A report that wasn’t issued 86 years ago following the riot of 1935 was at the core of the daylong event at the Schomburg Center Tuesday.
Under the rubric of “Conditions in Harlem Revisited: From the 1936 Mayor’s Commission Report to Today,” a coterie of academics, clergy, community activists and leaders, and city officials assembled and discussed the report from several angles, including employment and economic development, housing and land use, justice and public safety, healthcare and environment, and education and recreation.
This concern resonated at the core of the various panels assembled and Pauline Toole, commissioner of the New York City Department of Records and Information Services , framed the discussions at the beginning of the event. “So many portions of the 1936 Mayor’s Commission Report read as if they could have been written today. That’s why it was so important for us to release it to the public now—something that was done by theat the time, but not the LaGuardia Administration.
Arva Rice, President & CEO of the New York Urban League, posed her remarks in a comparative approach during the second panel on employment and economic development, citing the differences between yesterday and today. “As I read through the report I was struck by the things they didn’t have, such as our agency, Lloyd Williams, the Harlem Business Alliance, Letitia James, Inez Dickens, Mayor Adams and the other institutions we now have.