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Black mecca

New York City was considered the first Black mecca

A black mecca, in the United States, is a city to which African Americans, particularly singles, professionals, and middle-class families,[1] are drawn to live, due to some or all of the following factors:

  • superior economic opportunities for black people, often as assessed by the presence of a large black upper-middle and upper class
  • black businesses and political activism in a city
  • leading black educational institutions in a city
  • a city's leading role in black history, arts, music, food, and other cultures
  • harmonious black-white race relations in a city

New York City, in particular Harlem, was referred to as a black mecca during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s and still is as of today.[2][3][4] Atlanta has also adopted the name and has been referred to as a black mecca since the 1970s, while Black Enterprise has referred to Houston as the emerging equivalent.[5]

  1. ^ Simms, Margaret C. (November 28, 1991). "Economics Perspectives: What Cities = More Black Jobs?". Black Enterprise – via Google Books.
  2. ^ "Further, by 1920 Harlem had gained a symbolic significance for blacks which caused it to be referred to as a "mecca" by scholars of the period" in Carolyn Jackson, "Harlem Renaissance: Pivotal Period in the Development of Afro-American Culture", Yale University.
  3. ^ reference to the text "Harlem—the Mecca of the Negroes the country over" in Wallace Thurman's 1928 book Negro Life in New York's Harlem, in Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, Harlem is Nowhere: A Journey to the Mecca of Black America, Little, Brown, 2011.
  4. ^ Locke, Alain (March 1925). Harlem, Mecca of the New Negro. Black Classic Press. ISBN 9780933121058. Retrieved 17 February 2012. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
  5. ^ Graves, Earl G. Sr. (2016-12-08). "Join us in Houston, America's Next Great Black Business Mecca". Black Enterprise.

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