Life in Harlem: A Documentary Film of America's Negro Metropolis

Source catalog description

This description refers to material held by Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. Visual details below describe the original material.

A motion picture film with the title Life in Harlem: A Documentary Film of America's Negro Metropolis. It consists of a single reel of positive, black-and-white, 16mm acetate film with bilateral variable-density optical sound. The film opens with text rolling on the screen which reads: [Within sight of the New / York skyscrapers is a city / within a city where over / three hundred thousand / people live in an area / three square miles in / upper Manhattan. These / people work and play, live / and die amidst poverty / and prosperity, tragedy / and laughter, in America's / largest negro settlement, / Harlem.] After the quote, a narrator begins to speak as footage of a horse carriage being pulled down a street plays on screen.

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