“Knowledge is power!” chanted dozens of Harlemites on September 28 as they moved down through the streets of West Harlem in Total Equity Now’s 12th Annual Literacy Across Harlem March. Community organizations and Black-owned businesses teamed up to celebrate this year’s theme: “Children’s Books About Harlem.” Participants in the march made book donations and celebrated the memory of writers Walter Dean Myers and James Baldwin.
“Twenty years ago, there were no books with people with my skin color,” said Sister Janifer Wilson, co-owner of the Sister’s Uptown Bookstore and Cultural Center (Amsterdam Avenue and West 155th Street). This past June, Sister’s Uptown celebrated 24 years as the only female Black-owned bookstore in Harlem and Washington Heights.
Sister Janifer began the march with a meeting at noon in the bookstore — participants met for a Total Equity Now livestream with community organizations The Brotherhood Sister Sol, the Harlem Bomb Shelter, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. – Tau Omega and Lambda Chapters, and Harlem Writers United.
Sister Janifer spoke about the importance of Black literacy and how far the Sister’s Uptown Bookstore has come since opening in 2000. “Today is a celebration of Black and Brown authors and poets. Today, we celebrate children’s books by authors who have written books about Harlem, such as Jason Reynolds and Rio Cortez,” she said.
After the livestream, the march began down the west side of Harlem. Marchers raised their Black and Brown children’s books high in the air, along with signs showing the faces of Pura Belpré, the New York Public Library’s first Latina librarian, and Faith Ringgold, the Harlem-born author and artist who died in April at the age of 93.
The march paraded down the West Side, making stops along the way; the first at Trinity Church Cemetery and Mausoleum. Each stop highlighted a piece of Black history and famous Harlem-born literary figures and activists.
Sharica Daley photos
Students of the Harlem chapter of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority (AKA) from schools like Columbia University, and City College-CUNY 
Sister Janifer Wilson, co-owner of the Sister’s Uptown Bookstore and Cultural Center, started the 12th Annual Literacy Across Harlem March with a livestream on September 28th, 2024. 
The marchers all grouped together at the Richard Rodgers Amphitheater inside the park at the end of the march. 
Marchers stopped at the Schomburg Center for Black Culture for a brief history in the Langston Hughes Lobby, and the founder, Arthur Schomburg.
The march continued down to block after block, chanting reading-related slogans like “Reading is my superpower!” and receiving love and praise from spectators in the neighborhood.
The group made stops at Hamilton Place and West 144th Street to recite a poem by Afro-Latina writer Elizabeth Acevedo, then at the main gate to The City College of New York, and made a U-turn onto the CUNY campus and crossed over St. Nicholas Park at West 127th Street, calling attention to the goal of literacy throughout Harlem.
The march headed to the Schomburg Center for Black Culture for a brief history in the Langston Hughes Lobby, where the poet’s ashes are scattered beneath the atrium lobby floor. This stop highlighted the importance of Hughes to the Harlem community. The founder, Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, built an extensive collection for the basis of the present-day center.
Heading to the east side of Harlem, the group stopped in front of Harlem Renaissance High School, which Hughes attended.
The march headed into its final phase at Marcus Garvey Park (E. 120th Street), named after the Jamaican-born political activist who founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association in Harlem. The marchers grouped together at the Richard Rodgers Amphitheater in the park.
Event’s coordinator Joe Rogers, founder and executive director of Total Equity Now, ended the march with a few words to participants.
“The goal of the event every year is to celebrate and promote Harlem’s great traditions of reading and writing and literary brilliance,” Rogers said. “It is an exuberant celebration of who we are and our cultural identity as readers and writers in the community. This year’s theme [is] children’s books about Harlem, inspiring young readers to write the next chapter of our community…It is important for young people to see themselves reflected in books.”
The children’s books that were donated will be sorted and given to children and their families in New York City family and domestic violence shelters across Harlem. Rogers put the march to a close by declaring, “We’re taking reading to the streets.”