negro children.” For more than a hundred years, “Lift Every Voice and Sing” has held a key place in American history. It has been said that “the song is a history lesson, a rallying cry, a pledge of unity, and as people gather to fight for equality and justice, it is an ever-present refrain.” The song includes the following lines: “Lift every voice and sing, Till earth and heaven ring, Ring with the harmonies of Liberty; Let our rejoicing rise High as the list’ning skies, Let it resound loud as the rolling sea. Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us, Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us; Facing the rising sun of our new day begun, Let us march on till victory is won. In 1901, the Johnson brothers moved to New York City to write songs for Broadway musicals and opera. Together they achieved success with the composition of around two hundred songs. During this time, Johnson also studied creative literature formally for three years at Columbia University. While living in New York, Johnson also became involved in politics. His diplomatic career began in 1906, when President Theodore Roosevelt appointed him as the first African American United States consul to Venezuela and in 1909, he was promoted to serve as consul in Nicaragua. In addition to his service as consul Johnson published a work of fiction, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912). Published anonymously in 1912, the novel attracted little attention until it was reissued under Johnson’s own name more than a ten years later. The book tended to draw more comment from a sociological perspective rather than as a work of fiction. Readers believed it to be a true autobiography. Johnson eventually authored his real-life story, Along This Way, to end the confusion. Leaving government service in1916, Johnson was hired by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Rising quickly through the leadership ranks, he became the first African American to serve as field secretary and later as executive secretary. During his time with the NAACP, Johnson succeeded in significantly raising the organization’s visibility and membership, as well as bringing attention to racism, lynching, and segregation. Retiring from his position with the NAACP in 1930, Johnson accepted a creative writing teaching position at Fisk University. In 1934 he accepted an appointment as Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at New York University, thus becoming the NYU’s first African American faculty member. Johnson’s efforts to preserve and win recognition for Black cultural traditions contributed to the spirit of racial pride and self-confidence that marked the efflorescence of Black music, art, and literature in the 1920s known as the Harlem Renaissance. Johnson believed that it was important for Black Americans to produce great literature and art. By doing so, Johnson held that blacks could show their intellectual equality and advance their placement in America. Throughout Johnson’s life, he was able to continue writing. He wrote several notable works before and during the Harlem Renaissance. He brought a high standard of artistry and realism to Black literature in such works as God’s Trombones (1927), The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912), Negro Americans, What Now? (1934), Along This Way: The Autobiography of James Weldon Johnson (1933), and Black Manhattan (1930), His pioneering studies of Black poetry, music, and theater in the 1920s introduced many white Americans to the rich African American creative spirit, hitherto known through the distortions of the minstrel show and dialect poetry. Sadly, Johnson died tragically at the age of 67, in June 1938, after the car he was riding in was struck by a train at an unguarded rail crossing in Wiscasset, Maine. The poet and civil rights leader was widely eulogized and more than 2,000 mourners attended his Harlem funeral. Known throughout his career as a generous and invariably courteous man, Johnson once summed up his personal credo as a Black American in a pamphlet published by the NAACP: “I will not allow one prejudiced person or one million or one hundred million to blight my life. I will not let prejudice or any of its attendant humiliations and injustices bear me down to spiritual defeat. My inner life is mine, and I shall defend and maintain its integrity against all the powers of hell. “ Johnson was buried in Brooklyn’s Greenwood Cemetery dressed in his favorite lounging robe and holding a copy of God’s Trombones in his hand IN the history of New York, the significance of the name Harlem has changed from Dutch to Irish to Jewish to Negro. Of these changes, the last has come most swiftly. Throughout colored America, from Massachusetts to Mississippi, and across the continent to Los Angeles and Seattle, its name, which as late as fifteen years ago had scarcely been heard, now stands for the Negro metropolis. Harlem is indeed the great Mecca for the sightseer, the pleasure-seeker, the curious, the adventurous, the enterprising, the ambitious and the talented of the whole Negro world; for the lure of it has reached down to every island of the Carib Sea and has penetrated even into Africa. In the make-up of New York, Harlem is not merely a Negro colony or community, it is a city within a city, the greatest Negro city in the world. It is not a slum or a fringe, it is located in the heart of Manhattan and occupies one of the most beautiful and healthful sections of the city. It is not a “quarter” of dilapidated tenements, but is made up of new-law apartments* and handsome dwellings, with well-paved and well-lighted streets. It has its own churches, social and civic centers, shops, theaters and other places of amusement. And it contains more Negroes to the square mile than any other spot on earth. A stranger who rides up magnificent Seventh Avenue on a bus or in an automobile must be struck with surprise at the transformation which takes place after he crosses One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street. Beginning there, the population suddenly darkens and he rides through twenty-five solid blocks where the passersby, the shoppers, those sitting in restaurants, coming out of theaters, standing in doorways and looking out of windows are practically all Negroes; and then he emerges where the population as suddenly becomes white again. There is nothing just like it in any other city in the country, for there is no preparation for it; no change in the character of the houses and streets; no change, indeed, in the appearance of the people, except their color. Negro Harlem is practically a development of the past decade, but the story behind it goes back a long way. There have always been colored people in New York. In the middle of the last century they lived in the vicinity of Lispenard, Broome and Spring Streets. When Washington Square and lower Fifth Avenue was the center of aristocratic life, the colored people, whose chief occupation was domestic service in the homes of the rich, lived in a fringe and were scattered in nests to the south, east and west of the square. As late as the ’8o’s the major part of the colored population lived in Sullivan, Thompson, Bleecker, Grove, Minetta Lane and adjacent streets. It is curious to note that some of these nests still persist. In a * National Humanities Center, 2007: nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/. In Alain Locke, ed., The New Negro: An Interpretation (New York: Albert and Charles Boni, 1925), pp. 301-311. [The New Negro included the contents of the March 1925 special issue of Survey Graphic on Harlem, plus additional essays, including this Johnson essay.] Copyright holder and status undetermined; permission pending. Footnotes and images added; complete image credits at nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/maai3/imagecredits.htm. * The Tenement House Act of 1901 (New York City) imposed stricter standards for apartment building construction, including improved light, ventila- tion, and toilet facilities. Such buildings were called “new-law” structures. number of the blocks of Greenwich Village and Little Italy may be found small groups of Negroes who have never lived in any other section of the city. By about 1890 the center of colored population had shifted to the upper Twenties and lower Thirties west of Sixth Avenue. Ten years later another considerable shift northward had been made to West Fifty-third Street. . . . . . . the Negro colony was becoming more stable; the churches were being moved from the lower part of the city; social and civic centers were being formed; and gradually a community was being evolved. Following the outbreak of the war in Europe Negro Harlem received a new and tremendous impetus. Because of the war thousands of aliens in the United States rushed back to their native lands to join the colors and immigration practically ceased. The result was a critical shortage in labor. This shortage was rapidly increased as the United States went more and more largely into the business of furnishing munitions and supplies to the warring countries. To help meet this shortage of common labor Negroes were brought up from the South. The government itself took the first steps, following the practice in vogue in Germany of shifting labor according to the supply and demand in various parts of the country. The example of the government was promptly taken up by the big industrial concerns, which sent hundreds, perhaps thousands, of labor agents into the South who recruited Negroes by wholesale. I was in Jacksonville, Fla., for a while at that time, and I sat one day and watched the stream of migrants passing to take the train. For hours they passed steadily, carrying flimsy suit cases, new and shiny, rusty old ones, bursting at the seams, boxes and bundles and impedimenta of all sorts, including banjos, guitars, birds in cages and what not. Similar scenes were being enacted in cities and towns all over that region. The first wave of the great exodus of Negroes from the South was on. Great numbers of these migrants headed for New York or eventually got there, and naturally the majority went up into Harlem. But the Negro population of Harlem was not swollen by migrants from the South alone; the opportunity for Negro labor exerted its pull upon the Negroes of the West Indies, and those islanders in the course of time poured into Harlem to the number of twenty-five thousand or more. New York Public Library Metropolitan Baptist Church, 1924 Photograph in the March 1925 issue of Survey Graphic entitled “Harlem: Mecca of the New Negro,” precursor of Alain Locke’s anthology The New Negro, in which this article originally appeared These new-comers did not have to look for work; work looked for them, and at wages of which they had never even dreamed. And here is where the unlooked for, the unprecedented, the miraculous happened. According to all preconceived notions, these Negroes suddenly earning large sums of money for the first time in their lives should have had their heads turned; they should have squandered it in the most silly and absurd manners imaginable. Later, after the United States had entered the war and even Negroes in the South were making money fast, many stories in accord with the tradition came out of that section. There was the one about the colored man who went into a general store and on hearing a phonograph for the first time promptly ordered six of them, one for each child in the house. I shall not stop to discuss whether Negroes in the South did that sort of thing or not, but I do know that those who got to New York didn’t. The Negroes of Harlem, for the greater part, worked and saved their money. Nobody knew how much they had saved until congestion made expansion necessary for tenants and ownership profitable for landlords, and they began to buy property. Persons who would never be suspected of having money bought property. The Rev. W. W. Brown, pastor of the Metropolitan Baptist Church, repeatedly made “Buy Property” the text of his sermons. A large part of his congregation carried out the injunction. The church itself set an example by purchasing a magnificent brownstone church building on Seventh Avenue from a white congregation. Buying property became a fever. At the height of this activity, that is, 1920-21, it was not an uncommon thing for a colored washerwoman or cook National Humanities Center 2 to go into a real estate office and lay down from one thousand to five thousand dollars on a house. . . . . . Twenty years ago Negroes were begging for the privilege of renting a flat in Harlem. Fifteen years ago barely a half dozen colored men owned real property in all Manhattan. And down to ten years ago the amount that had been acquired in Harlem was comparatively negligible. Today Negro Harlem is practically owned by Negroes. New York Public Library Looking toward the Lafayette theatre on Seventh Ave. Photograph in Survey Graphic, “Harlem: Mecca of the New Negro,” March 1925 Armistice Day, Lenox Ave., 4 West 134th Street, Harlem, 1919 The question naturally arises, “Are the Negroes going to be able to hold Harlem?” If they have been steadily driven northward for the past hundred years and out of less desirable sections, can they hold this choice bit of Manhattan Island? It is hardly probable that Negroes will hold Harlem indefinitely, but when they are forced out it will not be for the same reasons that forced them out of former quarters in New York City. The situation is entirely different and without precedent. When colored people do leave Harlem, their homes, their churches, their investments and their businesses, it will be because the land has become so valuable they can no longer afford to live on it. But the date of another move northward is very far in the future. What will Harlem be and become in the meantime? Is there danger that the Negro may lose his economic status in New York and be unable to hold his property? Will Harlem become merely a famous ghetto, or will it be a center of intellectual, cultural and economic forces exerting an influence throughout the world, especially upon Negro peoples? Will it become a point of friction between the races in New York? I think there is less danger to the Negroes of New York of losing out economically and industrially than to the Negroes of any large city in the North. In most of the big industrial centers Negroes are engaged in gang labor. They are employed by thousands in the stockyards in Chicago, by thousands in the automobile plants in Detroit; and in those cities they are likely to be the first to be let go, and in thousands, with every business depression. In New York there is hardly such a thing as gang labor among Negroes, except among the longshoremen, and it is in the longshoremen’s unions, above all others, that Negroes stand on an equal footing. Employment among Negroes in New York is highly diversified; in the main they are employed more as individuals than as non-integral parts of a gang. Furthermore, Harlem is gradually becoming more and more a self-supporting community. Negroes there are steadily branching out into new businesses and enterprises in which Negroes are employed. So the danger of great numbers of Negroes being thrown out of work at once, with a resulting economic crisis among them, is less in New York than in most of the large cities of the North to which Southern migrants have come. These facts have an effect which goes beyond the economic and industrial situation. They have a direct bearing on the future character of Harlem and on the question as to whether Harlem will be a point of friction between the races in New York. It is true that Harlem is a Negro community, well defined and stable; anchored to its fixed homes, churches, institutions, business and amusement places; having its own working, business and professional classes. It is experiencing a constant growth of group consciousness and community feeling. Harlem is, therefore, in many respects, typically Negro. It has National Humanities Center 3 many unique characteristics. It has movement, color, gayety, singing, dancing, boisterous laughter and loud talk. One of its outstanding features is brass band parades. Hardly a Sunday passes but that there are several of these parades of which many are gorgeous with regalia and insignia. Almost any excuse will do ⎯ the death of an humble member of the Elks, the laying of a cornerstone, the “turning out” of the order of this or that. In many of these characteristics it is similar to the Italian colony. But withal, Harlem grows more metropolitan and more a part of New York all the while. Why is it then that its tendency is not to become a mere “quarter”? I shall give three reasons that seem to me to be important in their order. First, the language of Harlem is not alien; it is not Italian or Yiddish; it is English. Harlem talks American, reads American, thinks American. Second, Harlem is not physically a “quarter.” It is not a section cut off. It is merely a zone through which four main arteries of the city run. Third, the fact that there is little or no gang labor gives Harlem Negroes the opportunity for individual expansion and individual contacts with the life and spirit of New York. A thousand Negroes from Mississippi put to work as a gang in a Pittsburgh steel mill will for a long time remain a thousand Negroes from Mississippi. Under the conditions that prevail in New York they would all within six months become New Yorkers. The rapidity with which Negroes become good New Yorkers is one of the marvels to observers. These three reasons form a single reason why there is small probability that Harlem will ever be a point of race friction between the races in New York. One of the principal factors in the race riot in Chicago in 1919 was the fact that at that time there were 12,000 Negroes employed in gangs in the stockyards. There was considerable race feeling in Harlem at the time of the hegira [exodus] of white residents due to the “invasion,” but that feeling, of course, is no more. Indeed, a number of the old white residents who didn’t go or could not get away before the housing shortage struck New York are now living peacefully side by side with colored residents. In fact, in some cases white and colored tenants occupy apartments in the same house. Many white merchants still do business in thickest Harlem. On the whole, I know of no place in the country where the feeling between the races is so cordial and at the same time so matter-of-fact and. taken for granted. One of the surest safeguards against an outbreak in New York such as took place in so many Northern cities in the summer of 1919 is the large proportion of Negro police on duty in Harlem. New York Public Library “Negroes share in law enforcement. Negro policemen, Harlem, New York City” Photograph in S. Nearing, Black America, 1929 To my mind, Harlem is more than a Negro community; it is a large scale laboratory experiment in the race problem. The statement has often been made that if Negroes were transported to the North in large numbers the race problem with all of its acuteness and with new aspects would be transferred with them. Well, 175,000 Negroes live closely together in Harlem, in the heart of New York ⎯ 75,000 more than live in any Southern city ⎯ and do so without any race friction. Nor is there any unusual record of crime. I once heard a captain of the 38th Police Precinct (the Harlem precinct) say that on the whole it was the most law-abiding precinct in the city. New York guarantees its Negro citizens the fundamental rights of American citizenship and protects them in the exercise of those rights. In return the Negro loves New York and is proud of it, and contributes in his way to its greatness. He still meets with discriminations, but possessing the basic rights, he knows that these discriminations will be abolished. I believe that the Negro’s advantages and opportunities are greater in Harlem than in any other place in the country, and that Harlem will become the intellectual, the cultural and the financial center for Negroes of the United States, and will exert a vital influence upon all Negro peoples. James Weldon Johnson, 1671-1933, may be regarded both as a precursor and as an elder statesman of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920's. This present study seeks primarily to establish his place as a precursor. The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920's is also referred to as "The Negro Awakening." Transformations of the inner and outer life of the "Negro" in America were gauged and registered in an anthology of contemporary writing by "Negroes" entitled, The New Negro, edited by the redoubtable black scholar, Alain Locke. The book appeared in 1925* when the movement was well on its way, if 1930 is considered as the terminal date. The legacy of The New Negro is so rich because of its remarkable fusion of earlier cultural heritages — notably those of Southern and African origin. But more than that, the book demanded that the "American Mind" do an about-face. It must reckon with a fundamentally changed "Negro." The "New Negro" was a new man who was instrumental in "shaking off the psychology of imitation and inplied inferiority." The "New Negro" was a new citizen who was shedding the "old chrysalis of the Negro problem" — voicing his claim as a rightful adherent of American democracy. And finally, the "New Negro" was a new artist "achieving something like spiritual emancipation." The human creative spirit of the black artist tried to express the black man's evaluation of himself as a man, and succeeded to a reasonable extent. viii I Janes Vfeldon Johnson is usually counted among the Renaissance writers who examined "the mores of Negro life in an honest and daring manner." Hardly* if ever, is it mentioned that he was in his mid-fifties when The New Ne.tro appeared in 1925* That same year he received the Spingam Medal for meritorious service as a "Diplomat, Poet and Public Servant." The wording of this citation indicates that Johnson had reached the high nark of "newness" attributed to the "Negro" as a man, citizen and artist before the official announcement was made to America and the world. The first chapter of this study gives a portrait of James Vfeldon Johnson as a "humanist," a "publicist" and a literary artist with the aim of providing an overview of his life and his myriad accomplishments. Immediately, the man behind the medal appears as one who had the attributes to serve as an architect of culture. The old Atlanta University spirit of race, equality and human rights became his breastplate and shield as he became an educator, a lawyer, an editor, a songwriter and librettist, a politician, a diplomat. But the transcendent vision of service to his race came with an understanding of the needs adamant for conscious black art works. In 1899* while working to dignify the "coon song," he realized that the work of the conscious black artist should rest upon the superstructure of folk art rather than upon the stereotypes invented by Anglo-American creative artists. To his credit* once he had made this discovery, Johnson worked steadily, if not always progressively, toward that goal until he had discovered a "black" medium for literary expression* a basis in realism for black fiction* and a touchstone for the revelation of Soul in black poetry. "The Creation," his first black poem, is a conscious art work using the primary effects of idiom, rhythm and imagery so dominant in the old gospel sermon of antebellum days. On his completion of "The Creation" in 1918, James Weldon Johnson's efforts to found an Afrocentric tradition for Black American Literature was accomplished. INTRODUCTION James Weldon Johnson (1871-1933) has been and still is a neglected figure in Afro-.American literature since his death. Of the early efforts to recognize James Weldon Johnson, several of the most valuable have been used in this study as Eunice B. Potts' article (1940), "James Weldon Johnson: His Legacy to Us" and Carl Van Vechten's article, "The Proposed James Weldon Johnson Memorial" (1940). Johnson is included in Hugh M. Gloster1s Negro Voices in American Fiction (1948). In 1951, George E. Copeland wrote "James Weldon Johnson: A Bibliography" as a Master of Science Thesis for the School of Library Science at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. Robert Bone discusses Johnson at length in The Negro Novel in America (1958). New interest in his poetry became apparent when Vinnette Carroll made an adaptation of God's Trombones. Johnson's poetic masterpiece, 1961, in "Trumpets of The Lord" which played in the Ford Theater in Washington, D. C. and the Brooks Atkinson Theater in New York. Another book giving special attention to Johnson is Stephen Bronze's book, Roots of Negro Racial Consciousness, 1964. Two important articles in the Journal of Negro History. 1967, are Iynn Adelman's, "A Study of James Weldon Johnson," and Herbert Aptheker's, "DuBois on James WBldon Johnson." Diane Moore completed a Master's Thesis at Iowa State University, 1970, entitled "James Weldon Johnson: Black American Poet." The same year, The Negro American Literature Form published the following articles: "Three Negro Classics — An Estimate," by Clarence A. Amann, and "Contemporary Themes in Johnson's Autobiography of Ap Ex-Coloured Man" by Robert E. Fleming. Just recently (Winter, 1971) Phylon devoted most of an issue to articles on Johnson. This contains six articles: "James Weldon Johnson and Atlanta University" by Clarence A. 3acote; "Black Racial Spirit: An Analysis of James Weldon Johnson's Critical Perspective" by Richard A. Carroll; "The Endless Journey of an Ex-Coloured Man" by Eugenia Collier; "James Vfeldon Johnson and Haiti" by Rayford W. Logan; "A Weapon of Ify Song: The Poetry of James Weldon Johnson" by Richard A. Long; and "James Weldon Johnson's Theories and Performance Practice of Afro-American Folksong" by Vfendell Phillips Whalum. The works listed above represent, almost in totality, the serious James Weldon Johnson studies. Many brief accounts of Johnson appear here and there. These are usually based on Johnson's autobiography, Along This Vfcy. Johnson's autobiography begins with his ancestry, moves on to what he observed and learned as he grew up in Jacksonville, Florida, during the Reconstruction Era, and subsequently covers fully all the years of his life until 1933. Along This Way no doubt diminishes the need for a biography, save for an account of the last five years of Johnson's life. In 1933t Johnson could not know whether or not his place would be secure as a Promethean figure in Black American history. Nor could he know that with the exaltation of the Black ethos in the 1960's, he would become godfather to literary artists working to find fa center" and "a radius" in the Black Experience. For despite Johnson's acquaintance with the body of Euro-American literature, he learned to write intimately and xiii authentically about his race — a fact which needs to be stressed as the Black Revolution gains momentum. That Johnson as a man and his career as a race leader and literary artist stand in need of closer analysis is hardly questionable. How to proceed is another question. Two focal points lend clarity to the overall problem of procedure. First, Johnson's literary works have an organic relationship to his life experiences. Second, from the beginning of his conscious literary existence to 1921, when he conceived the idea for the anthology of "Negro" verse, he worked to find his "center," an outlet to black consciousness, a black ruling organization for racial aggrandizement, a black language, a black literature. From the time of research for the anthology of black verse to 1938, he worked to extend the "radius" of "Negro" influence in life and letters, knowing that he worked at last from the "center". The reality of the Black Experience and its attendant spirit Soul, motivated his efforts after 1918. The present work, "James Weldon Johnson: In Quest of an Afrocentric Tradition for Black American Literature," gives vital facts about the author's life in a chronological framework before discussing his writings. It then proceeds to an examination of Johnson's search for an Afrocentric tradition. A renewed awareness of the race problem came when Johnson found himself victim of race prejudice and party politics in 1913. The Democratic majority in the Senate refused to confirm his nomination as Consul to the Azores because of his allegiance to the Republican Party. He resigned from the Consular Service, September 1913. For a short time he suffered economic reprisals which renewed his memory of the disadvantages xiv experienced by black folk that he met in Hampton, Georgia, 1891. The "spiritual" experience which led him to the "center" needed for black poetry came with the aid of the "Black Holy Ghost" evoked by a gospel preacher in Kansas City. Once he had come in contact with the deepest revelations of the black ancestral spirit, Johnson composed "The Creation" (1918^ his first true black poem. From 1921 (after the idea was formulated for the anthology of black American poetry) to 1938, the year of his death, he extended the province of black literature by using the Afrocentric tradition which he had discovered in his original literary works. When he selected works for the anthologies featuring other creative artists of the race, he used blackness as the norm for inclusion. One other problem looms up in any serious study of Johnson's life and works. Frequently, Johnson, the Renaissance figure, is treated as if he sprang into intellectual maturity in a manner no less mysterious than that of Athena who sprang full grown from the head of Zeus bearing an aegis. A closer examination of his intellectual life reveals that he followed a highway already walked more than lightly, by Alexander Crummell and W. £. B. OuBois, two black intellectuals of the nineteenth century, who like himself, owned a heritage of freedom. Crummell influenced DuBois, and DuBois influenced Johnson. DuBois makes his acknowledgment of the influence in The Souls of Black Folk. Johnson acknowleges the influence of DuBois in Along This1Way. Johnson followed at first, an intellectual tradition fostered by Europe and America. Crummell and DuBois injected features as skilled thinkers which were distinctly Afro-American. The first chapter in the present study seeks to clarify Johnson's status as a Renaissance man, though the main purpose of the chapter is to give a portrait of him as a "humanist," "publicist," and a literary artist. Following a broad view of Johnson's adult activities, the factors in his childhood and early youth up to 188?- which helped to ground his opinions are discussed in Chapter II. The span of years covered in Chapter II are 1802 to 1887. Johnson was able to recall his trip to Nassau in 1875. Thus, 1875-1887 is designated as the first formative period. He went to Atlanta University as a prep student the fall of 1887, and remained there (missing one year) until the spring of 1894. He formulated his basic ideas about race at the University and in the backwoods of Hampton, Georgia. This period is designated as the second formative period, and is the matter of Chapter III. In the years to follow, from 1894 to the end of his life, Johnson resolved to lift his race in one way or the other. Chapter IV depicts him as a young enthusiast in Jacksonville, Florida, working as an educator, a lawyer and a newspaper editor, 1894 to 1899* without being able to foster the Atlanta University ideals of equality and justice. Following the path to a wider world of experience, already taken by his brother Rosamond, Johnson tried a new career as songwriter and librettist. Chapter V is a discussion of the unusual situations he (Johnson) encountered in a world of wider experience from 1900 to 1905* Fame and success in New York did not bring complete satisfaction to Johnson's mind. Fame and fortune had taken him far away from his resolve to "serve" the race, yet displaying his talent as an artist was a grandstand act on behalf of his race. This image was a refutation of the stereotype, Uncle Tom. Once the idea entered his mind,in 1899* that there had to be some connection between folk art and conscious art, Johnson never rested until he discovered a way for the meeting of the two. Chapter VI tells why he abandoned dialect as "the language" for black poetry and how he sought to xvi gain poetic orientation through the "genteel” romanticist Dunbar, and the "robust" realist, Vfelt Whitman. Chapter VII is an account of Johnson's performance as a novelist. It begins with the tentative plans made for The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Kan in 1905, while he studied literature at Columbia University, though the novel was not published until 1912. In addition, the novel is analyzed in a manner to support the thesis that the real matter of black life is the proper source for black fiction. Published while Johnson was serving as American Consul in Nicaragua, it is not the only work he produced while he worked as a governmental official. He wrote a considerable number of his best known lyric3 from 1906 to 1913. In Chapter VIII, these poems are measured by a scale of values for black literature devised by George 3. Kent. Several of the poems suggest that on the conscious level, he was performing his duties as an American; but on the subconscious level, he v/as still in touch xvith the race problem. Chapter IX tells about Johnson's difficulties a3 a marginal man after resigning from the American Consulate, 1913. He directed all of his time and his talents from that day forward to building a black cultural nation. The years 1914 to 1920 cover his activities as editor for the New York Age, the oldest black paper in New York, and his first years of service as an NAACP official. The success of his poetry, deepening in black values, can be attributed to his chance to live the Atlanta ideals of service to the black populace. Chapter X relates how Johnson experienced the deepest revelation of Soul while listening to an old-fashioned gospel sermon. This is the end of his quest for a means for Afro-American poetry. "The Creation" employs xvii the language of the dominant culture but is flavored with black idiomatic expressions. He captured the "spirit" of the sermon which was recapitulated with serious intent in verse. But above all, he had made his journey to the "bush," the home base of the Collective Spirit. By the time the Renaissance was acknowledged as a movement in 1925* Johnson had published The Book of American Negro Poetry (1922) which contained works that were specifically black. He introduced the idea that the presence of a "centrifugal force" in black verse generated a power not found in Anglo-American poetry. Johnson's discovery of an Afrocentric tradition for Black American literature embraces three areas: The use of a "dialect" to accommodate the richness and the musical quality of black expression, the use of The Black Experience for black fiction, and the use of Soul in black poetry. Johnson's employment of the primal qualities of his family the larger family of race, as the basis for arb— finds agreement in pronouncements by the Afro-Americans Crummell and DuBois, his intellectual models. Crummell believes that primal qualities of a family, a clan, a nation or a race, are heritable qualities, "congential things." He believed also Lhat they remain notwithstanding "the conditions and the changes of rudeness, slavery, civilization and enlightenment." He says that "the attempt to eliminate them will only serve to make a people factitious and unmanly. It is a law of moral elevation that you must allow the constant abidance of the essential elements of a people's character." DuBois, in accord with Crummell, expresses the feeling that if the black man ever attains his place in the world, he will do it by being himself and not another. A new African poet, Abioseh Meal, admonishes black men to "Go for the bush," for "inside the bush / you will find your hidden heart, / your xviii nute ancestral spirit." Johnson, an American, could not go dancing on his way to the "bush" as the young African poet suggests. The difference between the African’s task of finding his roots and the Afro-American's is vastly different. The African writer is on native soil. His roots are right at hand. He is not an outside observer. His tribal marks are still on his very skin, as Langston Hughes noted. On the other hand, the Harlem Renaissance writers had to search for their roots. Johnson's pioneering efforts made it somewhat easier for the young writers to develop an interest in their folk roots and their African heritage. Since this discussion is designed to establish Johnson as a precursor of the Harlen Renaissance rather than a participant in the movement, only poems dated from 1899 to 1913; the volume Fifty Years. 1917; The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Nan. 1913# his only novel; and selected articles from the New York Age will be examined. Other works in the Johnson canon will be used as source material. The single poems given special attention in the study are: "Sence You Want Away," 1899; "0 Black and Unknown Bards," 1899; "Tunk," 1905; "0 Southland," 1907; "0 Black and Unknown Bards," 1908; "Ibther Night," 1913; "The Awakening," 1913; "The White WLtch," 1915; "Brothers," 1916; and "The Creation," 1913. "The Creation" employs the idiom of emotion in which African civilization is reborn and respected. Alain Locke says that after "The Creation," race poetry did not mean dialect (the conventional type) any longer. What he means is that Johnson's use of the authentic mold of the gospel sermon as an art ‘^jsveans of giving out presupposes that each black poet will be as truthful in depicting the level of Black Experience common to him, using the proper idiom of the emotions, as the preacher did for each occasion. Accepting this truth, the black writer will speak for his folk; he will speak to his provincial audience and to the world. The upsurge of ancestral pride today in Africa, the West Indies, the United States of America, or wherever black nen are found, lends validity to Johnson's quest for an Afrocentric tradition in Black American literature. Leopold Sedar Senghor, the poet-president of Senegal, published an article in a current issue of Black War Id. "In Defense of Negritude," praising Johnson and others for perpetuating the idea of black values which influenced him as a young student of Western Culture: The European experts, artists and writers . . . taught us to have a better knowledge, not of African life in its living flavor, but in its irreplaceable values of civilization. The role of the Afro-Americans was different. They taught us not exactly to rebel morally but rather to organize ourselves socially if not politically, and above all to create.^- He continues by noting the special influence of the poets: The poets of the Negro Renaissance who influenced us most were Langston Hughes and Claude McKay, Jean Toomer and Jair.es Weldon Johnson, Sterling Brown and Franck Marshall Davis. They revealed the movement to us while on the move: The possibility in creating first some works of art, of having the African civilization reborn and respected.2 Thus, the work of the Harlem Renaissance writers helped the men of Africa to renew their pride of race. Their pride extends to a deep appreciation of folk life which years of colonalism could not erase. Johnson's interest in Africa was nourished through his childhood years by visiting Nassau with his family and by witnessing the practices of "Little Africa" in his own community in Jacksonville, and later by ^Leopold Sedar Senghor, "The Problematics of Negritude," Black World. 20, No. 10 (1971), 13-14. 2jbig., 13. XX visiting Haiti, the home of his first known ancestor. As an adult, his interest in Africa continued and found utterance when he became editor of the New York Age, in 1914* Before he joined the staff, Africa had become leading news. For example, May, 23, 1914, a special page reprinted from Hearst's Atlanta Georgian was entitled: "Why Africans are not Barbarians." High praise is alloted Leo Frobenius, the famous German explorer and archaeologist, who used his scholarship and science to state the truth of human history which exonerated the black man. The editor concludes his article with a note which served as a stimulant to the interest in Africa manifested not only by Johnson when he became editor of the Age, but other famous Blacks as W. E. B. DuBois, the sociologist; Alain Locke, the philosopher; Carter G. Woodson, the historian; and Arthur A. Schomburg, the curator. The editor found that a high degree of civilization and high artistic ability existed in Africa of the past. On Saturday, August, 13, 1913, Johnson wrote in his column in the Age. "Views and Reviews," an article entitled, "More Exploded Fallacies." The "more" indicates that he had been keeping up with previous "exploded fallacies." On February 18, 1919* Johnson published another article related to World War I and the black man entitled "Internationalization." In this article he manifests interest in the question as to whether or not the question of the Afro-American would be allowed to rise at the peace table because the powers would be only too glad to regard it as a domestic question. The black vanguard reached the conclusion that the wisest step that could be taken by the colored people of the world would be to put the African question up to the peace conference so strongly that it would compel a consideration of the rights of black people everywhere. An Africa for Africans, Johnson concluded, would make a great xxt change for the better in the statue of black men everywhere. AfroAmericans would win the right to fight at home for the things in the name of which the war was waged. The belief that the black intellectual in the United States had a future of unlimited opportunity based on the findings of his lost civilization, is now being realized. Even though Johnson did not visit the continent of Africa, his interest in his past heritage persisted, as is manifested by his article on Ethiopia and other discourses on Africa. His Are article "The Finding of a Lost Civilization," December 10, 1921, explicitly states his reason for searching into the past. He writes: One of the greatest handicaps that the Negro has had to contend with in his struggle for achievement and recognition has been the denial that he has ever had any cultural background. The generally accepted idea is that through all the centuries and ages as far back as the human mind can penetrate, Negro peoples have never been more than howling savages. This idea is held out not only by many people who, at least, suppose they are educated. He continues with a statement on the value of historical evidence: One of the most valuable assets that any race or people can have is cultural background. Indeed, cultural background bears about the same relation to a people that past performances bear to a race horse. They both compel recognition for what may be accomplished on the ground of what has already been accomplished. By 1921, James Weldon Johnson had tested the validity of Carter G. Woodson'3 premise that "not to know what one’s race has done in former times is to continue always as a child. 'If no use was made of the labor of the past ages • . • the world would remain always in the infancy of knowledge.1,1 Other works on Africa by Johnson include "Africa in the World Democracy:" An Address before the Annual Meeting of the NAACP, January 6, 1919, at Carnegie Hall, New York, New York; and Native African Races and xxii Culture, a pamphlet published in Charlottesville, Virginia in 1927. Other works on the complex phase of traditions in Black American Literature are suggested for further reading: "The First American Negro Literary Movement," Charles H. Good; "Introduction," Creole Voices: Poems in French by Free Men of Color, edited by Edward M. Coleman; "Preface," The Poetry of Woe Negro. 17L6-19L9. edited by Langston Hughes and Ama Bontemps; "Introduction," Anger and Beyond, edited by Herbert Hill; and "The Traditions of Negro Literature in the United States" by Joyce Nower. Finally, the writer*s interest in James Weldon Johnson as a suitable choice for a doctoral dissertation stems from a felt need to draw added attention to his life and works which have not been analyzed on a scale commensurate with his magnetic personality nor his myriad accomplishments as a modem American, bar race. Yet, in the final analysis, it is the author's contribution of an iota to the current Black Revolution. This Revolution in kind was defined long ago by Alexander Crummell in his address, "The Need of New Ideas and New Aims," delivered at Storer College, Harper's Ferry, West Virginia, May 30, 1885. He spoke these words among the hills, "breezy" with the memories and the purposes of John Brown: "The Revolution I speak of is one which finds its primal elements in qualities, latent though they be, which reside in the people who need this revolution and which can be drawn out of them, and thus secure form and reality CHAPTER I THREE STEPS TO THE RIGHT: A PORTRAIT OF JANES WELDON JOHNSON James Weldon Johnson was bo m in Jacksonville, Florida, June 17, 1871, end educated in the schools of that city, Atlanta University, and Columbia University. He was a brilliant student whose parents had given him a basic foundation In the arts before he even started to school. On completing his undergraduate training at Atlanta University the spring of 1894, he refused a scholarship offered by Harvard University to study medicine in order to serve as a gramnar school principal in his hometown. As he worked to develop Stanton Grannar School into a high school, he studied law and was admitted to the Florida bar, and founded a newspaper, The Daily American. In 1899, he published his first poem, "Sence You Mint Away" and continued to write, no matter what else he was involved in, until the end of his life. Recognition on a wide scale came with his song-poem, "Lift Every Voice and Sing,” set to music by his brother Rosamond. From 1901 to 1905, he worked in collaboration with Bob Cole and his brother writing songs and musical plays in New York. From 1906 to 1913* he served as United States Consul, in Venezuela and Nicaragua. He took leave, 1910, to many Grace Nail. In 1914, he became editor of The New York Age. Two years later, he became Field Secretary for the National Association for the Advancemmt of Colored People, and in 1920, the Executive Secretary. He resigned after serving in that capacity for ten years, to become Professor of Creative Literature at Fisk University in 2 Nashville, Tennessee. New Tork University extended the seme honor to him in 193A. He held the two positions simultaneously until his accidental death on June 26, 1933. The accident occurred on a grade crossing on lullscasset Bridge in WLseasset, Maine. A blinding rainstorm obscured Mrs. Grace Nail Johnson's vision as the Maine Central train struck; Johnson was asleep. They were on their way to Great Barrington, Massachusetts, their sunmer place, from Point Pleasant, Maine. They had been visiting Dean £• George Payne of New Tork University. The University had just appointed Johnson as Extension Professor for Black literature.^ A capsule report can only begin to shed light on Johnson's life and works. Nevertheless, it does suggest a complexity that demands care in treating him as a man of many talents, numerous occupations, and myriad accomplishments • The task of picturing Johnson in clear relief as a knowing participant in Western Culture, then Afro-American Culture, offers other difficulties because he participated in one and both at the same time before he knew how to distinguish one from the other. The idea of the "right way" in the title of this chapter stems from a laudatory statement made by Floyd J. Calvin in his article "Native Genius." He writes: "It is certainly a tribute to the native genius of the Negro and to the American growth toward a higher and better life that a Booker T. Washington and a James Weldon Johnson could arise in the same 2 fitful era." Calvin makes no effort to draw a line of distinction between the type of "native genius" possessed by the two men. Neither does lnJames Weldon Johnson Dead;*? The New Tork Age. 2 July 1933, p. 1, Col. 1; Kelly Miller, "James Wsldon Johnson the Negro Poet laureate," The New Toxic Age. 9 July 1938, p. 4* 2Floyd J. Calvin, "'Native Genius' of The Negro," The New Tork Age. 9 July 1938, p. 4. he make a distinction between the background experiences that shaped these two men in Post Civil Vfcr America. Washington (1856-1915) m s b o m in slavery, reared in poverty and educated through hard work. Sponsored by the right people after his start, he founded Tuskeegee, which emphasised practical, vocational education for Afro-Americans. "Aside from the fact that Washington's leadership was conciliatory," writes Frasier, "the essential fact to be noted is that Washington was the spokesman for a mass of inarticulate, illiterate folk."^ Washington encouraged the spirit of individual initiative associated with American character. He is a prototype of the Horatio Alger - Abraham Lincoln, courageous, self-made man — a man who found honor in the American heroic tradition. Gene Buck, president of the American Society of Composers , authors and publishers, the only speaker at Johnson's funeral, was more discriminate in his comparison of Washington and Johnson. He said that Or. Johnson was one of the greatest men of our times and that his achievemsnts outranked those of the late Dr. Booker T. Washington. Johnson, he said, did not build material things, but he quickened the spirits of men everywhere.^ Washington's opposer, W. £• B. OuBois (1868-1963) was working in the background to set the loftiest ideals that man could achieve for the Afro-American. He sought as an end culture and character as it is understood in the humanistic tradition of Western Culture. This type of -*E. Franklin Frasier, The Negro in the United States. 2nd ed., rev. (New York: The Macmillan Co., 19637* PP« 547-548. ^"Editorial," The New Tork A lt# 9 July 1938, p. 4. 4 education was at that tine the privilege of white men and the danger and delusion of black.^ OuBois' position, represented as the left wing, because of its opposition to Washington, represents the right way for Janes Weldon Johnson. He was b o m a privileged character in a family gifted with the heritage of freedom as Alexander Crumnell and OuBois. On viewing the activities of these men of free heritage in 1895* the year of B. T. Washington's rise to fame after his speech at the Atlanta Exposition, we find each of them engaged in tasks of uplift that demanded "brains". Alexander Crummell was preaching, writing and lecturing with the aim of establishing the Negro American Academy to gather the forces of the Black intelligentsia in America. OuBois was on the eve of receiving his Ph. 0. at Harvard University. Johnson was experiencing his first jpy of succeeding as an educator of youth, and of fulfilling a boyhood dream of founding and editing his own newspaper. All were veering to the left from Washington, but blazing a never-ending trail for the black men who could walk the path of discipline and high endeavor to Athens. Following in the steps of Alexander Crummell and tf. E. B. OuBois, James Weldon Johnson helped the Afro-American to readdress himself to the homeland on a cultural plane. Through his exemplary efforts as a "humanist," a "publicist," and a literary artist, Johnson brought dignity and pride to Black America and proof to America that the so-called "Negro" was a creator as well as a creature. Recently, overwhelming tributes have been paid to Johnson as a renaissance figure. Almost always the tribute is connected with the part 5w. E. B. DuBois, "Of the Training of Black Hen" in The of Black Folk (1903} 1953} rpt. Fawcett Publications, Inc., Premier Amerioana, 1961), p. 78. 5 he played In establishing and participating in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920's. Stephen Bronze says, in his discussion of Johnson's contributions to racial progress, that he did as ouch as anyone to bring about the Harlem Renaissance.^ This statement implies that Johnson had apprised himself of the values prominent during the 11 Awakening" before it was formally acknowledged in 1925. In March of that year, Or. Alain Locke, then Professor of Philosophy at Howard University, and "The Dean of the group of fledging writers" of the Renaissance, edited the Harlem 7 number of the Survey Graphic. The materials gathered for the magazine became the nucleus for the New Negro which presented the reborn AfroAmerican in a national and even international scope. The book registered the transformations of the inner and outer life of the Black American that had taken place in the years following lforld War I. One of the purposes of this discussion is to show that by 1918, the year Johnson wrote "The Creation," the first poem in his God's Trombones, his poetic masterpiece, he had become a prominent Afro-American in a national and even international scope. For a moment, it is important to examine another statement made as a tribute to Johnson as a renaissance figure. The statement reads: "Johnson was as close to a Renaissance man as the conditions of American society would permit a Negro to be."® No mention is made of the "Negro" ^Stephen Bronze, Roots of Racial Consciousness (New Tork: Libra Publishers, Inc.), p. 10. 7Robert Hayden, "Preface to the Atheneum Edition*" in Alain Locke, ed. The New Negro (1925; New Tork: Atheneum, 1970), xL-xli. All subsequent references will come from this text. ®James A. Bnanuel and Theodore L. Gross,edi*. Dark Symphony (New Tork: The Free Press, a Division of Macmillan Co., 1968), p. 69* 6 Renaissance, intimating, therefore, that the archetype of the "Renaissance man" was drawn before Johnson*s time. The individual has always resisted confinement — thralldom, the Promethean crag. A lone Socrates saw the men of Athens, a city of light, vote for darkness. A lone Galilean saw men of piety free Barabbas — each experiencing his separate doom to attest to the nobility of man, himself, with, but also apart from other considerations. The liberation of the mind and spirit, known to the Greeks, then the Romans of classical antiquity, gained the sanction of modem man through the efforts of Italian scholars. In fourteenth century Italy, a tradition of humanism was fathered by intellectuals who worked for the liberation of the individual anew. The inevitable victory belongs to such men as Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio. They placed a premium on human wisdom rather than divine wisdom. During the medieval period, man was conscious of himself only as a member of a race, people, party or corporation only through some general category. This veil melted into air and man became an individual. The impulse to the highest individual development was combined with a powerful and varied nature in the couplete men of Renaissance in Italy. The complete man mastered all of the culture of his age, aspiring likewise to be a "all-sided man" — 9 1 >1101110 universale. This concept was familiar to Afro-Americans who became scholars of the humanities. Alexander Crummell (1319-1908), an erudite Episcopal minister who received a Bachelor of Arts degree 9Jacob Burckhardt, Renaissance in Italy, trans., S.G.C. Middlemore (New York: Albert and Charles Bone, 1935)* pp. 143-147. 7 from Cambridge, 1853,^° believed in the efficacy of the complete man. In an address delivered to the Garnett Iyceum, of Lincoln University, entitled "Right-Mindedness," he declared: "We should seek the training and education of our whole nature. That is not a true real system of education which is one-sided. I would, therefore, urge upon you that that mental training is defective which leaves entirely neglected certain distinct provinces of the intellect."^- A familiar example of the "all-sided man" comes to view in the portrait of a well-known Englishman. Henry VIII was an English version of the many-sided Renaissance aristocrat. He was a scholar and lover of music; he was on terms with the best minds of his day. He was educated by poets like John Skelton and by the best musicians and linguists in England. Besides, he could ride, hunt, fence and play the sportsmanThe perfection of manners of dress, of daily habits,were also a part of "Renaissance Form." Regardless of his erudition, his new individualism, his life shows that the Renaissance man in the throes of the Great Revival of Learning and Art in Vfestem Europe was in essence a "spiritual" individual. The distinction is necessary even in reference to the Greeks, who were "spiritual" as distinguished from the barbarian. Henry broke with the Church of Rome but the idea of a moral universe still existed for him as it did for Americans and Black Americans who wrangled with authority in the 10Frazier, p. 498. ^Alex Crummell, "Right Mindedness," in Africa and America (1891; Miami, Florida: Mnemosyne Publishing Inc. 1969), p. 368. Other addresses from this book will be entered by the title and page number. 12Bernard Grebanier et. al«, eds., English Literature and Its Bsekgmimde rev. ed. I (New York: The Dryden Press, 1949), p. 259. 8 nineteenth and early twentieth century. Significantly the idea of individual worth during the Renaissance period in Italy, found sanction apart from its existence only in those of a blooded aristocracy. For the courtier, a certain rank of nobility was required, but this belief never was held to imply that the personal worth of one who was not of noble blood was in any degree lessened thereby. The aristocracy of intellect, revered in ancient Greece, was cherished anew in the early modern period of Western Culture and borne even upon the black intellectuals who received a liberal education. When we say that Johnson is a "humanist" with a difference, it is meant first of all that he is an heir to Renaissance thought as a scholar of the classics. The idea of the liberated individual, meant to apply mostly to Caucasians in the Western World, was one of the determining forces in his development. Fortunately, he did not know about the law of exclusion. He did not know that the concept existed until he began his college preparatory studies at Atlanta University in the fall of 1887* He was not sure that such a concept held sway in the South until he taught school in the backwoods of Georgia, 1891. He was not sure that it held sway in the North until Blacks were denied choice seats in New York theaters to watch fellow blacks perform. He was still not sure that it held sway in America until he had to deal with rancid insults to his dignity in Salt lake City in 1905* Like Alexander Crummell and W. E. B. DuBois, black intellectuals and race pioneers, he enjoyed for the most part the privilege of being a human being, a citisen of America and the world, before he was forced to assume the role of a "human Negro." ^Burckhardt, p. 360. Just proving that they were "human" during the nineteenth century was a gigantic task when "scientific" studies were being conducted to prove that the black nan was other than a human being. Sometimes he was drawn In cartoon as a torso. If the myth persists, the intellectuals proved that there were eyss on the torso that could see with the mind's eye. Before Johnson began his study in the "humanities" at Atlanta University, his Immediate family and acquaintances had demonstrated the necessity of living life to its fullest extent in this world. As it is shown in Chapter II of this study, the stage was set for a varied career in his childhood. Added to this was his ability to learn and the advantage of economic security which gave him the chance to pursue his ambition. Perhaps the absurdity of Johnson's place in the humanistic tradition is lessened by Ralph Ellison's claim to the same tradition. He considered himself an heir to all of the privileges granted to any human being who desired to develop his full potential as an adherent of Western Culture. Growing up back in Oklahoma between World Whr I and the Great Depression, he believed that the concept of Renaissance man lurked in the shadow of his past without knowing how he acquired it. A half dozen of his black friends who shared the idea with him subscribed to the belief "that somehow the human ideal lay in the vague and constantly shifting figures — sometimes comic but always versatile, picaresque and self-effacingly heroic — which evolved from our widely improvisionary projections — figures neither white nor black, Christian nor Jewish, but representative of certain desirable essences, of skills and powers physical, aesthetic and moral.The description of this "Renaissance" ideal, nourished during the "play-stage" of culture, gives a clear view of Johnson's orientation during the same period of his life. Until he went to Atlanta University in 1687 at the age of sixteen, he believed in the "ideal". As a "Renaissance Man" he owned no limitations in extending his intellectual ken. Nothing could obstruct his spirit ascending. Very soon, after he entered Atlanta University, he realised that his "ideal" had to be filtered through the arcana of race. Black men who attended Fisk, Harvard and Atlanta University in the latter part of the nineteenth century were trained in the "humanities" with the aim of producing worthy men who would lift the masses to civilisation. Johnson, who did his preparatory work and earned his Bachelor of Arts degree at Atlanta, 1894, spoke frequently of the effort exerted to make students nobler and higher beings by studying the classics Kelley Miller speaks for Howard University and her sister institutions in their first phase as schools where "education was extolled chiefly in its cultural and hiiTnftrvt*A»»^n (italics added) aspects. The stress of emphasis was laid on manhood rather than mechanism. The man was educated for his worth (italics added) rather than his work. To be somebody counted for more than to do something. Produce the man, the rest will f o l l o w . " ^ The combination of the "cultural aspects" with the "humanitarian aspects," disavows the dictum that the black man was being educated for his intrinsic worth. The intellectual was educated to ^♦Ralph Ellison, Shadow and Act (1953; 1964; New Tork: The New American Library, Inc., Signet Books, 1966), xiv. Note: Ellison's best known work is his novel, The Invisible Man (New Tork: Random House, 1952) Kelley Miller, "Howard: The National Negro University,* in Alain Locke, ed., The New Negro (1925; rpt. New Tork: Atheneum; 1970), p. 315* serve the black masses as "philanthropistsn. The currency of the term the "Talented Tenth" came with DuBois' use of it in his book, The JQA2& Folk. first published in 1903* However, the idea was also stressed by an earlier black intellectual of the nineteenth century. Alexander Crummell, DuBois' favorite black hero, who founded the Negro American Academy in 1897, encouraged the development of an intelligentsia that would develop their highest faculties; but, in addition, they were called upon to be philanthropists. Before the Academy was founded he proclaimed in an address delivered to the graduating class at Storer College, Harper's Ferry, West Virginia, Nay 30, 1685, that scholars and philantropists from the schools would raise and elevate the people. "These men," he says, "must needs be both scholars and philanthropists; the intellect rightly discerning the conditions, and the gracious and godly heart stimulating to the performance of the noblest duties for a people."1^ The five objectives of the Negro American Academy were goals similar to those of the French Academy which provided a national institute for the French republic to be entrusted with the duty of collecting records of all discoveries and to further the progress of arts and sciences. The basic difference between the two is that the black organisation set as its first aim a measure to defend the race, to save the man himself from ultimate abuse. The objectives are: first, the defenses of the Negro against vicious assaults; second, publication of scholarly works; third, fostering higher education among Negroes; fourth, formulation of intellectual tastes; and fifth, the promotion of literature, science ^Alexander Crummell, "The Need of New Ideas and New Alms for a New Era," p. 36. and art* Crunmall founded the Academy, March 5, 1897 and served as its 17 president until hie death September 12, 1908. DuBois became president of the Academy following Crummell*s death and stated that those with higher education must take the responsibility of uplifting the race* The idea of the "Talented Tenth" ie cogently stated in the essay "Of The Training of Black Men*"^ He writes: "Today we have climbed to heights where we would open at least the outer courts of knowledge to all, display its treasures to many, and select the few to idiom its mystery of Truth is revealed, not wholly by birth or by accidents of the stock market, but at least in part according to deftness 19 and aim, talent and character*" James Weldon Johnson was being shaped into the man of excellence described by Crummell and DuBois, but apart from their direct influence until 1903, when he read the flX ElftSfe Folk. He recognised DuBois' power at that time as an intellectual, not a racial agitator. He met DuBois the next year, 1904, in person when he went to Atlanta to receive an honorary degree. Upper Manhattan is the most northern region of the New York City borough of Manhattan. Its southern boundary has been variously defined, but some of the most common usages are 96th Street, the northern boundary of Central Park (110th Street), 125th Street, or 155th Street.[citation needed] The term Uptown can refer to Upper Manhattan, but is often used more generally for neighborhoods above 59th Street; in the broader definition, Uptown encompasses Upper Manhattan.[1] Upper Manhattan is generally taken to include the neighborhoods of Marble Hill, Inwood, Washington Heights (including Fort George, Sherman Creek and Hudson Heights), Harlem (including Sugar Hill, Hamilton Heights and Manhattanville), East Harlem, Morningside Heights, and Manhattan Valley (in the Upper West Side). The George Washington Bridge connects Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan across the Hudson River to Fort Lee, New Jersey, and is the world's busiest motor vehicle bridge.[2][3] In the late 19th century, the IRT Ninth Avenue Line and other elevated railroads brought people to the previously rustic Upper Manhattan. Until the late 20th century it was less influenced by the gentrification that had taken place in other parts of New York over the previous 30 years. Tourist attractions Like other residential areas, Upper Manhattan is not a major center of tourism in New York City, although many tourist attractions lie within it, such as Grant's Tomb, the Apollo Theater, United Palace, and The Cloisters, Sylvia's Restaurant, the Hamilton Grange, the Morris–Jumel Mansion, Minton's Playhouse, Sugar Hill, Riverside Church, the National Jazz Museum in Harlem, and the Dyckman House, along with Fort Tryon Park, most of Riverside Park, Riverbank State Park, Sakura Park, and other parks. Gallery City College of New York in Hamilton Heights City College of New York in Hamilton Heights   The Cloisters in Fort Tryon Park houses the medieval art collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Cloisters in Fort Tryon Park houses the medieval art collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.   The Little Red Lighthouse under the George Washington Bridge The Little Red Lighthouse under the George Washington Bridge   Inwood Hill Park contains the last remnant of the primeval forest which once covered Manhattan; these caves were used by native Lenape people. Inwood Hill Park contains the last remnant of the primeval forest which once covered Manhattan; these caves were used by native Lenape people. New York, often called New York City[a] or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over 300.46 square miles (778.2 km2), New York City is the most densely populated major city in the United States. The city is more than twice as populous as Los Angeles, the nation's second-largest city, and has a larger population than 38 of the nation's 50 states. New York City is located at the southern tip of the state of New York. The city is the geographical and demographic center of both the Northeast megalopolis and the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the U.S. by both population and urban area. With over 20.1 million people in its metropolitan statistical area and 23.5 million in its combined statistical area as of 2020, New York City is one of the world's most populous megacities.[10] New York City is a global cultural, financial, high-tech,[11] entertainment, glamor,[12] and media center with a significant influence on commerce, health care and life sciences,[13] research, technology, education, politics, tourism, dining, art, fashion, and sports. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York City is an important center for international diplomacy,[14][15] and it is sometimes described as the capital of the world.[16][17] Situated on one of the world's largest natural harbors, New York City comprises five boroughs, each of which is coextensive with a respective county of the state of New York. The five boroughs, which were created in 1898 when local governments were consolidated into a single municipal entity, are: Brooklyn (Kings County), Queens (Queens County), Manhattan (New York County), the Bronx (Bronx County), and Staten Island (Richmond County).[18] As of 2021, the New York metropolitan area is the second largest metropolitan economy in the world with a gross metropolitan product of over $2.4 trillion. If the New York metropolitan area were a sovereign state, it would have the eighth-largest economy in the world. New York City is an established safe haven for global investors.[19] As of 2023, New York City is the most expensive city in the world for expatriates to live.[20] New York City is home to the highest number of billionaires,[21][22] individuals of ultra-high net worth (greater than US$30 million),[23] and millionaires of any city in the world.[24] The city and its metropolitan area are the premier gateway for legal immigration to the United States. As many as 800 languages are spoken in New York,[25] making it the most linguistically diverse city in the world. New York City is home to more than 3.2 million residents born outside the U.S., the largest foreign-born population of any city in the world as of 2016.[26] It is the most visited U.S. city by international visitors.[27] New York City traces its origins to Fort Amsterdam and a trading post founded on the southern tip of Manhattan Island by Dutch colonists in approximately 1624. The settlement was named New Amsterdam (Dutch: Nieuw Amsterdam) in 1626 and was chartered as a city in 1653. The city came under British control in 1664 and was renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, the Duke of York.[28][29] The city was regained by the Dutch in July 1673 and was renamed New Orange for one year and three months; the city has been continuously named New York since November 1674. New York City was the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790,[30] and has been the largest U.S. city since 1790. The Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the U.S. by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and is a symbol of the U.S. and its ideals of liberty and peace.[31] In the 21st century, New York City has emerged as a global node of creativity, entrepreneurship,[32] and as a symbol of freedom and cultural diversity.[33] The New York Times has won the most Pulitzer Prizes for journalism and remains the U.S. media's "Newspaper of record".[34] Many districts and monuments in New York City are major landmarks, including three of the world's ten-most visited tourist attractions in 2023.[35] A record 66.6 million tourists visited New York City in 2019. Times Square is the brightly illuminated hub of the Broadway Theater District,[36] one of the world's busiest pedestrian intersections[37] and a major center of the world's entertainment industry.[38] New York's residential and commercial real estate markets are the most expensive in the world.[39][better source needed] Providing continuous 24/7 service and contributing to the nickname The City That Never Sleeps, the New York City Subway is the largest single-operator rapid transit system in the world with 472 passenger rail stations, and Penn Station in Midtown Manhattan is the busiest transportation hub in the Western Hemisphere.[40] The city features over 120 colleges and universities, including some of the world's top universities.[41] Its public urban university system, the City University of New York, is the largest in the nation.[42] Anchored by Wall Street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan, New York City has been called both the world's leading financial and fintech center[43][44] and the most economically powerful city in the world,[45] and is home to the world's two largest stock exchanges by total market capitalization, the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq.[46][47] The Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, part of the Stonewall National Monument, is considered the historic epicenter of LGBTQ+ culture[48] and the birthplace of the modern gay rights movement.[49][50] New York City is the headquarters of the global art market, with numerous art galleries and auction houses collectively hosting half of the world's art auctions; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art is both the largest and second-most-visited art museum in the United States and hosts the globally focused Met Gala haute couture fashion event annually.[51][52] Governors Island in New York Harbor is planned to host a US$1 billion research and education center as a leader in the climate crisis.[53] Etymology See also: Nicknames of New York City In 1664, New York was named in honor of the Duke of York, who would become King James II of England.[54] James's elder brother, King Charles II, appointed the Duke as proprietor of the former territory of New Netherland, including the city of New Amsterdam, when England seized it from Dutch control.[55] History Main article: History of New York City For a chronological guide, see Timeline of New York City. Early history Main article: History of New York City (prehistory–1664) Lenape sites in Lower Manhattan In the pre-Columbian era, the area of present-day New York City was inhabited by Algonquian Native Americans, including the Lenape. Their homeland, known as Lenapehoking, included the present-day areas of Staten Island, Manhattan, the Bronx, the western portion of Long Island (including the areas that would later become the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens), and the Lower Hudson Valley.[56] The first documented visit into New York Harbor by a European was in 1524 by Italian Giovanni da Verrazzano, an explorer from Florence in the service of the French crown.[57] He claimed the area for France and named it Nouvelle Angoulême (New Angoulême).[58] A Spanish expedition, led by the Portuguese captain Estêvão Gomes sailing for Emperor Charles V, arrived in New York Harbor in January 1525 and charted the mouth of the Hudson River, which he named Río de San Antonio ('Saint Anthony's River'). The Padrón Real of 1527, the first scientific map to show the East Coast of North America continuously, was informed by Gomes' expedition and labeled the northeastern United States as Tierra de Esteban Gómez in his honor.[59] In 1609, the English explorer Henry Hudson rediscovered New York Harbor while searching for the Northwest Passage to the Orient for the Dutch East India Company.[60] He proceeded to sail up what the Dutch would name the North River (now the Hudson River), named first by Hudson as the Mauritius after Maurice, Prince of Orange. Hudson's first mate described the harbor as "a very good Harbour for all windes" and the river as "a mile broad" and "full of fish".[61] Hudson sailed roughly 150 miles (240 km) north,[62] past the site of the present-day New York State capital city of Albany, in the belief that it might be an oceanic tributary before the river became too shallow to continue.[61] He made a ten-day exploration of the area and claimed the region for the Dutch East India Company. In 1614, the area between Cape Cod and Delaware Bay was claimed by the Netherlands and called Nieuw-Nederland ('New Netherland'). The first non–Native American inhabitant of what would eventually become New York City was Juan Rodriguez (transliterated to the Dutch language as Jan Rodrigues), a merchant from Santo Domingo. Born in Santo Domingo of Portuguese and African descent, he arrived in Manhattan during the winter of 1613–14, trapping for pelts and trading with the local population as a representative of the Dutch. Broadway, from 159th Street to 218th Street in Upper Manhattan, is named Juan Rodriguez Way in his honor.[63][64] Dutch rule Main articles: New Amsterdam  and  Fort Amsterdam New Amsterdam, centered in what eventually became Lower Manhattan, in 1664, the year England took control and renamed it New York The Castello Plan, a 1660 map of New Amsterdam (the top right corner is roughly north) in Lower Manhattan A permanent European presence near New York Harbor was established in 1624, making New York the 12th-oldest continuously occupied European-established settlement in the continental United States,[65] with the founding of a Dutch fur trading settlement on Governors Island. In 1625, construction was started on a citadel and Fort Amsterdam, later called Nieuw Amsterdam (New Amsterdam), on present-day Manhattan Island.[66][67] The colony of New Amsterdam was centered on what would ultimately become Lower Manhattan. Its area extended from the southern tip of Manhattan to modern-day Wall Street, where a 12-foot (3.7 m) wooden stockade was built in 1653 to protect against Native American and British raids.[68] In 1626, the Dutch colonial Director-General Peter Minuit, acting as charged by the Dutch West India Company, purchased the island of Manhattan from the Canarsie, a small Lenape band,[69] for "the value of 60 guilders"[70] (about $900 in 2018).[71] A frequently told but disproved legend claims that Manhattan was purchased for $24 worth of glass beads.[72][73] Following the purchase, New Amsterdam grew slowly.[29] To attract settlers, the Dutch instituted the patroon system in 1628, whereby wealthy Dutchmen (patroons, or patrons) who brought 50 colonists to New Netherland would be awarded swaths of land, along with local political autonomy and rights to participate in the lucrative fur trade. This program had little success.[74] Since 1621, the Dutch West India Company had operated as a monopoly in New Netherland, on authority granted by the Dutch States General. In 1639–1640, in an effort to bolster economic growth, the Dutch West India Company relinquished its monopoly over the fur trade, leading to growth in the production and trade of food, timber, tobacco, and slaves (particularly with the Dutch West Indies).[29][75] In 1647, Peter Stuyvesant began his tenure as the last Director-General of New Netherland. During his tenure, the population of New Netherland grew from 2,000 to 8,000.[76][77] Stuyvesant has been credited with improving law and order in the colony; however, he also earned a reputation as a despotic leader. He instituted regulations on liquor sales, attempted to assert control over the Dutch Reformed Church, and blocked other religious groups (including Quakers, Jews, and Lutherans) from establishing houses of worship.[78] The Dutch West India Company would eventually attempt to ease tensions between Stuyvesant and residents of New Amsterdam.[79] English rule Main article: History of New York City (1665–1783) The Fall of New Amsterdam by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris, part of the Conquest of New Netherland A painting of a ship firing its cannons in a harbor Fort George and New York with British Navy ships of the line c. 1731 In 1664, unable to summon any significant resistance, Stuyvesant surrendered New Amsterdam to English troops, led by Colonel Richard Nicolls, without bloodshed.[78][79] The terms of the surrender permitted Dutch residents to remain in the colony and allowed for religious freedom.[80] In 1667, during negotiations leading to the Treaty of Breda after the Second Anglo-Dutch War, the Dutch decided to keep the nascent plantation colony of what is now Suriname (on the northern South American coast) they had gained from the English; and in return, the English kept New Amsterdam. The fledgling settlement was promptly renamed "New York" after the Duke of York (the future King James II and VII), who would eventually be deposed in the Glorious Revolution.[81] After the founding, the duke gave part of the colony to proprietors George Carteret and John Berkeley. Fort Orange, 150 miles (240 km) north on the Hudson River, was renamed Albany after James's Scottish title.[82] The transfer was confirmed in 1667 by the Treaty of Breda, which concluded the Second Anglo-Dutch War.[83] On August 24, 1673, during the Third Anglo-Dutch War, Dutch captain Anthony Colve seized the colony of New York from the English at the behest of Cornelis Evertsen the Youngest and rechristened it "New Orange" after William III, the Prince of Orange.[84] The Dutch would soon return the island to England under the Treaty of Westminster of November 1674.[85][86] Several intertribal wars among the Native Americans and some epidemics brought on by contact with the Europeans caused sizeable population losses for the Lenape between the years 1660 and 1670.[87] By 1700, the Lenape population had diminished to 200.[88] New York experienced several yellow fever epidemics in the 18th century, losing ten percent of its population to the disease in 1702 alone.[89][90] Province of New York and slavery Slave being burned at the stake in N.Y.C. after the 1741 slave revolt. Thirteen slaves were burned.[91] In the early 18th century, New York grew in importance as a trading port while as a part of the colony of New York.[92] It also became a center of slavery, with 42% of households enslaving Africans by 1730, the highest percentage outside Charleston, South Carolina.[93] Most cases were that of domestic slavery, as a New York household then commonly used one or more slaves as cooks and house keepers. Others were hired out to work at labor. Slavery became integrally tied to New York's economy through the labor of slaves throughout the port, and the banking and shipping industries trading with the American South. During construction in Foley Square in the 1990s, the African Burying Ground was discovered; the cemetery included 10,000 to 20,000 of graves of colonial-era Africans, some enslaved and some free.[94] The 1735 trial and acquittal in Manhattan of John Peter Zenger, who had been accused of seditious libel after criticizing colonial governor William Cosby, helped to establish the freedom of the press in North America.[95] In 1754, Columbia University was founded under charter by King George II as King's College in Lower Manhattan.[96] American Revolution Further information: American Revolution An illustration of the Battle of Long Island, one of the largest battles of the American Revolutionary War, which took place in Brooklyn on August 27, 1776 The Stamp Act Congress met in New York in October 1765, as the Sons of Liberty organization emerged in the city and skirmished over the next ten years with British troops stationed there.[97] The Battle of Long Island, the largest battle of the American Revolutionary War, was fought in August 1776 within the modern-day borough of Brooklyn.[98] After the battle, in which the Americans were defeated, the British made the city their military and political base of operations in North America. The city was a haven for Loyalist refugees and escaped slaves who joined the British lines for freedom newly promised by the Crown for all fighters. As many as 10,000 escaped slaves crowded into the city during the British occupation. When the British forces evacuated at the close of the war in 1783, they transported 3,000 freedmen for resettlement in Nova Scotia.[99] They resettled other freedmen in England and the Caribbean. The only attempt at a peaceful solution to the war took place at the Conference House on Staten Island between American delegates, including Benjamin Franklin, and British general Lord Howe on September 11, 1776. Shortly after the British occupation began, the Great Fire of New York occurred, a large conflagration on the West Side of Lower Manhattan, which destroyed about a quarter of the buildings in the city, including Trinity Church.[100] Post-Revolutionary War Main article: History of New York City (1784–1854) First inauguration of George Washington in 1789 In 1785, the assembly of the Congress of the Confederation made New York City the national capital shortly after the war. New York was the last capital of the U.S. under the Articles of Confederation and the first capital under the Constitution of the United States. As the U.S. capital, New York City hosted several events of national scope in 1789—the first President of the United States, George Washington, was inaugurated; the first United States Congress and the Supreme Court of the United States each assembled for the first time; and the United States Bill of Rights was drafted, all at Federal Hall on Wall Street.[101] In 1790, for the first time, New York City, surpassed Philadelphia as the nation's largest city. At the end of that year, pursuant to the Residence Act, the national capital was moved to Philadelphia.[102][103] Late 19th century Main article: History of New York City (1855–1897) A painting of a snowy city street with horse-drawn sleds and a 19th-century fire truck under blue sky Broadway, which follows the Native American Wecquaesgeek Trail through Manhattan, in 1840.[104] The Great East River Bridge To connect the cities of New York and Brooklyn, Currier & Ives, 1872 Over the course of the nineteenth century, New York City's population grew from 60,000 to 3.43 million.[105] Under New York State's abolition act of 1799, children of slave mothers were to be eventually liberated but to be held in indentured servitude until their mid-to-late twenties.[106][107] Together with slaves freed by their masters after the Revolutionary War and escaped slaves, a significant free-Black population gradually developed in Manhattan. Under such influential United States founders as Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, the New York Manumission Society worked for abolition and established the African Free School to educate Black children.[108] It was not until 1827 that slavery was completely abolished in the state, and free Blacks struggled afterward with discrimination. New York interracial abolitionist activism continued; among its leaders were graduates of the African Free School. New York city's population jumped from 123,706 in 1820 to 312,710 by 1840, 16,000 of whom were Black.[109][110] In the 19th century, the city was transformed by both commercial and residential development relating to its status as a national and international trading center, as well as by European immigration, respectively.[111] The city adopted the Commissioners' Plan of 1811, which expanded the city street grid to encompass almost all of Manhattan. The 1825 completion of the Erie Canal through central New York connected the Atlantic port to the agricultural markets and commodities of the North American interior via the Hudson River and the Great Lakes.[112] Local politics became dominated by Tammany Hall, a political machine supported by Irish and German immigrants.[113] Several prominent American literary figures lived in New York during the 1830s and 1840s, including William Cullen Bryant, Washington Irving, Herman Melville, Rufus Wilmot Griswold, John Keese, Nathaniel Parker Willis, and Edgar Allan Poe. Public-minded members of the contemporaneous business elite lobbied for the establishment of Central Park, which in 1857 became the first landscaped park in an American city. The Great Irish Famine brought a large influx of Irish immigrants, of whom more than 200,000 were living in New York by 1860, representing upward of one-quarter of the city's population.[114] There was also extensive immigration from the German provinces, where revolutions had disrupted societies, and Germans comprised another 25% of New York's population by 1860.[115][116] American Civil War Main article: New York City in the American Civil War A drawing from The Illustrated London News showing armed rioters clashing with Union Army soldiers during the New York City draft riots in 1863 Democratic Party candidates were consistently elected to local office, increasing the city's ties to the South and its dominant party. In 1861, Mayor Fernando Wood called upon the aldermen to declare independence from Albany and the United States after the South seceded, but his proposal was not acted on.[108] Anger at new military conscription laws during the American Civil War (1861–1865), which spared wealthier men who could afford to pay a $300 (equivalent to $7,130 in 2022) commutation fee to hire a substitute,[117] led to the Draft Riots of 1863, whose most visible participants were ethnic Irish working class.[108] The draft riots deteriorated into attacks on New York's elite, followed by attacks on Black New Yorkers and their property after fierce competition for a decade between Irish immigrants and Black people for work. Rioters burned the Colored Orphan Asylum to the ground, with more than 200 children escaping harm due to efforts of the New York Police Department, which was mainly made up of Irish immigrants.[115] At least 120 people were killed.[118] Eleven Black men were lynched over five days, and the riots forced hundreds of Blacks to flee the city for Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and New Jersey. The Black population in Manhattan fell below 10,000 by 1865, which it had last been in 1820. The White working class had established dominance.[115][118] Violence by longshoremen against Black men was especially fierce in the docks area.[115] It was one of the worst incidents of civil unrest in American history.[119] In 1898, the City of New York was formed with the consolidation of Brooklyn (until then a separate city), the County of New York (which then included parts of the Bronx), the County of Richmond, and the western portion of the County of Queens.[120] The opening of the subway in 1904, first built as separate private systems, helped bind the new city together.[121] Throughout the first half of the 20th century, the city became a world center for industry, commerce, and communication.[122] Early 20th century Main articles: History of New York City (1898–1945) and History of New York City (1946–1977) Manhattan's Little Italy in the Lower East Side, c. 1900 In 1904, the steamship General Slocum caught fire in the East River, killing 1,021 people on board.[123] In 1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, the city's worst industrial disaster, took the lives of 146 garment workers and spurred the growth of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union and major improvements in factory safety standards.[124] New York's non-White population was 36,620 in 1890.[125] New York City was a prime destination in the early twentieth century for African Americans during the Great Migration from the American South, and by 1916, New York City had become home to the largest urban African diaspora in North America.[126] The Harlem Renaissance of literary and cultural life flourished during the era of Prohibition.[127] The larger economic boom generated construction of skyscrapers competing in height and creating an identifiable skyline. A man working on a steel girder high about a city skyline. A construction worker atop the Empire State Building during its construction in 1930. The Chrysler Building is visible behind him. New York City became the most populous urbanized area in the world in the early 1920s, overtaking London. The metropolitan area surpassed the 10 million mark in the early 1930s, becoming the first megacity in human history.[128] The Great Depression saw the election of reformer Fiorello La Guardia as mayor and the fall of Tammany Hall after eighty years of political dominance.[129] Returning World War II veterans created a post-war economic boom and the development of large housing tracts in eastern Queens and Nassau County as well as similar suburban areas in New Jersey. New York emerged from the war unscathed as the leading city of the world, with Wall Street leading America's place as the world's dominant economic power. The United Nations headquarters was completed in 1952, solidifying New York's global geopolitical influence, and the rise of abstract expressionism in the city precipitated New York's displacement of Paris as the center of the art world.[130] A two-story building with brick on the first floor, with two arched doorways, and gray stucco on the second floor off of which hang numerous rainbow flags. Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, a designated U.S. National Historic Landmark and National Monument, was the site of the June 1969 Stonewall riots and the cradle of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement.[131][132][133] The Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous, violent protests by members of the gay community against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan.[134] They are widely considered to be the single most important event leading to the gay liberation movement[131][135][136][137] and the modern fight for LGBT rights.[138][139] Wayne R. Dynes, author of the Encyclopedia of Homosexuality, wrote that drag queens were the only "transgender folks around" during the June 1969 Stonewall riots. The transgender community in New York City played a significant role in fighting for LGBT equality during the period of the Stonewall riots and thereafter.[140] In the 1970s, job losses due to industrial restructuring caused New York City to suffer from economic problems and rising crime rates.[141] Late 20th century to present Main articles: History of New York City (1978–present) and September 11 attacks While a resurgence in the financial industry greatly improved the city's economic health in the 1980s, New York's crime rate continued to increase through that decade and into the beginning of the 1990s.[142] By the mid 1990s, crime rates started to drop dramatically due to revised police strategies, improving economic opportunities, gentrification, and new residents, both American transplants and new immigrants from Asia and Latin America. Important new sectors, such as Silicon Alley, emerged in the city's economy.[143] New York City's population reached all-time highs in the 2000, 2010, and 2020 US censuses. Two tall, gray, rectangular buildings spewing black smoke and flames, particularly from the left of the two. United Airlines Flight 175 hits the South Tower of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, the largest terrorist attack in world history. New York City suffered the bulk of the economic damage and largest loss of human life in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks.[144] Two of the four airliners hijacked that day were flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, destroying the towers and killing 2,192 civilians, 343 firefighters, and 71 law enforcement officers. The North Tower became, and remains, the tallest building to ever be destroyed.[145] The area was rebuilt with a new World Trade Center, the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, and other new buildings and infrastructure.[146] The World Trade Center PATH station, which had opened on July 19, 1909, as the Hudson Terminal, was also destroyed in the attacks. A temporary station was built and opened on November 23, 2003. An 800,000-square-foot (74,000 m2) permanent rail station designed by Santiago Calatrava, the World Trade Center Transportation Hub, the city's third-largest hub, was completed in 2016.[147] The new One World Trade Center is the tallest skyscraper in the Western Hemisphere[148] and the seventh-tallest building in the world by pinnacle height, with its spire reaching a symbolic 1,776 feet (541.3 m) in reference to the year of U.S. independence.[149][150][151][152] The Occupy Wall Street protests in Zuccotti Park in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan began on September 17, 2011, receiving global attention and popularizing the Occupy movement against social and economic inequality worldwide.[153] Manhattan in the aftermath of the Hurricane Sandy in 2012, the worst to strike the city since 1700.[154] New York City was heavily affected by Hurricane Sandy in late October 2012. Sandy's impacts included the flooding of the New York City Subway system, of many suburban communities, and of all road tunnels entering Manhattan except the Lincoln Tunnel. The New York Stock Exchange closed for two consecutive days. Numerous homes and businesses were destroyed by fire, including over 100 homes in Breezy Point, Queens. Large parts of the city and surrounding areas lost electricity for several days. Several thousand people in Midtown Manhattan were evacuated for six days due to a crane collapse at Extell's One57. Bellevue Hospital Center and a few other large hospitals were closed and evacuated. Flooding at 140 West Street and another exchange disrupted voice and data communication in Lower Manhattan. At least 43 people lost their lives in New York City as a result of Sandy, and the economic losses in New York City were estimated to be roughly $19 billion. The disaster spawned long-term efforts towards infrastructural projects to counter climate change and rising seas.[155][156] In March 2020, the first case of COVID-19 in the city was confirmed in Manhattan.[157] The city rapidly replaced Wuhan, China to become the global epicenter of the pandemic during the early phase, before the infection became widespread across the world and the rest of the nation. As of March 2021, New York City had recorded over 30,000 deaths from COVID-19-related complications. Geography Main articles: Geography of New York City and Geography of New York–New Jersey Harbor Estuary Aerial view of the New York City metropolitan area with Manhattan at its center During the Wisconsin glaciation, 75,000 to 11,000 years ago, the New York City area was situated at the edge of a large ice sheet over 2,000 feet (610 m) in depth.[158] The erosive forward movement of the ice (and its subsequent retreat) contributed to the separation of what is now Long Island and Staten Island. That action also left bedrock at a relatively shallow depth, providing a solid foundation for most of Manhattan's skyscrapers.[159] New York City is situated in the northeastern United States, in southeastern New York State, approximately halfway between Washington, D.C. and Boston. The location at the mouth of the Hudson River, which feeds into a naturally sheltered harbor and then into the Atlantic Ocean, has helped the city grow in significance as a trading port. Most of New York City is built on the three islands of Long Island, Manhattan, and Staten Island. The Hudson River flows through the Hudson Valley into New York Bay. Between New York City and Troy, New York, the river is an estuary.[160] The Hudson River separates the city from the U.S. state of New Jersey. The East River—a tidal strait—flows from Long Island Sound and separates the Bronx and Manhattan from Long Island. The Harlem River, another tidal strait between the East and Hudson rivers, separates most of Manhattan from the Bronx. The Bronx River, which flows through the Bronx and Westchester County, is the only entirely freshwater river in the city.[161] The city's land has been altered substantially by human intervention, with considerable land reclamation along the waterfronts since Dutch colonial times; reclamation is most prominent in Lower Manhattan, with developments such as Battery Park City in the 1970s and 1980s.[162] Some of the natural relief in topography has been evened out, especially in Manhattan.[163] The city's total area is 468.484 square miles (1,213.37 km2); 302.643 sq mi (783.84 km2) of the city is land and 165.841 sq mi (429.53 km2) of this is water.[164][165] The highest point in the city is Todt Hill on Staten Island, which, at 409.8 feet (124.9 m) above sea level, is the highest point on the eastern seaboard south of Maine.[166] The summit of the ridge is mostly covered in woodlands as part of the Staten Island Greenbelt.[167] Boroughs Main articles: Boroughs of New York City and Neighborhoods in New York City A map showing five boroughs in different colors.   1. Manhattan   2. Brooklyn   3. Queens   4. The Bronx   5. Staten Island New York City's five boroughsvte Jurisdiction Population Land area Density of population GDP † Borough County Census (2020) square miles square km people/ sq. mile people/ sq. km billions (2012 US$) 2 The Bronx Bronx 1,472,654 42.2 109.3 34,920 13,482 $38.726 Brooklyn Kings 2,736,074 69.4 179.7 39,438 15,227 $92.300 Manhattan New York 1,694,251 22.7 58.8 74,781 28,872 $651.619 Queens Queens 2,405,464 108.7 281.5 22,125 8,542 $88.578 Staten Island Richmond 495,747 57.5 148.9 8,618 3,327 $14.806 City of New York 8,804,190 302.6 783.8 29,095 11,234 $885.958 State of New York 20,215,751 47,126.4 122,056.8 429 166 $1,514.779 † GDP = Gross Domestic Product    Sources:[168][169][170][171] and see individual borough articles. New York City is sometimes referred to collectively as the Five Boroughs.[172] Each borough is coextensive with a respective county of New York State, making New York City one of the U.S. municipalities in multiple counties. There are hundreds of distinct neighborhoods throughout the boroughs, many with a definable history and character. If the boroughs were each independent cities, four of the boroughs (Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, and the Bronx) would be among the ten most populous cities in the United States (Staten Island would be ranked 37th as of 2020); these same boroughs are coterminous with the four most densely populated counties in the United States: New York (Manhattan), Kings (Brooklyn), Bronx, and Queens. Manhattan Lower and Midtown Manhattan photographed by a SkySat satellite in August 2017 Midtown Manhattan, the world's largest central business district Manhattan (New York County) is the geographically smallest and most densely populated borough. It is home to Central Park and most of the city's skyscrapers, and is sometimes locally known as The City.[173] Manhattan's population density of 72,033 people per square mile (27,812/km2) in 2015 makes it the highest of any county in the United States and higher than the density of any individual American city.[174] Manhattan is the cultural, administrative, and financial center of New York City and contains the headquarters of many major multinational corporations, the United Nations headquarters, Wall Street, and a number of important universities. The borough of Manhattan is often described as the financial and cultural center of the world.[175][176] Most of the borough is situated on Manhattan Island, at the mouth of the Hudson River and the East River, and its southern tip, at the confluence of the two rivers, represents the birthplace of New York City itself. Several small islands also compose part of the borough of Manhattan, including Randalls and Wards Islands, and Roosevelt Island in the East River, and Governors Island and Liberty Island to the south in New York Harbor. Manhattan Island is loosely divided into the Lower, Midtown, and Uptown regions. Uptown Manhattan is divided by Central Park into the Upper East Side and the Upper West Side, and above the park is Harlem, bordering the Bronx (Bronx County). Harlem was predominantly occupied by Jewish and Italian Americans in the 19th century until the Great Migration. It was the center of the Harlem Renaissance. The borough of Manhattan also includes a small neighborhood on the mainland, called Marble Hill, which is contiguous with the Bronx. New York City's remaining four boroughs are collectively referred to as the Outer Boroughs. Brooklyn Panorama of Gowanus Canal, as viewed from Union Street Bridge, Gowanus, Brooklyn Brooklyn (Kings County), on the western tip of Long Island, is the city's most populous borough. Brooklyn is known for its cultural, social, and ethnic diversity, an independent art scene, distinct neighborhoods, and a distinctive architectural heritage. Downtown Brooklyn is the largest central core neighborhood in the Outer Boroughs. The borough has a long beachfront shoreline including Coney Island, established in the 1870s as one of the earliest amusement grounds in the U.S.[177] Marine Park and Prospect Park are the two largest parks in Brooklyn.[178] Since 2010, Brooklyn has evolved into a thriving hub of entrepreneurship and high technology startup firms,[179][180] and of postmodern art and design.[180][181] Queens The growing skyline of Long Island City in Queens,[182] facing the East River Queens (Queens County), on Long Island north and east of Brooklyn, is geographically the largest borough, the most ethnically diverse county in the United States,[183] and the most ethnically diverse urban area in the world.[184][185] Historically a collection of small towns and villages founded by the Dutch, the borough has since developed both commercial and residential prominence. Downtown Flushing has become one of the busiest central core neighborhoods in the outer boroughs. Queens is the site of the Citi Field baseball stadium, home of the New York Mets, and hosts the annual U.S. Open tennis tournament at Flushing Meadows–Corona Park. Additionally, two of the three busiest airports serving the New York metropolitan area, John F. Kennedy International Airport and LaGuardia Airport, are in Queens. The third is Newark Liberty International Airport in Newark, New Jersey. The Bronx The Yankee Stadium in the Bronx The Bronx (Bronx County) is both New York City's northernmost borough, and the only one that is mostly on the mainland. It is the location of Yankee Stadium, the baseball park of the New York Yankees, and home to the largest cooperatively-owned housing complex in the United States, Co-op City.[186] It is also home to the Bronx Zoo, the world's largest metropolitan zoo,[187] which spans 265 acres (1.07 km2) and houses more than 6,000 animals.[188] The Bronx is also the birthplace of hip hop music and its associated culture.[189] Pelham Bay Park is the largest park in New York City, at 2,772 acres (1,122 ha).[190] Staten Island St. George, Staten Island Staten Island (Richmond County) is the most suburban in character of the five boroughs. Staten Island is connected to Brooklyn by the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, and to Manhattan by way of the free Staten Island Ferry, a daily commuter ferry that provides unobstructed views of the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and Lower Manhattan. In central Staten Island, the Staten Island Greenbelt spans approximately 2,500 acres (10 km2), including 28 miles (45 km) of walking trails and one of the last undisturbed forests in the city.[191] Designated in 1984 to protect the island's natural lands, the Greenbelt comprises seven city parks. Architecture Further information: Architecture of New York City; List of buildings, sites, and monuments in New York City; List of tallest buildings in New York City; and List of hotels in New York City The Empire State Building has setbacks, Art Deco details, and a spire. It was the world's tallest building from 1931 to 1970. The Chrysler Building, built in 1930, is in the Art Deco style, with ornamental hubcaps and a spire. Landmark 19th-century rowhouses, including brownstones, on tree-lined Kent Street in the Greenpoint Historic District, Brooklyn Modernist and Gothic Revival architecture in Midtown Manhattan New York has architecturally noteworthy buildings in a wide range of styles and from distinct time periods, from the Dutch Colonial Pieter Claesen Wyckoff House in Brooklyn, the oldest section of which dates to 1656, to the modern One World Trade Center, the skyscraper at Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan and the most expensive office tower in the world by construction cost.[192] Manhattan's skyline, with its many skyscrapers, is universally recognized, and the city has been home to several of the tallest buildings in the world. As of 2019, New York City had 6,455 high-rise buildings, the third most in the world after Hong Kong and Seoul.[193] Of these, as of 2011, 550 completed structures were at least 330 feet (100 m) high, with more than fifty completed skyscrapers taller than 656 feet (200 m). These include the Woolworth Building, an early example of Gothic Revival architecture in skyscraper design, built with massively scaled Gothic detailing; completed in 1913, for 17 years it was the world's tallest building.[194] The 1916 Zoning Resolution required setbacks in new buildings and restricted towers to a percentage of the lot size, to allow sunlight to reach the streets below.[195] The Art Deco style of the Chrysler Building (1930) and Empire State Building (1931), with their tapered tops and steel spires, reflected the zoning requirements. The buildings have distinctive ornamentation, such as the eagles at the corners of the 61st floor on the Chrysler Building, and are considered some of the finest examples of the Art Deco style.[196] A highly influential example of the International Style in the United States is the Seagram Building (1957), distinctive for its façade using visible bronze-toned I-beams to evoke the building's structure. The Condé Nast Building (2000) is a prominent example of green design in American skyscrapers[197] and has received an award from the American Institute of Architects and AIA New York State for its design. The character of New York's large residential districts is often defined by the elegant brownstone rowhouses and townhouses and shabby tenements that were built during a period of rapid expansion from 1870 to 1930.[198] In contrast, New York City also has neighborhoods that are less densely populated and feature free-standing dwellings. In neighborhoods such as Riverdale (in the Bronx), Ditmas Park (in Brooklyn), and Douglaston (in Queens), large single-family homes are common in various architectural styles such as Tudor Revival and Victorian.[199][200][201] Stone and brick became the city's building materials of choice after the construction of wood-frame houses was limited in the aftermath of the Great Fire of 1835.[202] A distinctive feature of many of the city's buildings is the roof-mounted wooden water tower. In the 1800s, the city required their installation on buildings higher than six stories to prevent the need for excessively high water pressures at lower elevations, which could break municipal water pipes.[203] Garden apartments became popular during the 1920s in outlying areas, such as Jackson Heights.[204] According to the United States Geological Survey, an updated analysis of seismic hazard in July 2014 revealed a "slightly lower hazard for tall buildings" in New York City than previously assessed. Scientists estimated this lessened risk based upon a lower likelihood than previously thought of slow shaking near the city, which would be more likely to cause damage to taller structures from an earthquake in the vicinity of the city.[205] Manhattan contained over 500 million square feet of office space as of 2022; the COVID-19 pandemic and hybrid work model have prompted consideration of commercial-to-residential conversion within Midtown Manhattan.[206] Ten mile (16km) Manhattan skyline panorama from 120th Street to the Battery, taken in February 2018 from across the Hudson River in Weehawken, New Jersey Riverside ChurchDeutsche Bank Center220 Central Park SouthCentral Park TowerOne57432 Park Avenue53W53Chrysler BuildingBank of America Tower4 Times SquareThe New York Times BuildingEmpire State BuildingManhattan Westa: 55 Hudson Yards, 14b: 35 Hudson Yards, 14c: 10 Hudson Yards, 14d: 15 Hudson Yards56 Leonard Street8 Spruce StreetWoolworth Building70 Pine StreetFour Seasons Downtown40 Wall Street3 World Trade Center4 World Trade CenterOne World Trade Center Climate Main article: Climate of New York City New York City Climate chart (explanation) J F M A M J J A S O N D   3.6  4028   3.2  4230   4.3  5036   4.1  6246   4  7155   4.5  8064   4.6  8570   4.6  8369   4.3  7662   4.4  6551   3.6  5442   4.4  4434 █ Average max. and min. temperatures in °F █ Precipitation totals in inches Metric conversion Deep snow in Brooklyn during the Blizzard of 2006 Nor'easter Under the Köppen climate classification, using the 0 °C (32 °F) isotherm, New York City features a humid subtropical climate (Cfa), and is thus the northernmost major city on the North American continent with this categorization. The suburbs to the immediate north and west lie in the transitional zone between humid subtropical and humid continental climates (Dfa).[207][208] By the Trewartha classification, the city is defined as having an oceanic climate (Do).[209][210] Annually, the city averages 234 days with at least some sunshine.[211] The city lies in the USDA 7b plant hardiness zone.[212] Winters are chilly and damp, and prevailing wind patterns that blow sea breezes offshore temper the moderating effects of the Atlantic Ocean; yet the Atlantic and the partial shielding from colder air by the Appalachian Mountains keep the city warmer in the winter than inland North American cities at similar or lesser latitudes such as Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and Indianapolis. The daily mean temperature in January, the area's coldest month, is 33.3 °F (0.7 °C).[213] Temperatures usually drop to 10 °F (−12 °C) several times per winter,[214] yet can also reach 60 °F (16 °C) for several days even in the coldest winter month. Spring and autumn are unpredictable and can range from cool to warm, although they are usually mild with low humidity. Summers are typically hot and humid, with a daily mean temperature of 77.5 °F (25.3 °C) in July.[213] Nighttime temperatures are often enhanced due to the urban heat island effect. Daytime temperatures exceed 90 °F (32 °C) on average of 17 days each summer and in some years exceed 100 °F (38 °C), although this is a rare achievement, last occurring on July 18, 2012.[215] Similarly, readings of 0 °F (−18 °C) are also extremely rare, last occurring on February 14, 2016.[216] Extreme temperatures have ranged from −15 °F (−26 °C), recorded on February 9, 1934, up to 106 °F (41 °C) on July 9, 1936;[213] the coldest recorded wind chill was −37 °F (−38 °C) on the same day as the all-time record low.[217] The record cold daily maximum was 2 °F (−17 °C) on December 30, 1917, while, conversely, the record warm daily minimum was 87 °F (31 °C), on July 2, 1903.[215] The average water temperature of the nearby Atlantic Ocean ranges from 39.7 °F (4.3 °C) in February to 74.1 °F (23.4 °C) in August.[218] The city receives 49.5 inches (1,260 mm) of precipitation annually, which is relatively evenly spread throughout the year. Average winter snowfall between 1991 and 2020 has been 29.8 inches (76 cm); this varies considerably between years. Hurricanes and tropical storms are rare in the New York area.[219] Hurricane Sandy brought a destructive storm surge to New York City on the evening of October 29, 2012, flooding numerous streets, tunnels, and subway lines in Lower Manhattan and other areas of the city and cutting off electricity in many parts of the city and its suburbs.[220] The storm and its profound impacts have prompted the discussion of constructing seawalls and other coastal barriers around the shorelines of the city and the metropolitan area to minimize the risk of destructive consequences from another such event in the future.[155][156] The coldest month on record is January 1857, with a mean temperature of 19.6 °F (−6.9 °C) whereas the warmest months on record are July 1825 and July 1999, both with a mean temperature of 81.4 °F (27.4 °C).[221] The warmest years on record are 2012 and 2020, both with mean temperatures of 57.1 °F (13.9 °C). The coldest year is 1836, with a mean temperature of 47.3 °F (8.5 °C).[221][222] The driest month on record is June 1949, with 0.02 inches (0.51 mm) of rainfall. The wettest month was August 2011, with 18.95 inches (481 mm) of rainfall. The driest year on record is 1965, with 26.09 inches (663 mm) of rainfall. The wettest year was 1983, with 80.56 inches (2,046 mm) of rainfall.[223] The snowiest month on record is February 2010, with 36.9 inches (94 cm) of snowfall. The snowiest season (Jul–Jun) on record is 1995–1996, with 75.6 inches (192 cm) of snowfall. The least snowy season was 2022–2023, with 2.3 inches (5.8 cm) of snowfall.[224] The earliest seasonal trace of snowfall occurred on October 10, in both 1979 and 1925. The latest seasonal trace of snowfall occurred on May 9, in both 2020 and 1977.[225] vte Climate data for New York (Belvedere Castle, Central Park), 1991–2020 normals,[b] extremes 1869–present[c] Month Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Year Record high °F (°C) 72 (22) 78 (26) 86 (30) 96 (36) 99 (37) 101 (38) 106 (41) 104 (40) 102 (39) 94 (34) 84 (29) 75 (24) 106 (41) Mean maximum °F (°C) 60.4 (15.8) 60.7 (15.9) 70.3 (21.3) 82.9 (28.3) 88.5 (31.4) 92.1 (33.4) 95.7 (35.4) 93.4 (34.1) 89.0 (31.7) 79.7 (26.5) 70.7 (21.5) 62.9 (17.2) 97.0 (36.1) Average high °F (°C) 39.5 (4.2) 42.2 (5.7) 49.9 (9.9) 61.8 (16.6) 71.4 (21.9) 79.7 (26.5) 84.9 (29.4) 83.3 (28.5) 76.2 (24.6) 64.5 (18.1) 54.0 (12.2) 44.3 (6.8) 62.6 (17.0) Daily mean °F (°C) 33.7 (0.9) 35.9 (2.2) 42.8 (6.0) 53.7 (12.1) 63.2 (17.3) 72.0 (22.2) 77.5 (25.3) 76.1 (24.5) 69.2 (20.7) 57.9 (14.4) 48.0 (8.9) 39.1 (3.9) 55.8 (13.2) Average low °F (°C) 27.9 (−2.3) 29.5 (−1.4) 35.8 (2.1) 45.5 (7.5) 55.0 (12.8) 64.4 (18.0) 70.1 (21.2) 68.9 (20.5) 62.3 (16.8) 51.4 (10.8) 42.0 (5.6) 33.8 (1.0) 48.9 (9.4) Mean minimum °F (°C) 9.8 (−12.3) 12.7 (−10.7) 19.7 (−6.8) 32.8 (0.4) 43.9 (6.6) 52.7 (11.5) 61.8 (16.6) 60.3 (15.7) 50.2 (10.1) 38.4 (3.6) 27.7 (−2.4) 18.0 (−7.8) 7.7 (−13.5) Record low °F (°C) −6 (−21) −15 (−26) 3 (−16) 12 (−11) 32 (0) 44 (7) 52 (11) 50 (10) 39 (4) 28 (−2) 5 (−15) −13 (−25) −15 (−26) Average precipitation inches (mm) 3.64 (92) 3.19 (81) 4.29 (109) 4.09 (104) 3.96 (101) 4.54 (115) 4.60 (117) 4.56 (116) 4.31 (109) 4.38 (111) 3.58 (91) 4.38 (111) 49.52 (1,258) Average snowfall inches (cm) 8.8 (22) 10.1 (26) 5.0 (13) 0.4 (1.0) 0.0 (0.0) 0.0 (0.0) 0.0 (0.0) 0.0 (0.0) 0.0 (0.0) 0.1 (0.25) 0.5 (1.3) 4.9 (12) 29.8 (76) Average precipitation days (≥ 0.01 in) 10.8 10.0 11.1 11.4 11.5 11.2 10.5 10.0 8.8 9.5 9.2 11.4 125.4 Average snowy days (≥ 0.1 in) 3.7 3.2 2.0 0.2 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.2 2.1 11.4 Average relative humidity (%) 61.5 60.2 58.5 55.3 62.7 65.2 64.2 66.0 67.8 65.6 64.6 64.1 63.0 Average dew point °F (°C) 18.0 (−7.8) 19.0 (−7.2) 25.9 (−3.4) 34.0 (1.1) 47.3 (8.5) 57.4 (14.1) 61.9 (16.6) 62.1 (16.7) 55.6 (13.1) 44.1 (6.7) 34.0 (1.1) 24.6 (−4.1) 40.3 (4.6) Mean monthly sunshine hours 162.7 163.1 212.5 225.6 256.6 257.3 268.2 268.2 219.3 211.2 151.0 139.0 2,534.7 Percent possible sunshine 54 55 57 57 57 57 59 63 59 61 51 48 57 Average ultraviolet index 2 3 4 6 7 8 8 8 6 4 2 1 5 Source 1: NOAA (relative humidity and sun 1961–1990; dew point 1965–1984)[215][227][211][228] Source 2: Weather Atlas[229] See Climate of New York City for additional climate information from the outer boroughs. Sea temperature data for New York Month Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Year Average sea temperature °F (°C) 41.7 (5.4) 39.7 (4.3) 40.2 (4.5) 45.1 (7.3) 52.5 (11.4) 64.5 (18.1) 72.1 (22.3) 74.1 (23.4) 70.1 (21.2) 63.0 (17.2) 54.3 (12.4) 47.2 (8.4) 55.4 (13.0) Source: Weather Atlas[229] Graphs are temporarily unavailable due to technical issues. See or edit raw graph data. Parks Main article: List of New York City parks A spherical sculpture and several attractions line a park during a World's Fair. Flushing Meadows–Corona Park was used in both the 1939 and 1964 New York World's Fair. The city of New York has a complex park system, with various lands operated by the National Park Service, the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, and the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. In its 2018 ParkScore ranking, the Trust for Public Land reported that the park system in New York City was the ninth-best park system among the fifty most populous U.S. cities.[230] ParkScore ranks urban park systems by a formula that analyzes median park size, park acres as percent of city area, the percent of city residents within a half-mile of a park, spending of park services per resident, and the number of playgrounds per 10,000 residents. In 2021, the New York City Council banned the use of synthetic pesticides by city agencies and instead required organic lawn management. The effort was started by teacher Paula Rogovin's kindergarten class at P.S. 290.[231] National parks Main article: National Park Service The Statue of Liberty on Liberty Island in New York Harbor, a global symbol of the United States and its ideals of liberty, freedom, and opportunity[31] Gateway National Recreation Area contains over 26,000 acres (110 km2), most of it in New York City.[232] In Brooklyn and Queens, the park contains over 9,000 acres (36 km2) of salt marsh, wetlands, islands, and water, including most of Jamaica Bay and the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge. Also in Queens, the park includes a significant portion of the western Rockaway Peninsula, most notably Jacob Riis Park and Fort Tilden. In Staten Island, it includes Fort Wadsworth, with historic pre-Civil War era Battery Weed and Fort Tompkins, and Great Kills Park, with beaches, trails, and a marina. The Statue of Liberty National Monument and Ellis Island Immigration Museum are managed by the National Park Service and are in both New York and New Jersey. They are joined in the harbor by Governors Island National Monument. Historic sites under federal management on Manhattan Island include Stonewall National Monument; Castle Clinton National Monument; Federal Hall National Memorial; Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site; General Grant National Memorial (Grant's Tomb); African Burial Ground National Monument; and Hamilton Grange National Memorial. Hundreds of properties are listed on the National Register of Historic Places or as a National Historic Landmark. State parks Main article: New York state parks There are seven state parks within the confines of New York City. Some of them include: The Clay Pit Ponds State Park Preserve is a natural area that includes extensive riding trails. Riverbank State Park is a 28-acre (11 ha) facility that rises 69 feet (21 m) over the Hudson River.[233] Marsha P. Johnson State Park is a state park in Brooklyn and Manhattan that borders the East River that was renamed in honor of Marsha P. Johnson.[234] City parks See also: New York City Department of Parks and Recreation The Pond and Midtown Manhattan as seen from Gapstow Bridge in Central Park The Boathouse on the Lullwater in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, almost demolished in 1964 New York City has over 28,000 acres (110 km2) of municipal parkland and 14 miles (23 km) of public beaches.[235] The largest municipal park in the city is Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx, with 2,772 acres (1,122 ha).[190][236] Central Park, an 843-acre (3.41 km2)[190] park in middle-upper Manhattan, is the most visited urban park in the United States and one of the most filmed and visited locations in the world, with 40 million visitors in 2013.[237] The park has a wide range of attractions; there are several lakes and ponds, two ice-skating rinks, the Central Park Zoo, the Central Park Conservatory Garden, and the 106-acre (0.43 km2) Jackie Onassis Reservoir.[238] Indoor attractions include Belvedere Castle with its nature center, the Swedish Cottage Marionette Theater, and the historic Carousel. On October 23, 2012, hedge fund manager John A. Paulson announced a $100 million gift to the Central Park Conservancy, the largest ever monetary donation to New York City's park system.[239] Washington Square Park is a prominent landmark in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan. The Washington Square Arch at the northern gateway to the park is an iconic symbol of both New York University and Greenwich Village. Prospect Park in Brooklyn has a 90-acre (36 ha) meadow, a lake, and extensive woodlands. Within the park is the historic Battle Pass, prominent in the Battle of Long Island.[240] Flushing Meadows–Corona Park in Queens, with its 897 acres (363 ha) making it the city's fourth largest park,[241] was the setting for the 1939 World's Fair and the 1964 World's Fair[242] and is host to the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center and the annual U.S. Open Tennis Championships tournament.[243] Over a fifth of the Bronx's area, 7,000 acres (28 km2), is dedicated to open space and parks, including Pelham Bay Park, Van Cortlandt Park, the Bronx Zoo, and the New York Botanical Gardens.[244] In Staten Island, the Conference House Park contains the historic Conference House, site of the only attempt of a peaceful resolution to the American Revolution which was conducted in September 1775, attended by Benjamin Franklin representing the Americans and Lord Howe representing the British Crown.[245] The historic Burial Ridge, the largest Native American burial ground within New York City, is within the park.[246] Military installations Brooklyn is home to Fort Hamilton, the U.S. military's only active duty installation within New York City,[247] aside from Coast Guard operations. The facility was established in 1825 on the site of a small battery used during the American Revolution, and it is one of America's longest serving military forts.[248] Today, Fort Hamilton serves as the headquarters of the North Atlantic Division of the United States Army Corps of Engineers and for the New York City Recruiting Battalion. It also houses the 1179th Transportation Brigade, the 722nd Aeromedical Staging Squadron, and a military entrance processing station. Other formerly active military reservations still used for National Guard and military training or reserve operations in the city include Fort Wadsworth in Staten Island and Fort Totten in Queens. Demographics Historical population Year Pop. ±% 1698 4,937 —     1712 5,840 +18.3% 1723 7,248 +24.1% 1737 10,664 +47.1% 1746 11,717 +9.9% 1756 13,046 +11.3% 1771 21,863 +67.6% 1790 49,401 +126.0% 1800 79,216 +60.4% 1810 119,734 +51.1% 1820 152,056 +27.0% 1830 242,278 +59.3% 1840 391,114 +61.4% 1850 696,115 +78.0% 1860 1,174,779 +68.8% 1870 1,478,103 +25.8% 1880 1,911,698 +29.3% 1890 2,507,414 +31.2% 1900 3,437,202 +37.1% 1910 4,766,883 +38.7% 1920 5,620,048 +17.9% 1930 6,930,446 +23.3% 1940 7,454,995 +7.6% 1950 7,891,957 +5.9% 1960 7,781,984 −1.4% 1970 7,894,862 +1.5% 1980 7,071,639 −10.4% 1990 7,322,564 +3.5% 2000 8,008,278 +9.4% 2010 8,175,133 +2.1% 2020 8,804,190 +7.7% Note: Census figures (1790–2010) cover the present area of all five boroughs, before and after the 1898 consolidation. For New York City itself before annexing part of the Bronx in 1874, see Manhattan#Demographics.[249] Source: U.S. Decennial Census;[250] 1698–1771[251] 1790–1890[249][252] 1900–1990[253] 2000–2010[254][255][256] 2010–2020[257] Main articles: Demographics of New York City, New York City ethnic enclaves, and Demographic history of New York City Historical demographics 2020[258] 2010[259] 1990[260] 1970[260] 1940[260] New York City is the most populous city in the United States,[261] with 8,804,190 residents incorporating more immigration into the city than outmigration since the 2010 United States census.[257][262][263] More than twice as many people live in New York City as compared to Los Angeles, the second-most populous U.S. city;[261] and New York has more than three times the population of Chicago, the third-most populous U.S. city. New York City gained more residents between 2010 and 2020 (629,000) than any other U.S. city, and a greater amount than the total sum of the gains over the same decade of the next four largest U.S. cities, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, and Phoenix, Arizona combined.[264][265] New York City's population is about 44% of New York State's population,[266] and about 39% of the population of the New York metropolitan area.[267] The majority of New York City residents in 2020 (5,141,538, or 58.4%) were living on Long Island, in Brooklyn, or in Queens.[268] The New York City metropolitan statistical area, has the largest foreign-born population of any metropolitan region in the world. The New York region continues to be by far the leading metropolitan gateway for legal immigrants admitted into the United States, substantially exceeding the combined totals of Los Angeles and Miami.[269] Population density In 2020, the city had an estimated population density of 29,302.37 inhabitants per square mile (11,313.71/km2), rendering it the nation's most densely populated of all larger municipalities (those with more than 100,000 residents), with several small cities (of fewer than 100,000) in adjacent Hudson County, New Jersey having greater density, as per the 2010 census.[270] Geographically co-extensive with New York County, the borough of Manhattan's 2017 population density of 72,918 inhabitants per square mile (28,154/km2) makes it the highest of any county in the United States and higher than the density of any individual American city.[271][272][273] The next three densest counties in the United States, placing second through fourth, are also New York boroughs: Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Queens respectively.[274] Race and ethnicity Further information: African Americans in New York City, Bangladeshis in New York City, Caribbeans in New York City, Chinese in New York City, Dominican Americans in New York City, Filipinos in New York City, Fuzhounese in New York City, Indians in New York City, Irish in New York City, Italians in New York City, Japanese in New York City, Koreans in New York City, Pakistanis in New York City, Puerto Ricans in New York City, Russians in New York City, and Ukrainians in New York City The city's population in 2020 was 30.9% White (non-Hispanic), 28.7% Hispanic or Latino, 20.2% Black or African American (non-Hispanic), 15.6% Asian, and 0.2% Native American (non-Hispanic).[275] A total of 3.4% of the non-Hispanic population identified with more than one race. Throughout its history, New York has been a major port of entry for immigrants into the United States. More than 12 million European immigrants were received at Ellis Island between 1892 and 1954.[276] The term "melting pot" was first coined to describe densely populated immigrant neighborhoods on the Lower East Side. By 1900, Germans were the largest immigrant group, followed by the Irish, Jews, and Italians.[277] In 1940, Whites represented 92% of the city's population.[260] Approximately 37% of the city's population is foreign born, and more than half of all children are born to mothers who are immigrants as of 2013.[278][279] In New York, no single country or region of origin dominates.[278] The ten largest sources of foreign-born individuals in the city as of 2011 were the Dominican Republic, China, Mexico, Guyana, Jamaica, Ecuador, Haiti, India, Russia, and Trinidad and Tobago,[280] while the Bangladeshi-born immigrant population has become one of the fastest growing in the city, counting over 74,000 by 2011.[26][281] Asian Americans in New York City, according to the 2010 census, number more than one million, greater than the combined totals of San Francisco and Los Angeles.[282] New York contains the highest total Asian population of any U.S. city proper.[283] The New York City borough of Queens is home to the state's largest Asian American population and the largest Andean (Colombian, Ecuadorian, Peruvian, and Bolivian) populations in the United States, and is also the most ethnically and linguistically diverse urban area in the world.[284][185] Tens of thousands of asylum seekers from Venezuela have arrived in New York City since 2022.[285] Chinatown, Manhattan Lower Manhattan's Little Italy Koreatown, Midtown Manhattan Upper Manhattan's Spanish Harlem Little Russia, Brooklyn Little India, Queens Little Brazil, Manhattan Little Manila, Queens The Chinese population is the fastest-growing nationality in New York State. Multiple satellites of the original Manhattan's Chinatown—home to the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere,[286] as well as in Brooklyn, and around Flushing, Queens, are thriving as traditionally urban enclaves—while also expanding rapidly eastward into suburban Nassau County[287] on Long Island,[288] as the New York metropolitan region and New York State have become the top destinations for new Chinese immigrants, respectively, and large-scale Chinese immigration continues into New York City and surrounding areas,[269][289][290][291][292][293] with the largest metropolitan Chinese diaspora outside Asia,[26][294] including an estimated 812,410 individuals in 2015.[295] In 2012, 6.3% of New York City was of Chinese ethnicity, with nearly three-fourths living in either Queens or Brooklyn, geographically on Long Island.[296] A community numbering 20,000 Korean-Chinese (Chaoxianzu or Joseonjok) is centered in Flushing, Queens, while New York City is also home to the largest Tibetan population outside China, India, and Nepal, also centered in Queens.[297] Koreans made up 1.2% of the city's population, and Japanese 0.3%. Filipinos were the largest Southeast Asian ethnic group at 0.8%, followed by Vietnamese, who made up 0.2% of New York City's population in 2010. Indians are the largest South Asian group, comprising 2.4% of the city's population, with Bangladeshis and Pakistanis at 0.7% and 0.5%, respectively.[298] Queens is the preferred borough of settlement for Asian Indians, Koreans, Filipinos, and Malaysians,[299][269] and other Southeast Asians;[300] while Brooklyn is receiving large numbers of both West Indian and Asian Indian immigrants, and Manhattan is the favored destination for Japanese. New York City has the largest European and non-Hispanic white population of any American city. At 2.7 million in 2012, New York's non-Hispanic White population is larger than the non-Hispanic White populations of Los Angeles (1.1 million), Chicago (865,000), and Houston (550,000) combined.[301] The non-Hispanic White population was 6.6 million in 1940.[302] The non-Hispanic White population has begun to increase since 2010.[303] The European diaspora residing in the city is very diverse. According to 2012 census estimates, there were roughly 560,000 Italian Americans, 385,000 Irish Americans, 253,000 German Americans, 223,000 Russian Americans, 201,000 Polish Americans, and 137,000 English Americans. Additionally, Greek and French Americans numbered 65,000 each, with those of Hungarian descent estimated at 60,000 people. Ukrainian and Scottish Americans numbered 55,000 and 35,000, respectively. People identifying ancestry from Spain numbered 30,838 total in 2010.[304] People of Norwegian and Swedish descent both stood at about 20,000 each, while people of Czech, Lithuanian, Portuguese, Scotch-Irish, and Welsh descent all numbered between 12,000 and 14,000.[305] Arab Americans number over 160,000 in New York City,[306] with the highest concentration in Brooklyn. Central Asians, primarily Uzbek Americans, are a rapidly growing segment of the city's non-Hispanic White population, enumerating over 30,000, and including more than half of all Central Asian immigrants to the United States,[307] most settling in Queens or Brooklyn. Albanian Americans are most highly concentrated in the Bronx,[308] while Astoria, Queens is the epicenter of American Greek culture as well as the Cypriot community. New York is also home to the highest Jewish population of any city in the world, numbering 1.6 million in 2022, more than Tel Aviv and Jerusalem combined.[309] In the borough of Brooklyn, an estimated 1 in 4 residents is Jewish.[310] The city's Jewish communities are derived from many diverse sects, predominantly from around the Middle East and Eastern Europe, and including a rapidly growing Orthodox Jewish population, also the largest outside Israel.[297] The metropolitan area is also home to 20% of the nation's Indian Americans and at least 20 Little India enclaves, and 15% of all Korean Americans and four Koreatowns;[255] the largest Asian Indian population in the Western Hemisphere; the largest Russian American,[289] Italian American, and African American populations; the largest Dominican American, Puerto Rican American, and South American[289] and second-largest overall Hispanic population in the United States, numbering 4.8 million;[304] and includes multiple established Chinatowns within New York City alone.[311] Ecuador, Colombia, Guyana, Peru, Brazil, and Venezuela are the top source countries from South America for immigrants to the New York City region; the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Haiti, and Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean; Nigeria, Egypt, Ghana, Tanzania, Kenya, and South Africa from Africa; and El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala in Central America.[312] Amidst a resurgence of Puerto Rican migration to New York City, this population had increased to approximately 1.3 million in the metropolitan area as of 2013. Since 2010, Little Australia has emerged and is growing rapidly, representing the Australasian presence in Nolita, Manhattan.[313][314][315][316] In 2011, there were an estimated 20,000 Australian residents of New York City, nearly quadruple the 5,537 in 2005.[317][318] Qantas Airways of Australia and Air New Zealand have been planning for long-haul flights from New York to Sydney and Auckland, which would both rank among the longest non-stop flights in the world.[319] A Little Sri Lanka has developed in the Tompkinsville neighborhood of Staten Island.[320] Le Petit Sénégal, or Little Senegal, is based in Harlem. Richmond Hill, Queens is often thought of as "Little Guyana" for its large Guyanese community,[321] as well as Punjab Avenue (ਪੰਜਾਬ ਐਵੇਨਿਊ), or Little Punjab, for its high concentration of Punjabi people. Little Poland is expanding rapidly in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Sexual orientation and gender identity Main articles: LGBT culture in New York City, Stonewall riots, NYC Pride March, List of largest LGBT events, and List of LGBT people from New York City Further information: New York City Drag March, Queens Liberation Front, Queens Pride Parade, Greenwich Village Halloween Parade, and Same-sex marriage in New York Philippine-born Geena Rocero introducing International Transgender Day of Visibility Caribbean NYC-LGBTQ Equality Project The NYC Dyke March, the world's largest celebration of lesbian pride and culture[322] Spectators at a BDSM street fair in Lower Manhattan NYC Pride March in Manhattan, the world's largest[323][324] The Multicultural Festival at the 2018 Queens Pride Parade New York City has been described as the gay capital of the world and the central node of the LGBTQ+ sociopolitical ecosystem, and is home to one of the world's largest LGBTQ populations and the most prominent.[48] The New York metropolitan area is home to about 570,000 self-identifying gay and bisexual people, the largest in the United States.[325][326] Same-sex sexual activity between consenting adults has been legal in New York since the New York v. Onofre case in 1980 which invalidated the state's sodomy law.[327] Same-sex marriages in New York were legalized on June 24, 2011, and were authorized to take place on July 23, 2011.[328] Brian Silverman, the author of Frommer's New York City from $90 a Day, wrote the city has "one of the world's largest, loudest, and most powerful LGBT communities", and "Gay and lesbian culture is as much a part of New York's basic identity as yellow cabs, high-rise buildings, and Broadway theatre".[329] LGBT travel guide Queer in the World states, "The fabulosity of Gay New York is unrivaled on Earth, and queer culture seeps into every corner of its five boroughs".[330] LGBT advocate and entertainer Madonna stated metaphorically, "Anyways, not only is New York City the best place in the world because of the queer people here. Let me tell you something, if you can make it here, then you must be queer."[331] The annual New York City Pride March (or gay pride parade) proceeds southward down Fifth Avenue and ends at Greenwich Village in Lower Manhattan; the parade is the largest pride parade in the world, attracting tens of thousands of participants and millions of sidewalk spectators each June.[332][323] The annual Queens Pride Parade is held in Jackson Heights and is accompanied by the ensuing Multicultural Parade.[333] Stonewall 50 – WorldPride NYC 2019 was the largest international Pride celebration in history, produced by Heritage of Pride and enhanced through a partnership with the I ❤ NY program's LGBT division, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, with 150,000 participants and five million spectators attending in Manhattan alone.[334] New York City is also home to the largest transgender population in the world, estimated at more than 50,000 in 2018, concentrated in Manhattan and Queens; however, until the June 1969 Stonewall riots, this community had felt marginalized and neglected by the gay community.[333][140] Brooklyn Liberation March, the largest transgender-rights demonstration in LGBTQ history, took place on June 14, 2020, stretching from Grand Army Plaza to Fort Greene, Brooklyn, focused on supporting Black transgender lives, drawing an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 participants.[335][336] Religion Religious affiliation (2014)[337][338] Christian   59% Catholic   33% Protestant   23% Other Christian   3% Unaffiliated   24% Jewish   8% Muslim   4% Hindu   2% Buddhist   1% Other faiths   1% Religious affiliations in New York City The landmark Neo-Gothic Roman Catholic St. Patrick's Cathedral, Midtown Manhattan Central Synagogue, a notable Reform synagogue located at 652 Lexington Avenue The Islamic Cultural Center of New York in Upper Manhattan, the first mosque built in New York City Ganesh Temple in Flushing, Queens, the oldest Hindu temple in the U.S. Christianity Further information: St. Patrick's Cathedral (Midtown Manhattan), Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree, and Christmas in New York Largely as a result of Western European missionary work and colonialism, Christianity is the largest religion (59% adherent) in New York City,[337] which is home to the highest number of churches of any city in the world.[16] Roman Catholicism is the largest Christian denomination (33%), followed by Protestantism (23%), and other Christian denominations (3%). The Roman Catholic population are primarily served by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York and Diocese of Brooklyn. Eastern Catholics are divided into numerous jurisdictions throughout the city. Evangelical Protestantism is the largest branch of Protestantism in the city (9%), followed by Mainline Protestantism (8%), while the converse is usually true for other cities and metropolitan areas.[338] In Evangelicalism, Baptists are the largest group; in Mainline Protestantism, Reformed Protestants compose the largest subset. The majority of historically African American churches are affiliated with the National Baptist Convention (USA) and Progressive National Baptist Convention. The Church of God in Christ is one of the largest predominantly Black Pentecostal denominations in the area. Approximately 1% of the population is Mormon. The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America and other Orthodox Christians (mainstream and independent) were the largest Eastern Christian groups. The American Orthodox Catholic Church (initially led by Aftimios Ofiesh) was founded in New York City in 1927. Judaism Main articles: Judaism in New York City, History of the Jews in New York, and Jewish arrival in New Amsterdam Judaism, the second-largest religion practiced in New York City, with approximately 1.6 million adherents as of 2022, represents the largest Jewish community of any city in the world, greater than the combined totals of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.[339][340] Nearly half of the city's Jews live in Brooklyn, which is one-quarter Jewish.[341][342] The ethno-religious population makes up 18.4% of the city and its religious demographic makes up 8%.[343] The first recorded Jewish settler was Jacob Barsimson, who arrived in August 1654 on a passport from the Dutch West India Company.[344] Following the assassination of Alexander II of Russia, for which many blamed "the Jews", the 36 years beginning in 1881 experienced the largest wave of Jewish immigration to the United States.[345] In 2012, the largest Jewish denominations were Orthodox, Haredi, and Conservative Judaism.[346] Reform Jewish communities are prevalent through the area. 770 Eastern Parkway is the headquarters of the international Chabad Lubavitch movement, and is considered an icon, while Congregation Emanu-El of New York in Manhattan is the largest Reform synagogue in the world. Islam Main article: Islam in New York City Islam ranks as the third largest religion in New York City, following Christianity and Judaism, with estimates ranging between 600,000 and 1,000,000 observers of Islam, including 10% of the city's public school children.[347] Given both the size and scale of the city, as well as its relative proxinity and accessibility by air transportation to the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia, and South Asia, 22.3% of American Muslims live in New York City, with 1.5 million Muslims in the greater New York metropolitan area, representing the largest metropolitan Muslim population in the Western Hemisphere[348]—and the most ethnically diverse Muslim population of any city in the world.[349] Powers Street Mosque in Brooklyn is one of the oldest continuously operating mosques in the U.S., and represents the first Islamic organization in both the city and the state of New York.[350][351] Hinduism and other religious affiliations Further information: Hindu Temple Society of North America Following these three largest religious groups in New York City are Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism, and a variety of other religions. As of 2023, 24% of Greater New Yorkers identified with no organized religious affiliation, including 4% Atheist.[352] Wealth and income disparity New York City, like other large cities, has a high degree of income disparity, as indicated by its Gini coefficient of 0.55 as of 2017.[353] In the first quarter of 2014, the average weekly wage in New York County (Manhattan) was $2,749, representing the highest total among large counties in the United States.[354] In 2022, New York City was home to the highest number of billionaires of any city in the world, including former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, with a total of 107.[21] New York also had the highest density of millionaires per capita among major U.S. cities in 2014, at 4.6% of residents.[355] New York City is one of the relatively few American cities levying an income tax (about 3%) on its residents.[356][357][358] As of 2018, there were 78,676 homeless people in New York City.[359] Economy Main article: Economy of New York City Further information: Economy of Long Island and Economy of New York Midtown Manhattan, the world's largest central business district[360] see caption The Financial District of Lower Manhattan New York City is a global hub of business and commerce and an established safe haven for global investors, and is sometimes described as the capital of the world.[361] The term global city was popularized by sociologist Saskia Sassen in her 1991 work, The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo.[362] New York is a center for worldwide banking and finance, health care and life sciences,[13] medical technology and research, retailing, world trade, transportation, tourism, real estate, new media, traditional media, advertising, legal services, accountancy, insurance, both musical and prose theater, fashion, and the arts in the United States; while Silicon Alley, metonymous for New York's broad-spectrum high technology sphere, continues to expand. The Port of New York and New Jersey is a major economic engine, benefitting post-Panamax from the expansion of the Panama Canal, and accelerating ahead of California seaports in monthly cargo volumes in 2023.[363][364][365] Many Fortune 500 corporations are headquartered in New York City,[366] as are a large number of multinational corporations. New York City has been ranked first among cities across the globe in attracting capital, business, and tourists.[367][368] New York City's role as the top global center for the advertising industry is metonymously reflected as Madison Avenue.[369] The city's fashion industry provides approximately 180,000 employees with $11 billion in annual wages.[370] The non-profit Partnership for New York City, currently headed by Kathryn Wylde, is the city's pre-eminent private business association, comprising approximately 330 corporate leaders in membership. The fashion industry is based in Midtown Manhattan and is represented by the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CDFA), headquartered in Lower Manhattan. Significant economic sectors also include non-profit institutions, and universities. Manufacturing declined over the 20th century but still accounts for significant employment. particularly in smaller operations. The city's apparel and garment industry, historically centered on the Garment District in Manhattan, peaked in 1950, when more than 323,000 workers were employed in the industry in New York. In 2015, fewer than 23,000 New York City residents were employed in the manufacture of garments, accessories, and finished textiles, although efforts to revive the industry were underway,[371] and the American fashion industry continues to be metonymized as Seventh Avenue.[372] Chocolate is New York City's leading specialty-food export, with up to $234 million worth of exports each year.[373] Godiva, one of the world's largest chocolatiers, is headquartered in Manhattan,[374] and an unofficial chocolate district in Brooklyn is home to several chocolate makers and retailers.[375] Food processing is a $5 billion industry that employs more than 19,000 residents. In 2017, there were 205,592 employer firms in New York City.[259] Of those firms, 64,514 were owned by minorities, and 125,877 were shown to be owned by non-minorities. Veterans owned 5,506 of those firms.[259] View of Midtown Manhattan from New Jersey, taken in September 2021 Wall Street Main article: Wall Street A large flag is stretched over Roman style columns on the front of a large building. The New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street, the world's largest stock exchange per total market capitalization of its listed companies[376][377] New York City's most important economic sector lies in its role as the headquarters for the U.S. financial industry, metonymously known as Wall Street. The city's securities industry continues to form the largest segment of the city's financial sector and is an important economic engine. Many large financial companies are headquartered in New York City, and the city is also home to a burgeoning number of financial startup companies. Lower Manhattan is home to the New York Stock Exchange, at 11 Wall Street, and the Nasdaq, at 165 Broadway, representing the world's largest and second largest stock exchanges, respectively, when measured both by overall average daily trading volume and by total market capitalization of their listed companies in 2013.[376][377] Investment banking fees on Wall Street totaled approximately $40 billion in 2012,[378] while in 2013, senior New York City bank officers who manage risk and compliance functions earned as much as $324,000 annually.[379] In fiscal year 2013–14, Wall Street's securities industry generated 19% of New York State's tax revenue.[380] New York City remains the largest global center for trading in public equity and debt capital markets, driven in part by the size and financial development of the U.S. economy.[381]: 31–32 [382] New York also leads in hedge fund management; private equity; and the monetary volume of mergers and acquisitions. Several investment banks and investment managers headquartered in Manhattan are important participants in other global financial centers.[381]: 34–35  New York is also the principal commercial banking center of the United States.[383] Many of the world's largest media conglomerates are also based in the city. Manhattan contained over 500 million square feet (46.5 million m2) of office space in 2018,[384] making it the largest office market in the United States,[385] while Midtown Manhattan, with 400 million square feet (37.2 million m2) in 2018,[384] is the largest central business district in the world.[386] Tech and biotech Further information: Tech:NYC, Tech companies in New York City, Biotech companies in New York City, and Silicon Alley View from the Empire State Building looking southward (downtown) at the central Flatiron District, the cradle of Silicon Alley, now metonymous for the New York metropolitan region's high tech sector The Cornell Tech at the Roosevelt Island New York is a top-tier global technology hub.[11] Silicon Alley, once a metonym for the sphere encompassing the metropolitan region's high technology industries,[387] is no longer a relevant moniker as the city's tech environment has expanded dramatically both in location and in its scope. New York City's current tech sphere encompasses a universal array of applications involving artificial intelligence, the internet, new media, financial technology (fintech) and cryptocurrency, biotechnology, game design, and other fields within information technology that are supported by its entrepreneurship ecosystem and venture capital investments. Technology-driven startup companies and entrepreneurial employment are growing in New York City and the region. The technology sector has been claiming a greater share of New York City's economy since 2010.[388] Tech:NYC, founded in 2016, is a non-profit organization which represents New York City's technology industry with government, civic institutions, in business, and in the media, and whose primary goals are to further augment New York's substantial tech talent base and to advocate for policies that will nurture tech companies to grow in the city.[389] The biotechnology sector is also growing in New York City, based upon the city's strength in academic scientific research and public and commercial financial support. On December 19, 2011, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced his choice of Cornell University and Technion-Israel Institute of Technology to build a $2 billion graduate school of applied sciences called Cornell Tech on Roosevelt Island with the goal of transforming New York City into the world's premier technology capital.[390][391] By mid-2014, Accelerator, a biotech investment firm, had raised more than $30 million from investors, including Eli Lilly and Company, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson, for initial funding to create biotechnology startups at the Alexandria Center for Life Science, which encompasses more than 700,000 square feet (65,000 m2) on East 29th Street and promotes collaboration among scientists and entrepreneurs at the center and with nearby academic, medical, and research institutions. The New York City Economic Development Corporation's Early Stage Life Sciences Funding Initiative and venture capital partners, including Celgene, General Electric Ventures, and Eli Lilly, committed a minimum of $100 million to help launch 15 to 20 ventures in life sciences and biotechnology.[392] Real estate Deutsche Bank Center as seen from Central Park West Real estate is a major force in the city's economy, as the total value of all New York City property was assessed at US$1.072 trillion for the 2017 fiscal year, an increase of 10.6% from the previous year, with 89% of the increase coming from market effects.[393] In 2014, Manhattan was home to six of the top ten ZIP codes in the United States by median housing price.[394] Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan commands the highest retail rents in the world, at $3,000 per square foot ($32,000/m2) in 2017.[395] In 2019, the most expensive home sale ever in the United States achieved completion in Manhattan, at a selling price of $238 million, for a 24,000 square feet (2,200 m2) penthouse apartment overlooking Central Park.[396] In 2022, one-bedroom apartments in Manhattan rented at a median monthly price of US$3,600.00, one of the world's highest. New York City real estate is a safe haven for global investors.[19] Tourism Main article: Tourism in New York City Times Square, the hub of the Broadway theater district and a global media center, is one of the world's leading tourist attractions with 50 million tourists annually.[37] The I Love New York logo designed by Milton Glaser in 1977 Tourism is a vital industry for New York City, and NYC & Company represents the city's official bureau of tourism. New York has witnessed a growing combined volume of international and domestic tourists, reflecting over 60 million visitors to the city per year, the world's busiest tourist destination.[16] Approximately 12 million visitors to New York City have been from outside the United States, with the highest numbers from the United Kingdom, Canada, Brazil, and China. Multiple sources have called New York the most photographed city in the world.[397][398][399] I Love New York (stylized I ❤ NY) is both a logo and a song that are the basis of an advertising campaign and have been used since 1977 to promote tourism in New York City,[400] and later to promote New York State as well. The trademarked logo, owned by New York State Empire State Development,[401] appears in souvenir shops and brochures throughout the city and state, some licensed, many not. The song is the state song of New York. The majority of the most high-profile tourist destinations to the city are situated in Manhattan. These include Times Square; Broadway theater productions; the Empire State Building; the Statue of Liberty; Ellis Island; the United Nations headquarters; the World Trade Center (including the National September 11 Memorial & Museum and One World Trade Center); the art museums along Museum Mile; green spaces such as Central Park, Washington Square Park, the High Line, and the medieval gardens of The Cloisters; the Stonewall Inn; Rockefeller Center; ethnic enclaves including the Manhattan Chinatown, Koreatown, Curry Hill, Harlem, Spanish Harlem, Little Italy, and Little Australia; luxury shopping along Fifth and Madison Avenues; and events such as the Halloween Parade in Greenwich Village; the Brooklyn Bridge (shared with Brooklyn); the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade; the lighting of the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree; the St. Patrick's Day Parade; seasonal activities such as ice skating in Central Park in the wintertime; the Tribeca Film Festival; and free performances in Central Park at SummerStage.[402] Points of interest have also developed in the city outside Manhattan and have made the outer boroughs tourist destinations in their own right. These include numerous ethnic enclaves; the Unisphere, Flushing Meadows–Corona Park, and Downtown Flushing in Queens; Downtown Brooklyn, Coney Island, Williamsburg, Park Slope, and Prospect Park in Brooklyn; the Bronx Zoo, the New York Botanical Garden, and the Grand Concourse in the Bronx; and the Staten Island Ferry shuttling passengers between Staten Island and the South Ferry Terminal bordering Battery Park in Lower Manhattan, at the historical birthplace of New York City. Media and entertainment Main article: Media in New York City Further information: New Yorkers in journalism Rockefeller Center, one of Manhattan's leading media and entertainment hubs Times Square Studios on Times Square is sometimes called the "Crossroads of the World". New York City has been described as the entertainment[16][403][404] and digital media capital of the world.[405] The city is a prominent location for the American entertainment industry, with many films, television series, books, and other media being set there.[406] As of 2019, New York City was the second-largest center for filmmaking and television production in the United States, producing about 200 feature films annually, employing 130,000 individuals. The filmed entertainment industry has been growing in New York, contributing nearly $9 billion to the New York City economy alone as of 2015.[407] By volume, New York is the world leader in independent film production—one-third of all American independent films are produced there.[408][409] The Association of Independent Commercial Producers is also based in New York.[410] In the first five months of 2014 alone, location filming for television pilots in New York City exceeded the record production levels for all of 2013,[411] with New York surpassing Los Angeles as the top North American city for the same distinction during the 2013–2014 cycle.[412] New York City is the center for the advertising, music, newspaper, digital media, and publishing industries and is also the largest media market in North America.[413] Some of the city's media conglomerates and institutions include Warner Bros. Discovery, the Thomson Reuters Corporation, the Associated Press, Bloomberg L.P., the News Corp, The New York Times Company, NBCUniversal, the Hearst Corporation, AOL, Fox Corporation, and Paramount Global. Seven of the world's top eight global advertising agency networks have their headquarters in New York.[414] Two of the top three record labels' headquarters are in New York: Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group. Universal Music Group also has offices in New York. New media enterprises are contributing an increasingly important component to the city's central role in the media sphere. More than 200 newspapers and 350 consumer magazines have an office in the city,[409] and the publishing industry employs about 25,000 people.[415] Two of the three national daily newspapers with the largest circulations in the United States are published in New York: The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times (NYT). Nicknamed "the Grey Lady", the NYT has won the most Pulitzer Prizes for journalism and is considered the U.S. media's newspaper of record.[34] Tabloid newspapers in the city include the New York Daily News, which was founded in 1919 by Joseph Medill Patterson,[416] and The New York Post, founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton.[417] At the local news end of the media spectrum, Patch Media is also headquartered in Manhattan. New York City also has a comprehensive ethnic press, with 270 newspapers and magazines published in more than 40 languages.[418] El Diario La Prensa is New York's largest Spanish-language daily and the oldest in the nation.[419] The New York Amsterdam News, published in Harlem, is a prominent African American newspaper. The Village Voice, historically the largest alternative newspaper in the United States, announced in 2017 that it would cease publication of its print edition and convert to a fully digital venture.[420] The television and radio industry developed in New York and is a significant employer in the city's economy. The three major American broadcast networks are all headquartered in New York: ABC, CBS, and NBC. Many cable networks are based in the city as well, including CNN, MSNBC, MTV, Fox News, HBO, Showtime, Bravo, Food Network, AMC, and Comedy Central. News 12 Networks operated News 12 The Bronx and News 12 Brooklyn. WBAI, with news and information programming, is one of the few socialist radio stations operating in the United States. New York is also a major center for non-commercial educational media. NYC Media is the official public radio, television, and online media network and broadcasting service of New York City,[421] and this network has produced several original Emmy Award-winning shows covering music and culture in city neighborhoods and city government. The oldest public-access television channel in the United States is the Manhattan Neighborhood Network, founded in 1971.[422] WNET is the city's major public television station and a primary source of national Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) television programming. WNYC, a public radio station owned by the city until 1997, has the largest public radio audience in the United States.[423] Climate resiliency As an oceanic port city, New York City is vulnerable to the long-term manifestations of global warming and rising seas. Climate change has spawned the development of a significant climate resiliency and environmental sustainability economy in the city. Governors Island is slated to host a US$1 billion research and education center intended to establish New York's role as the global leader in addressing the climate crisis.[424] Education Main article: Education in New York City Butler Library at Columbia University, described as one of the most beautiful college libraries in the United States[425] The Washington Square Arch, an unofficial icon of both New York University and the Greenwich Village neighborhood that surrounds it Fordham University's Keating Hall in the Bronx New York City has the largest educational system of any city in the world.[16] The city's educational infrastructure spans primary education, secondary education, higher education, and research. Primary and secondary education The New York City Public Schools system, managed by the New York City Department of Education, is the largest public school system in the United States, serving about 1.1 million students in more than 1,700 separate primary and secondary schools.[426] The city's public school system includes nine specialized high schools to serve academically and artistically gifted students. The city government pays the Pelham Public Schools to educate a very small, detached section of the Bronx.[427] The New York City Charter School Center assists the setup of new charter schools.[428] There are approximately 900 additional privately run secular and religious schools in the city.[429] Higher education and research More than a million students, the highest number of any city in the United States,[430] are enrolled in New York City's more than 120 higher education institutions, with more than half a million in the City University of New York (CUNY) system alone as of 2020, including both degree and professional programs.[431] According to Academic Ranking of World Universities, New York City has, on average, the best higher education institutions of any global city.[432] The public CUNY system is one of the largest universities in the nation, comprising 25 institutions across all five boroughs: senior colleges, community colleges, and other graduate/professional schools. The public State University of New York (SUNY) system includes campuses in New York City, including SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University, Fashion Institute of Technology, SUNY Maritime College, and SUNY College of Optometry. New York City is home to such notable private universities as Barnard College, Columbia University, Cooper Union, Fordham University, New York University, New York Institute of Technology, Rockefeller University, and Yeshiva University; several of these universities are ranked among the top universities in the world,[433][434] while some of the world's most prestigious institutions like Princeton University and Yale University remain in the New York metropolitan area. The city also hosts other smaller private colleges and universities, including many religious and special-purpose institutions, such as Pace University, St. John's University, The Juilliard School, Manhattan College, Adelphi University - Manhattan, Mercy College (New York), The College of Mount Saint Vincent, Parsons School of Design, The New School, Pratt Institute, New York Film Academy, The School of Visual Arts, The King's College, Marymount Manhattan College, and Wagner College. Much of the scientific research in the city is done in medicine and the life sciences. In 2019, the New York metropolitan area ranked first on the list of cities and metropolitan areas by share of published articles in life sciences.[435] New York City has the most postgraduate life sciences degrees awarded annually in the United States, and in 2012, 43,523 licensed physicians were practicing in New York City.[436] There are 127 Nobel laureates with roots in local institutions as of 2004.[437] Major biomedical research institutions include Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Rockefeller University, SUNY Downstate Medical Center, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, and Weill Cornell Medical College, being joined by the Cornell University/Technion-Israel Institute of Technology venture on Roosevelt Island. The graduates of SUNY Maritime College in the Bronx earned the highest average annual salary of any university graduates in the United States, $144,000 as of 2017.[438] Human resources Public health Main articles: New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation and New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene New York-Presbyterian Hospital, affiliated with Columbia University and Cornell University, is the largest hospital and largest private employer in New York City and one of the world's busiest hospitals.[439] The New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC) operates the public hospitals and outpatient clinics in New York City. A public benefit corporation with As of 2021, HHC is the largest municipal healthcare system in the United States with $10.9 billion in annual revenues,[440] HHC is the largest municipal healthcare system in the United States serving 1.4 million patients, including more than 475,000 uninsured city residents.[441] HHC was created in 1969 by the New York State Legislature as a public benefit corporation (Chapter 1016 of the Laws 1969).[442] HHC operates 11 acute care hospitals, five nursing homes, six diagnostic and treatment centers, and more than 70 community-based primary care sites, serving primarily the poor and working class. HHC's MetroPlus Health Plan is one of the New York area's largest providers of government-sponsored health insurance and is the plan of choice for nearly half a million New Yorkers.[443] HHC's facilities annually provide millions of New Yorkers services interpreted in more than 190 languages.[444] The most well-known hospital in the HHC system is Bellevue Hospital, the oldest public hospital in the United States. Bellevue is the designated hospital for treatment of the President of the United States and other world leaders if they become sick or injured while in New York City.[445] The president of HHC is Ramanathan Raju, MD, a surgeon and former CEO of the Cook County health system in Illinois.[446] In August 2017, Mayor Bill de Blasio signed legislation outlawing pharmacies from selling cigarettes once their existing licenses to do so expired, beginning in 2018.[447] Public safety Police and law enforcement Main articles: New York City Police Department and Law enforcement in New York City Further information: Police surveillance in New York City and Crime in New York City The New York Police Department (NYPD), the largest police force in the United States NYPD police officers in Brooklyn The New York Police Department (NYPD) has been the largest police force in the United States by a significant margin, with more than 35,000 sworn officers.[448] Members of the NYPD are frequently referred to by politicians, the media, and their own police cars by the nickname, New York's Finest. Crime overall has trended downward in New York City since the 1990s.[449] In 2012, the NYPD came under scrutiny for its use of a stop-and-frisk program,[450][451][452] which has undergone several policy revisions since then. In 2014, New York City had the third-lowest murder rate among the largest U.S. cities,[453] having become significantly safer after a spike in crime in the 1970s through 1990s.[454] Violent crime in New York City decreased more than 75% from 1993 to 2005, and continued decreasing during periods when the nation as a whole saw increases.[455] By 2002, New York City was ranked 197th in crime among the 216 U.S. cities with populations greater than 100,000.[455] In 1992, the city recorded 2,245 murders.[456] In 2005, the homicide rate was at its lowest level since 1966,[457] and in 2009, the city recorded fewer than 461 homicides for the first time ever since crime statistics were first published in 1963.[456] New York City has stricter gun laws than most other cities in the U.S.—a license to own any firearm is required in New York City, and the NY SAFE Act of 2013 banned assault weapons—and New York state had the fifth lowest gun death rate of the fifty states in 2020.[458] New York City recorded 491 murders in 2021.[459] In 2017, 60.1% of violent crime suspects were Black, 29.6% Hispanic, 6.5% White, 3.6% Asian and 0.2% American Indian.[460] Sociologists and criminologists have not reached consensus on the explanation for the dramatic long-term decrease in the city's crime rate. Some attribute the phenomenon to new tactics used by the NYPD,[461] including its use of CompStat and the broken windows theory.[462] Others cite the end of the crack epidemic and demographic changes,[463] including from immigration.[464] Another theory is that widespread exposure to lead pollution from automobile exhaust, which can lower intelligence and increase aggression levels, incited the initial crime wave in the mid-20th century, most acutely affecting heavily trafficked cities like New York. A strong correlation was found demonstrating that violent crime rates in New York and other big cities began to fall after lead was removed from American gasoline in the 1970s.[465] Another theory cited to explain New York City's falling homicide rate is the inverse correlation between the number of murders and the increasingly wet climate in the city.[466] Organized crime has long been associated with New York City, beginning with the Forty Thieves and the Roach Guards in the Five Points neighborhood in the 1820s, followed by the Tongs in the same neighborhood, which ultimately evolved into Chinatown, Manhattan. The 20th century saw a rise in the Mafia, dominated by the Five Families, as well as in gangs, including the Black Spades.[467] The Mafia and gang presence has declined in the city in the 21st century.[468][469] Firefighting Main article: New York City Fire Department The Fire Department of New York (FDNY), the largest municipal fire department in the United States The Fire Department of New York (FDNY) provides fire protection, technical rescue, primary response to biological, chemical, and radioactive hazards, and emergency medical services for the five boroughs of New York City. The FDNY is the largest municipal fire department in the United States and the second largest in the world after the Tokyo Fire Department. The FDNY employs approximately 11,080 uniformed firefighters and more than 3,300 uniformed EMTs and paramedics. The FDNY's motto is New York's Bravest. The fire department faces multifaceted firefighting challenges in many ways unique to New York. In addition to responding to building types that range from wood-frame single family homes to high-rise structures, the FDNY also responds to fires that occur in the New York City Subway.[470] Secluded bridges and tunnels, as well as large parks and wooded areas that can give rise to brush fires, also present challenges. The FDNY is headquartered at 9 MetroTech Center in Downtown Brooklyn,[471] and the FDNY Fire Academy is on the Randalls Island.[472] There are three Bureau of Fire Communications alarm offices which receive and dispatch alarms to appropriate units. One office, at 11 Metrotech Center in Brooklyn, houses Manhattan/Citywide, Brooklyn, and Staten Island Fire Communications; the Bronx and Queens offices are in separate buildings. Public library system The Stephen A. Schwarzman Headquarters Building of the New York Public Library at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street The New York Public Library (NYPL), which has the largest collection of any public library system in the United States.[473] Queens is served by the Queens Borough Public Library (QPL), the nation's second-largest public library system, while the Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) serves Brooklyn.[473] In 2013, the New York Public Library and the Brooklyn Public Library announced that they would merge their technical services departments into a new department called BookOps. This proposed merger anticipated a savings of $2 million for the Brooklyn Public Library and $1.5 million for the New York Public Library. Although not currently part of the merger, it is expected that the Queens Public Library will eventually share some resources with the other city libraries.[474][475] Culture and contemporary life Main article: Culture of New York City Further information: Broadway theatre, LGBT culture in New York City, List of museums and cultural institutions in New York City, Music of New York City, List of nightclubs in New York City, List of LGBT people from New York City, List of people from New York City, New York Fashion Week, and Met Gala New York City has been described as the cultural capital of the world by Manhattan's Baruch College.[476] A book containing a series of essays titled New York, Culture Capital of the World, 1940–1965 has also been published as showcased by the National Library of Australia.[477] In describing New York, author Tom Wolfe said, "Culture just seems to be in the air, like part of the weather."[478] Numerous major American cultural movements began in the city, such as the Harlem Renaissance, which established the African-American literary canon in the United States.[479][480] The city became the center of stand-up comedy in the early 20th century, jazz[481] in the 1940s, abstract expressionism in the 1950s, and the birthplace of hip-hop in the 1970s.[482] The city's punk[483] and hardcore[484] scenes were influential in the 1970s and 1980s. New York has long had a flourishing scene for Jewish American literature. The city is the birthplace of many cultural movements, including the Harlem Renaissance in literature and visual art; abstract expressionism (also known as the New York School) in painting; and hip-hop,[189] punk, salsa, freestyle, Tin Pan Alley, certain forms of jazz, and (along with Philadelphia) disco in music. New York City has been considered the dance capital of the world.[485][486] The city is also frequently the setting for novels, movies (see List of films set in New York City), and television programs. New York Fashion Week is one of the world's preeminent fashion events and is afforded extensive coverage by the media.[487][488] New York has also frequently been ranked the top fashion capital of the world on the annual list compiled by the Global Language Monitor.[489] Pace Midtown Manhattan in January 2020 One of the most common traits attributed to New York City is its fast pace,[490][491] which spawned the term New York minute.[492] Journalist Walt Whitman characterized New York's streets as being traversed by "hurrying, feverish, electric crowds".[491] Resilience New York City's residents are prominently known for their resilience historically, and more recently related to their management of the impacts of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the COVID-19 pandemic.[493][494][495] New York was voted the world's most resilient city in 2021 and 2022 per Time Out's global poll of urban residents.[494] Arts New York City has more than 2,000 arts and cultural organizations and more than 500 art galleries.[496] The city government funds the arts with a larger annual budget than the National Endowment for the Arts.[496] Wealthy business magnates in the 19th century built a network of major cultural institutions, such as Carnegie Hall and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which have become internationally renowned. The advent of electric lighting led to elaborate theater productions, and in the 1880s, New York City theaters on Broadway and along 42nd Street began featuring a new stage form that became known as the Broadway musical. Strongly influenced by the city's immigrants, productions such as those of Harrigan and Hart, George M. Cohan, and others used song in narratives that often reflected themes of hope and ambition. New York City itself is the subject or background of many plays and musicals. Performing arts Main articles: Broadway theatre and Music of New York City The corner of a lit up plaza with a fountain in the center and the ends of two brightly lit buildings with tall arches on the square. Lincoln Center in Manhattan The Metropolitan Museum of Art, part of Museum Mile, is one of the largest museums in the world.[497] Broadway theatre is one of the premier forms of English-language theatre in the world, named after Broadway, the major thoroughfare that crosses Times Square,[498] also sometimes referred to as "The Great White Way".[499][500][501] Forty-one venues in Midtown Manhattan's Theatre District, each with at least 500 seats, are classified as Broadway theatres. According to The Broadway League, Broadway shows sold approximately $1.27 billion worth of tickets in the 2013–2014 season, an 11.4% increase from $1.139 billion in the 2012–2013 season. Attendance in 2013–2014 stood at 12.21 million, representing a 5.5% increase from the 2012–2013 season's 11.57 million.[502] Performance artists displaying diverse skills are ubiquitous on the streets of Manhattan. Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, anchoring Lincoln Square on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, is home to numerous influential arts organizations, including the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, New York Philharmonic, and New York City Ballet, as well as the Vivian Beaumont Theater, the Juilliard School, Jazz at Lincoln Center, and Alice Tully Hall. The Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute is in Union Square, and Tisch School of the Arts is based at New York University, while Central Park SummerStage presents free music concerts in Central Park.[503] Visual arts Main article: List of museums and cultural institutions in New York City New York City is home to hundreds of cultural institutions and historic sites. Museum Mile is the name for a section of Fifth Avenue running from 82nd to 105th streets on the Upper East Side of Manhattan,[504] in an area sometimes called Upper Carnegie Hill.[505] Nine museums occupy the length of this section of Fifth Avenue, making it one of the densest displays of culture in the world.[506] Its art museums include the Guggenheim, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Neue Galerie New York, and The Africa Center, which opened in late 2012. In addition to other programming, the museums collaborate for the annual Museum Mile Festival, held each year in June, to promote the museums and increase visitation.[507] Many of the world's most lucrative art auctions are held in New York City.[508][509] Cuisine Main articles: Cuisine of New York City, List of restaurants in New York City, and List of Michelin starred restaurants in New York City People crowd around white tents in the foreground next to a red brick wall with arched windows. Above and to the left is a towering stone bridge. Smorgasburg, which opened in 2011 as an open-air food market, is part of the Brooklyn Flea.[510] New York City's food culture includes an array of international cuisines influenced by the city's immigrant history. Central and Eastern European immigrants, especially Jewish immigrants from those regions, brought bagels, cheesecake, hot dogs, knishes, and delicatessens (delis) to the city. Italian immigrants brought New York-style pizza and Italian cuisine into the city, while Jewish immigrants and Irish immigrants brought pastrami[511] and corned beef,[512] respectively. Chinese and other Asian restaurants, sandwich joints, trattorias, diners, and coffeehouses are ubiquitous throughout the city. Some 4,000 mobile food vendors licensed by the city, many immigrant-owned, have made Middle Eastern foods such as falafel and kebabs[513] examples of modern New York street food. The city is home to "nearly one thousand of the finest and most diverse haute cuisine restaurants in the world", according to Michelin.[514] The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene assigns letter grades to the city's restaurants based upon their inspection results.[515] As of 2019, there were 27,043 restaurants in the city, up from 24,865 in 2017.[516] The Queens Night Market in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park attracts more than ten thousand people nightly to sample food from more than 85 countries.[517] Parades The annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, the world's largest parade[518] The annual Halloween Parade in Greenwich Village, the world's largest Halloween parade[519] The ticker-tape parade for the Apollo 11 astronauts on August 13, 1969 The annual Philippine Independence Day Parade, the largest outside the Philippines New York City is well known for its street parades, which celebrate a broad array of themes, including holidays, nationalities, human rights, and major league sports team championship victories. The majority of parades are held in Manhattan. The primary orientation of the annual street parades is typically from north to south, marching along major avenues. The annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is the world's largest parade,[518] beginning alongside Central Park and processing southward to the flagship Macy's Herald Square store;[520] the parade is viewed on telecasts worldwide and draws millions of spectators in person.[518] Other notable parades including the annual New York City St. Patrick's Day Parade in March, the NYC LGBT Pride March in June, the LGBT-inspired Greenwich Village Halloween Parade in October, and numerous parades commemorating the independence days of many nations. Ticker-tape parades celebrating championships won by sports teams as well as other heroic accomplishments march northward along the Canyon of Heroes on Broadway from Bowling Green to City Hall Park in Lower Manhattan. Accent and dialect Main articles: New York City English and New York accent The New York area is home to a distinctive regional accent and speech pattern called the New York dialect, alternatively known as Brooklynese or New Yorkese. It has generally been considered one of the most recognizable accents within American English.[521] The traditional New York area speech pattern is known for its rapid delivery, and its accent is characterized as non-rhotic so that the sound [ɹ] does not appear at the end of a syllable or immediately before a consonant; therefore the pronunciation of the city name as "New Yawk."[522] There is no [ɹ] in words like park [pɑək] or [pɒək] (with vowel backed and diphthongized due to the low-back chain shift), butter [bʌɾə], or here [hiə]. In another feature called the low back chain shift, the [ɔ] vowel sound of words like talk, law, cross, chocolate, and coffee and the often homophonous [ɔr] in core and more are tensed and usually raised more than in General American English. In the most old-fashioned and extreme versions of the New York dialect, the vowel sounds of words like "girl" and of words like "oil" became a diphthong [ɜɪ]. This is often misperceived by speakers of other accents as a reversal of the er and oy sounds, so that girl is pronounced "goil" and oil is pronounced "erl"; this leads to the caricature of New Yorkers saying things like "Joizey" (Jersey), "Toidy-Toid Street" (33rd St.) and "terlet" (toilet).[522] The character Archie Bunker from the 1970s television sitcom All in the Family was an example of this pattern of speech. The classic version of the New York City dialect is generally centered on middle- and working-class New Yorkers. The influx of non-European immigrants in recent decades has led to changes in this distinctive dialect,[522] and the traditional form of this speech pattern is no longer as prevalent among general New Yorkers as it has been in the past.[522] Sports Main article: Sports in the New York metropolitan area Three runners in a race down a street where onlookers are cheering behind barriers. The New York Marathon, held annually in November, is the largest marathon in the world.[523] A tennis stadium pack with fans watching a grass court. The U.S. Open Tennis Championships are held every August and September in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park in Queens. A baseball stadium from behind home plate in the evening. Citi Field, also in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, has been home to the New York Mets since 2009. Madison Square Garden in Midtown Manhattan is home to the New York Knicks, New York Rangers, and St. John's Red Storm. New York City is home to the headquarters of the National Football League,[524] Major League Baseball,[525] the National Basketball Association,[526] the National Hockey League,[527] and Major League Soccer.[528] The New York metropolitan area hosts the most sports teams in the first four major North American professional sports leagues with nine, one more than Los Angeles, and has 11 top-level professional sports teams if Major League Soccer is included, also one more than Los Angeles. Participation in professional sports in the city predates all professional leagues. The city has played host to more than 40 major professional teams in the five sports and their respective competing leagues. Four of the ten most expensive stadiums ever built worldwide (MetLife Stadium, the new Yankee Stadium, Madison Square Garden, and Citi Field) are in the New York metropolitan area.[529] Madison Square Garden, its predecessor, the original Yankee Stadium and Ebbets Field, are sporting venues in New York City, the latter two having been commemorated on U.S. postage stamps. New York was the first of eight American cities to have won titles in all four major leagues (MLB, NHL, NFL and NBA), having done so following the Knicks' 1970 title. In 1972, it became the first city to win titles in five sports when the Cosmos won the NASL final. American football The city is represented in the National Football League by the New York Giants and the New York Jets, although both teams play their home games at MetLife Stadium in nearby East Rutherford, New Jersey,[530] which hosted Super Bowl XLVIII in 2014.[531] Baseball New York has been described as the "Capital of Baseball".[532] There have been 35 Major League Baseball World Series and 73 pennants won by New York teams. It is one of only five metro areas to host two Major League Baseball teams, the others being Los Angeles, Chicago, Baltimore–Washington, and until the Athletics depart Oakland, California, the San Francisco Bay Area. Additionally, there have been 14 World Series in which two New York City teams played each other, known as a Subway Series and occurring most recently in 2000. No other metropolitan area has had this happen more than once (Chicago in 1906, St. Louis in 1944, and the San Francisco Bay Area in 1989). The city's two Major League Baseball teams are the New York Mets, who play at Citi Field in Queens,[533] and the New York Yankees, who play at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. These teams compete in six games of interleague play every regular season that has also come to be called the Subway Series. The Yankees have won a record 27 championships,[534] while the Mets have won the World Series twice.[535] The city also was once home to the Brooklyn Dodgers (now the Los Angeles Dodgers), who won the World Series once,[536] and the New York Giants (now the San Francisco Giants), who won the World Series five times. Both teams moved to California in 1958.[537] There is also one Minor League Baseball team in the city, the Mets-affiliated Brooklyn Cyclones,[538] and the city gained a club in the independent Atlantic League when the Staten Island FerryHawks began play in 2022.[539] Basketball The city's National Basketball Association teams are the Brooklyn Nets (previously known as the New York Nets and New Jersey Nets as they moved around the metropolitan area) and the New York Knicks, while the New York Liberty is the city's Women's National Basketball Association team. The first national college-level basketball championship, the National Invitation Tournament, was held in New York in 1938 and remains in the city.[540] The city is well known for its links to basketball, which is played in nearly every park in the city by local youth, many of whom have gone on to play for major college programs and in the NBA. Ice hockey The metropolitan area is home to three National Hockey League teams. The New York Rangers, the traditional representative of the city itself and one of the league's Original Six, play at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan. The New York Islanders, traditionally representing Nassau and Suffolk Counties of Long Island, play in UBS Arena in Elmont, New York, and played in Brooklyn's Barclays Center from 2015 to 2020. The New Jersey Devils play at Prudential Center in nearby Newark, New Jersey and traditionally represent the counties of neighboring New Jersey which are coextensive with the boundaries of the New York metropolitan area and media market. Soccer In soccer, New York City is represented by New York City FC of Major League Soccer, who play their home games at Yankee Stadium[541] and the New York Red Bulls, who play their home games at Red Bull Arena in nearby Harrison, New Jersey.[542] NJ/NY Gotham FC also plays their home games in Red Bull Arena, representing the metropolitan area in the National Women's Soccer League. Historically, the city is known for the New York Cosmos, the highly successful former professional soccer team which was the American home of Pelé. A new version of the New York Cosmos was formed in 2010, and most recently played in the third-division National Independent Soccer Association before going on hiatus in January 2021. New York was a host city for the 1994 FIFA World Cup[543] and will be one of eleven US host cities for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.[544] Tennis and other The annual United States Open Tennis Championships is one of the world's four Grand Slam tennis tournaments and is held at the National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park, Queens.[545] The New York City Marathon, which courses through all five boroughs, is the world's largest running marathon,[523] with 51,394 finishers in 2016[546] and 98,247 applicants for the 2017 race.[523] The Millrose Games is an annual track and field meet whose featured event is the Wanamaker Mile. Boxing is also a prominent part of the city's sporting scene, with events like the Amateur Boxing Golden Gloves being held at Madison Square Garden each year.[547] The city is also considered the host of the Belmont Stakes, the last, longest and oldest of horse racing's Triple Crown races, held just over the city's border at Belmont Park on the first or second Sunday of June. The city also hosted the 1932 U.S. Open golf tournament and the 1930 and 1939 PGA Championships, and has been host city for both events several times, most notably for nearby Winged Foot Golf Club. The Gaelic games are played in Riverdale, Bronx at Gaelic Park, home to the New York GAA, the only North American team to compete at the senior inter-county level. International events In terms of hosting multi-sport events, New York City hosted the 1984 Summer Paralympics and the 1998 Goodwill Games. New York City's bid to host the 2012 Summer Olympics was one of five finalists, but lost out to London.[548] Environment Main article: Environmental issues in New York City Two yellow taxis on a narrow street lined with shops. As of 2012, New York City had about 6,000 hybrid taxis in service, the largest number of any city in North America.[549] Environmental issues in New York City are affected by the city's size, density, abundant public transportation infrastructure, and its location at the mouth of the Hudson River. For example, it is one of the country's biggest sources of pollution and has the lowest per-capita greenhouse gas emissions rate and electricity usage. Governors Island is planned to host a US$1 billion research and education center to make New York City the global leader in addressing the climate crisis.[550] Environmental impact reduction New York City has focused on reducing its environmental impact and carbon footprint.[551] Mass transit use in New York City is the highest in the United States. Also, by 2010, the city had 3,715 hybrid taxis and other clean diesel vehicles, representing around 28% of New York's taxi fleet in service, the most of any city in North America.[552] New York City is the host of Climate Week NYC, the largest Climate Week to take place globally and regarded as major annual climate summit. New York's high rate of public transit use, more than 200,000 daily cyclists as of 2014,[553] and many pedestrian commuters make it the most energy-efficient major city in the United States.[554] Walk and bicycle modes of travel account for 21% of all modes for trips in the city; nationally the rate for metro regions is about 8%.[555] In both its 2011 and 2015 rankings, Walk Score named New York City the most walkable large city in the United States,[556][557][558] and in 2018, Stacker ranked New York the most walkable U.S. city.[559] Citibank sponsored the introduction of 10,000 public bicycles for the city's bike-share project in the summer of 2013.[560] New York City's numerical "in-season cycling indicator" of bicycling in the city had hit an all-time high of 437 when measured in 2014.[561] The city government was a petitioner in the landmark Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency Supreme Court case forcing the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases as pollutants. The city is a leader in the construction of energy-efficient green office buildings, including the Hearst Tower among others.[197] Mayor Bill de Blasio has committed to an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions between 2014 and 2050 to reduce the city's contributions to climate change, beginning with a comprehensive "Green Buildings" plan.[551] Water purity and availability Main articles: Food and water in New York City and New York City water supply system The New York City drinking water supply is extracted from the protected Catskill Mountains watershed.[562] As a result of the watershed's integrity and undisturbed natural water filtration system, New York is one of only four major cities in the United States the majority of whose drinking water is pure enough not to require purification through water treatment plants.[563] The city's municipal water system is the largest in the United States, moving over one billion gallons of water per day;[564] a leak in the Delaware aqueduct results in some 20 million gallons a day being lost under the Hudson River.[565] The Croton Watershed north of the city is undergoing construction of a $3.2 billion water purification plant to augment New York City's water supply by an estimated 290 million gallons daily, representing a greater than 20% addition to the city's current availability of water.[566] The ongoing expansion of New York City Water Tunnel No. 3, an integral part of the New York City water supply system, is the largest capital construction project in the city's history,[567] with segments serving Manhattan and the Bronx completed, and with segments serving Brooklyn and Queens planned for construction in 2020.[568] In 2018, New York City announced a $1 billion investment to protect the integrity of its water system and to maintain the purity of its unfiltered water supply.[564] Air quality According to the 2016 World Health Organization Global Urban Ambient Air Pollution Database,[569] the annual average concentration in New York City's air of particulate matter measuring 2.5 micrometers or less (PM2.5) was 7.0 micrograms per cubic meter, or 3.0 micrograms within the recommended limit of the WHO Air Quality Guidelines for the annual mean PM2.5.[570] The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, in partnership with Queens College, conducts the New York Community Air Survey to measure pollutants at about 150 locations.[571] Environmental revitalization Newtown Creek, a 3.5-mile (6-kilometer) a long estuary that forms part of the border between the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, has been designated a Superfund site for environmental clean-up and remediation of the waterway's recreational and economic resources for many communities.[572] One of the most heavily used bodies of water in the Port of New York and New Jersey, it had been one of the most contaminated industrial sites in the country,[573] containing years of discarded toxins, an estimated 30 million US gallons (110,000 m3) of spilled oil, including the Greenpoint oil spill, raw sewage from New York City's sewer system,[573] and other accumulation. Government and politics Main articles: Government of New York City, Politics of New York City, and Elections in New York City Government New York City Hall is the oldest City Hall in the United States that still houses its original governmental functions. New York County Courthouse houses the New York Supreme Court and other governmental offices. Eric Adams, the current and 110th Mayor of New York City New York City has been a metropolitan municipality with a Strong mayor–council form of government[574] since its consolidation in 1898. In New York City, the city government is responsible for public education, correctional institutions, public safety, recreational facilities, sanitation, water supply, and welfare services. The mayor and council members are elected to four-year terms. The City Council is a unicameral body consisting of 51 council members whose districts are defined by geographic population boundaries.[575] Each term for the mayor and council members lasts four years and has a two consecutive-term limit,[576] which is reset after a four-year break. The New York City Administrative Code, the New York City Rules, and the City Record are the code of local laws, compilation of regulations, and official journal, respectively.[577][578] Each borough is coextensive with a judicial district of the state Unified Court System, of which the Criminal Court and the Civil Court are the local courts, while the New York Supreme Court conducts major trials and appeals. Manhattan hosts the First Department of the Supreme Court, Appellate Division while Brooklyn hosts the Second Department. There are also several extrajudicial administrative courts, which are executive agencies and not part of the state Unified Court System. Uniquely among major American cities, New York is divided between, and is host to the main branches of, two different U.S. district courts: the District Court for the Southern District of New York, whose main courthouse is on Foley Square near City Hall in Manhattan and whose jurisdiction includes Manhattan and the Bronx; and the District Court for the Eastern District of New York, whose main courthouse is in Brooklyn and whose jurisdiction includes Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and U.S. Court of International Trade are also based in New York, also on Foley Square in Manhattan. Politics The present mayor is Eric Adams. He was elected in 2021 with 67% of the vote, and assumed office on January 1, 2022. The Democratic Party holds the majority of public offices. As of April 2016, 69% of registered voters in the city are Democrats and 10% are Republicans.[579] New York City has not been carried by a Republican presidential election since President Calvin Coolidge won the five boroughs in 1924. A Republican candidate for statewide office has not won all five boroughs of the city since it was incorporated in 1898. In 2012, Democrat Barack Obama became the first presidential candidate of any party to receive more than 80% of the overall vote in New York City, sweeping all five boroughs. Party platforms center on affordable housing, education, and economic development, and labor politics are of importance in the city. Thirteen out of 26 U.S. congressional districts in the state of New York include portions of New York City.[580] New York City is the most important geographical source of political fundraising in the United States. At least four of the top five ZIP Codes in the nation for political contributions were in Manhattan for the 2004, 2006, and 2008 elections. The top ZIP Code, 10021 on the Upper East Side, generated the most money for the 2004 presidential campaigns of George W. Bush and John Kerry.[581] The city has a strong imbalance of payments with the national and state governments. It receives 83 cents in services for every $1 it sends to the federal government in taxes (or annually sends $11.4 billion more than it receives back). City residents and businesses also sent an additional $4.1 billion in the 2009–2010 fiscal year to the state of New York than the city received in return.[582] Transportation Main article: Transportation in New York City A row of yellow taxis in front of a multi-story ornate stone building with three huge arched windows. New York City is home to the two busiest train stations in the U.S., Grand Central Terminal and Penn Station. New York City's comprehensive transportation system is both complex and extensive. The front end of a subway train, with a red E on a LED display on the top. To the right of the train is a platform with a group of people waiting for their train. The New York City Subway, the world's largest rapid transit system by number of stations Rapid transit Mass transit in New York City, most of which runs 24 hours a day, accounts for one in every three users of mass transit in the United States, and two-thirds of the nation's rail riders live in the New York City metropolitan area.[583][584] Rail The New York City Subway system is the largest rapid transit system in the world when measured by stations in operation, with 472, and by length of routes. Nearly all of New York's subway system is open 24 hours a day, in contrast to the overnight shutdown common to systems in most cities, including Hong Kong,[585][586] London, Paris, Seoul,[587][588] and Tokyo. The New York City Subway is also the busiest metropolitan rail transit system in the Western Hemisphere, with 1.76 billion passenger rides in 2015,[589] while Grand Central Terminal, also referred to as "Grand Central Station", is the world's largest railway station by number of train platforms. Public transport is widely used in New York City. 54.6% of New Yorkers commuted to work in 2005 using mass transit.[590] This is in contrast to the rest of the United States, where 91% of commuters travel in automobiles to their workplace.[591] According to the New York City Comptroller, workers in the New York City area spend an average of 6 hours and 18 minutes getting to work each week, the longest commute time in the nation among large cities.[592] New York is the only U.S. city in which a majority (52%) of households do not have a car; only 22% of Manhattanites own a car.[593] Due to their high usage of mass transit, New Yorkers spend less of their household income on transportation than the national average, saving $19 billion annually on transportation compared to other urban Americans.[594] New York City's commuter rail network is the largest in North America.[583] The rail network, connecting New York City to its suburbs, consists of the Long Island Rail Road, Metro-North Railroad, and New Jersey Transit. The combined systems converge at Grand Central Terminal and Pennsylvania Station and contain more than 250 stations and 20 rail lines.[583] In Queens, the elevated AirTrain people mover system connects 24 hours a day JFK International Airport to the New York City Subway and the Long Island Rail Road; a separate AirTrain system is planned alongside the Grand Central Parkway to connect LaGuardia Airport to these transit systems.[595][596] For inter-city rail, New York City is served by Amtrak, whose busiest station by a significant margin is Pennsylvania Station on the West Side of Manhattan, from which Amtrak provides connections to Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. along the Northeast Corridor, and long-distance train service to other North American cities.[597] The Staten Island Railway rapid transit system solely serves Staten Island, operating 24 hours a day. The Port Authority Trans-Hudson (PATH train) links Midtown and Lower Manhattan to northeastern New Jersey, primarily Hoboken, Jersey City, and Newark. Like the New York City Subway, the PATH operates 24 hours a day; meaning three of the six rapid transit systems in the world which operate on 24-hour schedules are wholly or partly in New York (the others are a portion of the Chicago "L", the PATCO Speedline serving Philadelphia, and the Copenhagen Metro). Multibillion-dollar heavy rail transit projects under construction in New York City include the Second Avenue Subway, and the East Side Access project.[598] Buses Port Authority Bus Terminal, the world's busiest bus station, at Eighth Avenue and 42nd Street[599] New York City's public bus fleet runs 24/7 and is the largest in North America.[600] The Port Authority Bus Terminal, the main intercity bus terminal of the city, serves 7,000 buses and 200,000 commuters daily, making it the busiest bus station in the world.[599] Air Five jumbo airplanes wait in a line on a runway next to a small body of water. Behind them in the distance is the airport and control tower. John F. Kennedy Airport in Queens, the busiest international airport to the United States with over 12 million inbound and outbound flights as of 2021 New York's airspace is the busiest in the United States and one of the world's busiest air transportation corridors. The three busiest airports in the New York metropolitan area include John F. Kennedy International Airport, Newark Liberty International Airport, and LaGuardia Airport; 130.5 million travelers used these three airports in 2016.[601] JFK and Newark Liberty were the busiest and fourth busiest U.S. gateways for international air passengers, respectively, in 2012; as of 2011, JFK was the busiest airport for international passengers in North America.[602] Plans have advanced to expand passenger volume at a fourth airport, Stewart International Airport near Newburgh, New York, by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.[603] Plans were announced in July 2015 to entirely rebuild LaGuardia Airport in a multibillion-dollar project to replace its aging facilities.[604] Other commercial airports in or serving the New York metropolitan area include Long Island MacArthur Airport, Trenton–Mercer Airport and Westchester County Airport. The primary general aviation airport serving the area is Teterboro Airport. Ferries Staten Island Ferry shuttles commuters between Manhattan and Staten Island. The Staten Island Ferry is the world's busiest ferry route, carrying more than 23 million passengers from July 2015 through June 2016 on the 5.2-mile (8.4 km) route between Staten Island and Lower Manhattan and running 24 hours a day.[605] Other ferry systems shuttle commuters between Manhattan and other locales within the city and the metropolitan area. NYC Ferry, a NYCEDC initiative with routes planned to travel to all five boroughs, was launched in 2017, with second graders choosing the names of the ferries.[606] Meanwhile, Seastreak ferry announced construction of a 600-passenger high-speed luxury ferry in September 2016, to shuttle riders between the Jersey Shore and Manhattan, anticipated to start service in 2017; this would be the largest vessel in its class.[607] Taxis, vehicles for hire, and trams See also: Taxis of New York City Yellow medallion taxicabs are a widely recognized icon of New York City. Other features of the city's transportation infrastructure encompass 13,587 yellow taxicabs;[608] other vehicle for hire companies;[609][610] and the Roosevelt Island Tramway, an aerial tramway that transports commuters between Roosevelt Island and Manhattan Island. Streets and highways 8th Avenue in Manhattan looking north (uptown) Despite New York's heavy reliance on its vast public transit system, streets are a defining feature of the city. The Commissioners' Plan of 1811 greatly influenced the city's physical development. Several of the city's streets and avenues, including Broadway,[611] Wall Street,[612] Madison Avenue,[369] and Seventh Avenue are also used as metonyms for national industries there: the theater, finance, advertising, and fashion organizations, respectively. New York City also has an extensive web of freeways and parkways, which link the city's boroughs to each other and to North Jersey, Westchester County, Long Island, and southwestern Connecticut through various bridges and tunnels. Because these highways serve millions of outer borough and suburban residents who commute into Manhattan, it is quite common for motorists to be stranded for hours in traffic congestion that are a daily occurrence, particularly during rush hour.[613][614] Congestion pricing in New York City will go into effect in 2022 at the earliest.[615][616][617] New York City is also known for its rules regarding turning at red lights. Unlike the rest of the United States, New York State prohibits right or left turns on red in cities with a population greater than one million, to reduce traffic collisions and increase pedestrian safety. In New York City, therefore, all turns at red lights are illegal unless a sign permitting such maneuvers is present.[618] River crossings The George Washington Bridge, connecting Upper Manhattan (background) and Fort Lee, New Jersey across the Hudson River, is the world's busiest motor vehicle bridge.[619][620] New York City is located on one of the world's largest natural harbors, and the boroughs of Manhattan and Staten Island are primarily coterminous with islands of the same names, while Queens and Brooklyn are at the west end of the larger Long Island, and the Bronx is on New York State's mainland. This situation of boroughs separated by water led to the development of an extensive infrastructure of bridges and tunnels. The George Washington Bridge is the world's busiest motor vehicle bridge,[619][620] connecting Manhattan to Bergen County, New Jersey. The Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge is the longest suspension bridge in the Americas and one of the world's longest.[621][622] The Brooklyn Bridge is an icon of the city itself. The towers of the Brooklyn Bridge are built of limestone, granite, and Rosendale cement, and their architectural style is neo-Gothic, with characteristic pointed arches above the passageways through the stone towers. This bridge was also the longest suspension bridge in the world from its opening until 1903, and is the first steel-wire suspension bridge. The Queensboro Bridge is an important piece of cantilever architecture. The Manhattan Bridge, opened in 1909, is considered to be the forerunner of modern suspension bridges, and its design served as the model for many of the long-span suspension bridges around the world; the Manhattan Bridge, Throgs Neck Bridge, Triborough Bridge, and Verrazano-Narrows Bridge are all examples of structural expressionism.[623][624] Manhattan Island is linked to New York City's outer boroughs and to New Jersey. The Lincoln Tunnel, which carries 120,000 vehicles a day under the Hudson River between New Jersey and Midtown Manhattan, is the busiest vehicular tunnel in the world.[625] The tunnel was built instead of a bridge to allow unfettered passage of large passenger and cargo ships that sailed through New York Harbor and up the Hudson River to Manhattan's piers. The Holland Tunnel, connecting Lower Manhattan to Jersey City, New Jersey, was the world's first mechanically ventilated vehicular tunnel when it opened in 1927.[626][627] The Queens–Midtown Tunnel, built to relieve congestion on the bridges connecting Manhattan with Queens and Brooklyn, was the largest non-federal project in its time when it was completed in 1940.[628] President Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first person to drive through it.[629] The Brooklyn–Battery Tunnel (officially known as the Hugh L. Carey Tunnel) runs underneath Battery Park and connects the Financial District at the southern tip of Manhattan to Red Hook in Brooklyn. Cycling network Main article: Cycling in New York City Cycling in New York City is associated with mixed cycling conditions that include urban density, relatively flat terrain, congested roadways with stop-and-go traffic, and many pedestrians. The city's large cycling population includes utility cyclists, such as delivery and messenger services; cycling clubs for recreational cyclists; and an increasing number of commuters. Cycling is increasingly popular in New York City; in 2017 there were approximately 450,000 daily bike trips, compared with 170,000 daily bike trips in 2005.[630] As of 2017, New York City had 1,333 miles (2,145 km) of bike lanes, compared to 513 miles (826 km) of bike lanes in 2006.[630] As of 2019, there are 126 miles (203 km) of segregated or "protected" bike lanes citywide.[631] People Main article: List of people from New York City Global outreach Main article: List of sister cities of New York City In 2006, the sister city Program of the City of New York, Inc.[632] was restructured and renamed New York City Global Partners. Through this program, New York City has expanded its international outreach to a network of cities worldwide, promoting the exchange of ideas and innovation between their citizenry and policymakers. New York's historic sister cities are denoted below by the year they joined New York City's partnership network.[633]

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