Reformers warned that neglecting black Harlem’s needs would bring future havoc

Evidence

Isaacs and other reformers saw that the swelling Negro population was not being assimilated into the city. Such assimilation was necessary, they said; if the influx continued and there was no base—no solid community that was part of the larger society around it—on which it could build, what would happen? “The question of what will happen to the Negro in New York…is overlaid with shadows of tragic premonition,” one wrote. Isaacs and others begged the city to make an intensified effort to meet the needs of these new immigrants. These people needed help, they said, and the city must give it to them. It was a civic duty to do so, they said. It was a matter of conscience. And if you weren’t interested in duty or conscience, well, it was a matter of expediency, too. For neglecting Harlem’s needs in the future as they had been neglected in the past could only lead to havoc in the city. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 2109

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the theme of exclusion-producing parallel worlds and the moral stakes of neglect recurring across the book. — connects to: Moses built no parks for the neighborhoods that needed them most — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 2110