THE NORTH RIDING PROJECT

Dirt, garbage cans overflowing or kicked over, drunks, dope addicts, beggars.  Sleazy bars, store-front churches with gospels being shouted inside, “bargain” stores, hockshops, undertaking parlors.  Greasy “home-cooking” restaurants, beauty shops smoky inside from Negro women’s hair getting fried, barbershops advertising conk experts.  Cadillacs, secondhand and new, conspicuous among the cars on the streets.

X/Autobiography

Pig Foot Mary: a huge Amazon who arrived in New York in 1901.  She mounted a steaming boiler of pig’s feet on top of a baby carriage and sold them on the Upper East Side.  She took the money she made in pigs’ feet and bought Harlem properties, becoming one of the wealthiest landowners in Harlem.

Ottley/Negro