“Look in the paper, look at the TV. Can you count to ten? Then you’re not stupid. Why would you take
Mr. Leonard was born and raised in the country in a farming family. He came to Harlem as an adult of18 or 19 years. He came after completing military service and could not wait to get to Harlem. This was because when he was a kid he had seen celebrities and pictures of Harlem and always wanted to go. When he finally came, it was 1956.
One of the first things he noticed was Harlem had at least 3 bars on every corner, from 110th to 150th Street. Mr. Leonard also noticed a lot of drug users would sleep in the streets. When he first saw people sleeping in the street, he did not even know much about drugs, and only knew marijuana so it had to be explained to him why they were there. Most kids that were around at this point were all into sports and other activities, so he was never involved.
The way Mr. Leonard sees it, drugs put bars out of business. Since drugs were cheaper, and became so widespread, it was easy to get and people started using them more than alcohol. Mr. Leonard himself never became involved with drugs, and only ever saw it from an outsider’s perspective. Even when his friends smoked, he never felt pressured to do the same.
In Mr. Leonard’s eyes, the way Harlem has changed is more in terms of racial diversification. In 1956, Harlem was a predominately black community. Five years from now, around 50% of the Harlem population will be non-black. This is both a good and bad thing. With the increase in a white population, building costs rise and while this is a good thing for newcomers, it becomes too expensive for those originally in Harlem, thereby pushing the black community out.
Mr. Leonard reflects on the MLK riots of 1964: “I forget the year, but blacks went crazy. They started burning up the buildings. Like the riots out in California more recently, the blacks stupidly burned their own apartments and shops. So a lot of people had no place to live and had to move out to other places like Queens. So over the next several years up to now whites began to move in taking over the vacant lots because they had the money. When you walk through Harlem now, you see all of these new buildings, all of which are owned by whites. There are new restaurants and markets. That’s why I say it’s good on one side, and bad on the other.”
Whites were scared to come to Harlem, but with increasing diversity it became more acceptable for them to choose residence there. A lot of this fear was perpetuated in the newspapers because whenever there was a murder or another crime, it was said to have been committed a black person; race was mentioned. Whenever a white person committed a crime, race was not mentioned. This led to people thinking that crimes were only committed by blacks, making non-blacks afraid. With more whites coming to Harlem, police started to enforce drug laws so users and dealers went more underground. This uncovered institutionalized racism, where police enforce laws because of white pressure to do so.
Advice for drug users: “Look in the paper, look at the TV. Can you count to ten? Then you’re not stupid. Why would you take something that you know is going to harm you? Are you not strong? I don’t care who you are, you should look at yourself and know that you’re not strong enough to escape addiction. There are people out there and they are stronger than you, and look what happened to them. What makes you think that you are better than them? It’s right in front of you. So if you take drugs, and can count to ten, something is wrong with you. You must be crazy.” For a final bit of advice, Mr. Leonard says the youth should get jobs at an early age and get motivated for things like education. All of this leads to a successful life.