Established in 1898, at 230 West 125th Street, Blumstein’s Department Store would become the largest in Harlem. Named after its founder, Louis Blumstein, a German immigrant, the store refused to hire black workers except for menial labor in a few cases. In 1934, the store was targeted by the “Don’t buy where you can’t work” boycotts (see ACP Jr. Blvd.). Blumstein’s ultimately capitulated and offered integration policies.
In Harlem, as elsewhere, streets like 125th st. have witnessed boycotts, protests, and riots. But memories are not only invested in particular places and paths; they can also be invoked and retold in the present. Below you will find a report, published in 1994 in the New York Times. If you read it carefully you'll see its author cites the history of Blumstein's Department Store.
After reading it, we invite you to discuss some of these issues with a person older than you. It can be a parent, grandparent, professor or even an older friend. Ask him or her how the retelling of particular historical events like this one could speak to contemporary issues in American society. Tell him or her what you think about it. Think about how your positions and ideas might be influenced by your own histories and memories too.
CAIRO, EGYPT
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Protests and riots are a way for people to express their rage and opposition to structural injustices. They have happened all around the world and in different historical moments, from Harlem to Tiananmen Square and from Paris in 1968 to Santiago in 2011. That same year, Cairo’s streets were filled by thousands of Egyptians contending the 30-year government of Hosni Mubarak.
Streets can be filled with people. They can be filled with words too. And then, they can be empty but filled with memories. We invite you to go here and watch a video about the 2011 protests in Cairo and then go here and read a poem of Ahmed Fu’ad Nigm that was sang in the streets during these protests. Then write your own poem about structural injustices. Or write it about how streets can be filled with memories through political actions. Or write it about whatever you like and imagine how someone else could use it as a chant and how it could become part of the memories embedded in the streets of Cairo, Harlem or any other place in the world. If you want to read more about the use of poetry in protests throughout the Middle East, you can read an interesting article about it here:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/02/03/egypt-protesters-using-poetry-to.html |