Before an assembled audience of more than 100, on Nov. 9, New York Amsterdam News publisher Elinor Tatum, led a breakfast presentation of the organization reimagining of its headquarters, which sits in a 138-year-old building on Frederick Douglass Boulevard in Harlem. That reimagining, supported by the Mellon Foundation, is intended to become a center devoted to the history of African American journalism while housing New York’s oldest Black newspaper and its charitable and educational foundation.
This event, which was sponsored by Trader Joe’s in Harlem announced the AmNews joining the recent reawakening along Harlem’s main commercial artery featured in the Harlem Heritage Tours.
A trail of legends
For example, the National Urban League nearby on 125th Street relocated from Lower Manhattan in 2025 into a $242 Million building which includes a Civil Rights museum and its offices. Marc Morial, president of the organization remembered how it was first introduced by the AmNews in 1911. “Their article outlined the Urban League’s vital mission,” he said “To [materially ] Aid Colored People.”
Also, the Studio Museum also on 125th Street reopened last year in a new $300 million facility. The AmNews covered it 1968 with an article, “A Museum Is Born in Harlem.” to mark its opening when it sat on Fifth Avenue at 125th. The Apollo Theatre, which sits around the corner from the AmNews headquarters, also on 125th, was first chronicled in the paper in 1935 after Frank Schiffman took over management of the closed 1914 burlesque venue.
Today it is closed for a $65 Million restoration, the complex is one of the few buildings in Harlem to utilize the federal 20% investment tax credit, available to buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places and others that contribute to a registered historic district.
Mere weeks after the National Black Theatre was established in 1968, the AmNews heralded the accomplishment: Presenting “Barbara Ann Teer and the Liberators,” they announced. Incorporating a towering residential component, their $80 Million complex is due to open in two years.
This leaves the Amsterdam News Educational Foundation project, described by Tatum as “the Citadel.”
Founded December 4, 1909, this Black weekly newspaper has occupied a former Victorian paint and wallpaper office and showroom, built in 1888, since 1941. Established as “an uncompromised voice for Blacks on matters overlooked by white mainstream dailies,” the AmNews metamorphosis is estimated to require a $44 Million investment.
Standing against injustice
Nearly 20 years my junior, Harlem city council member Yusef Salaam and I are still close enough age-wise, to share at least one common popular cultural reference. Marveling over the AmNews’ determination to assure its relevance through reinvention, he posited how in our childhood, modern marvels like AI and virtual media were accurately anticipated by a TV cartoon series we watched every Saturday.
He noted just how correct it turned out to be, except in one aspect. “The Only thing the Jetsons didn’t get right,” he asked? “Is that Black people are a part of the future too.”
Credit: Bill Moore Photo
A born and bred Harlemite and resident, of course, Salaam is most renowned as a member of the notoriously-wronged Central Park Five. I was only 33 in 1989, when the young men were accused of violently assaulting a white jogger.
So, it was at first difficult for me to empathize with the “wilding gang” of youth. “Why, would one confess to something bad you did not do,” reasoned this recent transplant from Ohio.
But for Wilbert Tatum and the AmNews, fully familiar with the NYPD’s tag teaming tactics, their “usual suspects,” good cop, bad cop and divide and conquer strategy, which almost always succeed in convincing Black suspects, the paper’s immediate position was unequivocal. Denied access to counsel or their parents, lied to and relentlessly interrogated without food, but to the AmNews, the young men were innocent.
This sentiment was echoed by Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal. Pledging a six-figure contribution to help realize the new Black Journalism History Center, he praised the AmNews as, “An antidote to Fox News and endemically racist media.”
The ‘doing good’ game plan
Just as she has effectively helped to steer this important venture, Siobhan “Sam” Bennett, the self-styled “white chick,”, who is Tatum’s longtime friend and effective field marshall, ably kept the breakfast proceedings going.
Introducing the collaborating architects, Angel Ayon of AYON Studio and Jerome Haferd of Jerome Haferd Studio, she noted how few New York buildings were done by designers of color and how even fewer buildings reflecting Black culture or history, were listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
“It’s as a means of connecting to our history, that makes this undertaking so essential,” said Ayon.
After recognizing Val Bradley and the invaluable of work her group, Save Harlem Now! State Sen. Cordell Cleare was quick to reiterate this notion.
“In this time, when there is such a mission underway, to harm Black people, to erase our essential contributions and even to dismiss our very existence, this is why I’m 100% behind this goal,” Cleare said. “It is the very culmination of all the other enriching and empowering activity along 125th Street. Collectively it’s prompting a “New Harlem Renaissance,” a Neo-Renaissance, an objective that’s deliberately doubly positive.
Tatum was in a reminiscent mood concluding the discussion. With poignancy she recalled, ‘when I was a little girl I asked my dad why he didn’t run for mayor of New York?’ He said, “I can do more good, doing what I’m doing…”
She’s now, enthusing how sometime in the near future, in a community oriented facility replete with educational exhibitions, a research apparatus, foundation and newspaper offices, there will also be be a welcoming lunch counter, a space reminiscent of Chock full o’ Nuts, Thomforde’s or Pam Pam, where the next generation will be able plan new revolutions.
Tatum is doing that same “good” her father did.
