evidence and climate history to trace the development of the ancient kingdoms and empires of sub-Saharan Africa.6 Where firm evidence could not be found, Davidson (1970) speculated about what might be reasonable to believe. For example, during the millennia between five and ten thousand years ago, when, according to scientists, the Sahara was a green and fertile land, there are faint traces of humans who were planting fields and raising animals. One can only wonder about cities buried beneath those sands.
The idea that ancient Africans had developed cities was a radical new concept for me. I spent hours and days rereading Davidson and trying to come to terms with the facts and possibilities he was presenting. At that time, the academic discipline of history was based exclusively on Eurocentric perspectives. Greece was considered to be the fountainhead of civilization. There seemed to be a consensus among my professors and fellow students that any scholarship centered on the African experience was not worth studying. My participation in anything Afrocentric would have made me academically suspect, and I wasn’t ready to go out on that limb. I kept my thoughts and interests to myself and continued reading and thinking about these new ideas throughout my years at Columbia.
In 1961, Dad suffered a brain hemorrhage at the age of 59. He was in a coma for four days before Mother finally called her sister, Ede. She thought he was sleeping and would eventually wake up. He was taken to the hospital and remained in the coma for a few days before he died. We were all able to be there with him, and that felt good. Lewie and I had both had some reconciliation with him before his death, but I wish there had been more. The memorial service at the funeral home was not as well attended as I expected, and only a handful of friends came to the graveside.
Lewie and I had to sell the several properties our dad had purchased as there was no way we could keep up the mortgages. We just broke even on the deals so there was no money left for Mother. She lived in Philadelphia with Ede for a few months after Dad died. She was in good health, but she was lonely. I was in my first year at Columbia, and Lewie was working at Princeton. We rented a house that was halfway between Princeton and Columbia, and Mother moved in with us. We decided that would be the easiest way to deal with our new situation. The arrangement lasted for about a year. I was very comfortable living with Lewie and Mother, but commuting was stressful. I worked as a night janitor at Columbia and was taking four courses during the days. For several days in a row, I would work all night, sleep on a couch on campus for a few hours, and then go straight to my classes without returning to New Jersey. The travel and switching between train and subway was tiring and time consuming. Eventually, Mother moved back to Philadelphia, and I moved to Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
I met Jean Doak briefly during my trip with John in the early spring of 1962 to the then all-white Connecticut College for Women,7 where we had been invited to talk about life as an African American man in the United States. I described a world the students had not known. Afterward, I exchanged letters with Joanne, Jean’s friend. I described the planned Sealtest Milk Company boycott and our need for staff. Wanting to work on the boycott, Jean took the bus from New Jersey to New York early that summer and found us in the basement on East Fourth Street beyond Avenue C. The absence of a kitchen and the night visits by rats were a shock to her. An Antioch student who was doing her three-month work requirement and living near us invited Jean to share her apartment. She did not find a role in the boycott and instead got a nine-to-five job to save money for the next year at college. Later that summer, we were raising funds to start up HEP, the civil rights group that I had cofounded with several other students as part of NSM. Jean ended up working at HEP and abandoned her plan to return to college.
Jean was quiet and reserved. She didn’t talk a lot. In that way, she reminded me of my mother, whose calm demeanor was a counterpoint to my father’s dominant personality. I thought Jean just needed to be drawn out, and I liked being able to do that. I liked that she was a rebel even though she was shy. I liked that she challenged conventions. She didn’t want to get married. She didn’t want to change her name. I admired her spirit of independence. It made me feel good to be connected with someone who was also rebelling. Although I was very active in the public arena, I was actually a loner deeper down. Being with Jean helped me feel less isolated.
Beside civil rights work, Jean and I shared an interest in drawing. After hearing so much from me related to architecture, she began to consider it as a possible career. We had interests in common and were both reluctant to be alone, so the transition to being together was easy. We became a couple toward summer’s end.
Jean had a broader sense of geographic entitlement than I did despite her insistence that she had not traveled much. My territory consisted of the Lower East Side, Greenwich Village, and uptown near Columbia in Harlem and Morningside Heights. In these neighborhoods, I felt more or less welcome. I could go other places, but, in those situations, I often felt like an interloper.
I did not trust that the whole continent belonged to me as Jean and other white people I knew seemed to feel. I was wary of wandering too far from a black neighborhood. I felt that most of Manhattan, to say nothing of the suburbs, was hostile territory.
Joining the Community Design Movement
In 1962, I was among the early adopters of the community design movement, a social movement that sought to link architecture and urban and community planning with civil rights. This involved finding a site, engaging nearby residents in the planning process, and designing a shared space where youth, families, and seniors could come together to celebrate community life. My model was the neighborhood commons projects that Karl Linn was orchestrating in collaboration with neighborhood residents, volunteer teams, students, and volunteer professionals. The idea behind commons was to foster the development of a new kind of extended family living based not on blood but on friendship, mutual aid, and intergenerational support. This work is documented and illustrated in Karl’s 2007 book, Building Commons and Community.
Karl was a champion of people’s access to commons at a time when the concept of commons was lost on most Americans. In our modern society, most land-use decisions are privatized, which tends to privilege people with more money and resources and marginalize everyone else. In most indigenous, traditional, or rural societies, people have a direct capacity to come together and decide what is needed for the common good—a grazing field for sheep or cattle, a pump for water, a market space, and so on. Most people believe that air and water are common assets, but these beliefs are being challenged by neoliberal economic theorists and corporate interests.8
Creating a Neighborhood Commons in Harlem
With my parallel interests in urban planning and the civil rights movement, I went to work for the Architects’ Renewal Committee in Harlem, which aided community groups. I involved myself in a practical project that would improve the neighborhood by surveying all the vacant land in Harlem. This was our first community design project. We surveyed 150 blocks of central and west Harlem. In collaboration with Karl Linn and members of HEP, I selected a site at 148th Street and Bradhurst Avenue to build a neighborhood commons. It took an enormous effort to clear the lot of trash, rats, mattresses, and broken appliances. A neighbor borrowed from his workplace an earth-moving vehicle, which saved us days of unpleasant work. In the summer of 1963, we moved our HEP storefront into a building adjacent to the site.
The two vacant lots formed an entrance to the commons, which included all the backyards in the city block bounded by 147th and 148th Streets, Bradhurst Avenue, and Eighth Avenue. With volunteer architects, we developed a plan for the site, cleared out the backyards, and implemented the first phase of the project: the building of a large barbecue pit. Several big community celebrations were held in the commons, and the tutoring program continued in one of the basements. Children also met their tutors at various churches.
Lewie moved into an apartment on the block