Harlem is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, long known as a major African-American residential, cultural, and business center. Originally a Dutch village, it was organized by a Governor and Council ordinance on March 4, 1658, whose ground breaking was on August 14, 1658, whereby it remained independent of the City of New York until 1873.

Harlem has been defined by a series of boom-and-bust cycles, with significant ethnic shifts accompanying each cycle. Black residents began to arrive en masse in 1904, with numbers fed by the Great Migration. In the 1920s and 1930s, the neighborhood was the locus of the "Harlem Renaissance", an outpouring of artistic and professional works without precedent in the American black community. However, starting with the job losses of the Great Depression and especially after World War II with deindustrialization in New York, rates of crime and poverty increased significantly.

New York's revival in the late 20th century has led to renewal in Harlem as well. By 1995, Harlem was experiencing social and economic gentrification. Though the percentage of residents who are black peaked in 1950, the area remains predominantly black. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlem]