AmNews launches Citadel campaign to preserve Black media, build Harlem’s future

It was a look into the future and a focus on the ground beneath us. Dozens came to the Amsterdam News’ headquarters on Nov. 9 to play a part in helping to preserve Harlem’s rich history as the news organization launched its Citadel of Black Truth capital campaign: an effort to transform the newspaper’s historic home into a new public center for Black journalism, history, and community life.

The $44 million campaign is intended to restore and expand the AmNews building at 2340 Frederick Douglass Boulevard. The Citadel campaign will restore the original AmNews newsroom, preserve the Black press’s archives and make them accessible to future generations, and turn the Amsterdam News headquarters into a neighborhood meeting place available for community members who want to shape the Harlem of the future. Architectural plans show that the building will have a designated research library, a cafe, and a community space.

Inside the Citadel

New fifth floorEast- and west-facing balconies

Third floorThe newsroom: editorial, reporting and administrative operations

EntranceA digitally programmed entrance opening upward toward the newsroom

Also plannedResearch library · cafe · community space · elevator · podcast studios · preserved historic offices · research and teaching spaces

Siobhan “Sam” Bennett, the AmNews chief strategic officer and president of its educational foundation, noted that the Citadel campaign is in line with a broader “Harlem Heritage Awakening” that has brought major investments to local, Black-led institutions: $300 million for the Studio Museum, $242 million for the National Urban League, $70 million for the Apollo Theater, and $80 million for the National Black Theatre. The Studio Museum and Urban League projects reopened just last year, and the Urban League’s Urban Civil Rights Museum opens this coming weekend. The National Black Theatre project is expected to open in 2028.

The “Harlem Heritage Awakening”

Studio Museum

$300M

National Urban League

$242M

National Black Theatre

$80M

Apollo Theater

$70M

AmNews Citadel (goal)

$44M

Bennett asked readers to be part of helping to raise funds for the newspaper’s future. The 117-year-old newspaper wrote about the Urban League in 1911, the Apollo Theater in 1934, and the founding of the National Black Theatre in 1968; was the first to cover the establishment of the Studio Museum in 1968; and wants to remain a foundational Harlem establishment.

The AmNews was there

1. 1911Wrote about the Urban League
2. 1934Wrote about the Apollo Theater
3. 1968Covered the founding of the National Black Theatre
4. 1968First to cover the establishment of the Studio Museum

The AmNews has already put funds together to work on archiving platforms and raised money to create an endowment so it will be able to put on public programs, but Bennett said it still needs financial help to push the full Citadel project to the finish line.

“We need your help to make this reality happen,” she said. “It’s a miracle; it is a miracle. Imagine what it takes for 117 years to publish a newspaper without cessation every single week. That is what [the] Amsterdam News has done. Now we want to preserve that miracle and bring it to you and the general public in the years to come.”

“Imagine what it takes for 117 years to publish a newspaper without cessation every single week.”

Siobhan “Sam” Bennett, AmNews chief strategic officer

Citadel project organizers invited donations of any size toward the $44 million project. There will be founder recognitions for individual donors. Ongoing subscriptions to the print and online versions of the Amsterdam News can help keep the publication viable. Bennett also welcomed AmNews supporters who can make introductions to prospective funders, including preservation groups, government agencies, and corporations.

Publisher Elinor Tatum described the reimagined Amsterdam News building as a physical bridge connecting working journalism with public access to Black press history.

“When it is reimagined, it will go back to what it looked like when it first opened in 1941,” Tatum said. “It will go back to the brick façade. It will go back to the original.” Plans include a digitally programmed entrance opening upward toward the third-floor newsroom, an elevator, podcast studios, preserved historic offices, research and teaching spaces, and a new fifth floor with east- and west-facing balconies.

There will even be a civil rights lunch-counter–styled cafe where, Tatum said, “You can come and sit and meet. This will be the place where the next generation will plan for the future. We’ll plan those next revolutions and plan for our future. We’ll be sitting there figuring out who will be our next mayor, our next president. We will figure out how we will make change and what changes are necessary.” Music, literature, and spoken-word events will also bring people into the space, because it will be designed for meeting and organizing.

“This will be the place where the next generation will plan for the future.”

Elinor Tatum, publisher

The architects of the redesigned Amsterdam News building are Angel Ayón of AYON Studio and Jerome Haferd’s studio. Haferd described the structure this way: “The building itself is an archive of memory.”

He said that in the redesigned building, visitors will enter into an immersive space and then “ascend into different moments of legacy and also different pockets of quietness.” Ayón emphasized keeping the AmNews in Harlem while making its archives an educational resource. AmNews digital editor Josh Barker explained that the third floor would serve as the space for editorial and administrative operations: “We’re essentially giving the building to you all. We’re taking one floor for all of our administrative, reporting, and editorial. There’s an office for the executive editor and for my job, of course, [which] is digital. We intend on all being here, but we’re going to be taking up one floor … so that we can give the building to you all.”

The Citadel project launch day’s programming also brought readers, advocates, and journalists into the building for discussions about violence prevention and housing — two issues that have been important for AmNews readers and will be the focus of a community space where they could meet and talk about both subjects.

Addressing gun violence: fear, public health, and community solutions

AmNews investigative contributor Shannon Chaffers moderated the anti-violence panel with Justin Napper of Not Another Child, Brownsville youth advocate MelQuan Thawney, and Rutgers public health professor Daniel Semenza. Chaffers asked what factors lead people to seek out illegal guns, especially in neighborhoods that already have a lot of violence and where there’s a lot of fear in the community; she asked if aggressive gun-possession enforcement really helps stop young people from carrying weapons.

Napper said fear is the main reason young people turn to weapons. “I would say that would be one of the leading factors for young people looking to possess a weapon. … It looks like recklessness, but it is actually fear. Young people want to feel safe: Safe from the police, safe from each other. … I think, more than anything, it’s just fear.”

Thawney also said fear is a driving force for weapons possession, and that mentoring, conflict mediation, education, and paid opportunities to do anti-violence work have become important alternatives. When local people are “getting paid to do the right thing, they’re getting paid to get their life in order,” he said. He emphasized the importance of engaging credible messengers — people whose experiences give them standing with young residents — rather than trying to work around them.

Semenza said violence prevention requires building sustained relationships and help managing impulsive responses, alongside support for outreach workers who often face burnout from such a strenuous job. He talked about efforts like “focused deterrence” and pairing targeted enforcement with housing, employment, and mental health assistance: “Policing is a tool in the toolbox to violence prevention,” Semenza said. “It doesn’t have to be the primary tool, but there’s good research and good evidence that the right kind of policing can help reduce violence.”

He explained that focused deterrence, or group-based violence intervention, targets people already involved in violence to limit harm to the larger community. Police and community partners, and often members of violence intervention organizations, identify people involved in shootings and invite them to a meeting at a neutral location, such as a church or town hall.

How a “call-in” works

1Police and community partners identify people involved in shootings

2They are invited to a meeting at a neutral location, such as a church or town hall, with mothers and community members present

3A choice is given

Keep shootingSwift consequences

Put the guns downHousing, a job, mental healthcare

“Everybody’s there; mothers are often there — they’re the most powerful messengers, frankly; and lots of people from the community are there, and there’s a choice given to people. The choice is: we know that you’ve been shooting, we know that you’ve been involved, and if you continue to shoot, you don’t put the guns down, there’s going to be consequences.

“There’s going to be swift consequences, whether that’s incarceration, whatever that looks like,” he continued. “But then the other path is given, and the other path is we can get you housing, we can get you a job, we can get you mental healthcare if that’s what you need. We can get you whatever it is, and there’s all of these different people that are at the call-in to provide that alternative pathway.”

Semenza explained that when the call-ins happen and real follow-up takes place, and the police are still part of it but sitting back, a better outcome can happen.

“The community is really making sure that people feel that they have this choice,” he said. “This has some of the best evidence to show that it can reduce violence because it’s done in a procedurally fair way.”

Expanding access to homeownership

The housing panel, led by FM Home Loans Senior Vice President Anya Irons, dealt with another barrier to community stability: access to homeownership. The NYU Furman Center’s analysis found that 26.9% of Black city households owned their homes in 2022, compared with 41.5% of white households.

Who owns their home in NYC

Black households

26.9%

White households

41.5%

“I see that many of you are exploring your options and learning about the [homebuying] process,” Irons said. “That’s perfect, because it’s never too soon to start thinking about it, honestly. Never too soon. Just like I was explaining with my own story, it was kind of always in the back of my mind that it would be really difficult for me to create generational wealth — but forward looking.”

FM representatives explained that their office offers FHA and conventional mortgages, down payment assistance, grants, second loans to help cover purchase costs, bank statement qualification for self-employed borrowers, and financing for HDFC cooperative apartments. They encouraged housing counseling, reviewing credit reports, and getting individual assessments before shopping for a home of one’s own.

“It’s never too soon, even if you think you don’t have any money, you don’t know where you want to live, but just start thinking about it.”

The anti-violence and housing panels focused the Amsterdam News Citadel campaign on ways to preserve Harlem, its people, and its institutions.