According to a recent Crimegrade.org rating, Harlem residents may spend on average as much as $30 a year on the effects of vandalism. That may seem a minuscule fee, compared to costs in other parts of the city, but the issue isn’t so much the cost as the hurtful nature of the crime.
Karen Taylor, founder and executive director of While We Are Still Here (WWSH) a Harlem-based nonprofit heritage preservation organization, has installed 25 historic markers in the community. Recently, three of them have been vandalized or knocked down, including one commemorating the great tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins and one denoting the importance of the Green Book, which was once so essential to African American travelers in the South.
She contends that another one, the Jungle Alley sign, signifying a vibrant cultural enclave at 133rd Street between Malcolm X Blvd. and Adam Clayton Powell Blvd. during the Harlem Renaissance, may have been knocked down accidentally by kids. While she has that one in storage, the other two remain missing.
“I am very upset and heartbroken by these acts, but this will not deter WWSH from putting them back up again,” Taylor vowed. The incidents she and her organization experienced are reminiscent of the graffiti scrawled on the front door of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints on Malcolm X Blvd. last winter. While the police investigated that incident, Taylor said her current calls to the police have not been answered.
“If whoever took the markers down thinks that will deter us, they are pitifully mistaken,” said Taylor. “I hope this is not a case of white supremacist derangement, but it could be, and it reminds me of how they kept shooting the Emmett Till sign in Mississippi.” If anyone has information about these acts of vandalism,” she said, “please notify the police and if you live near any of the other signs, your vigilance will be appreciated.”
