Harlem, a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, was a crucial setting during the Civil Rights Era, which spanned approximately 1950 to 1964, arguably culminating with the passage of the controversial Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Great Migration in the early 20th century brought a considerable number of Black residents to the neighborhood, and it became a hotbed of cultural growth and political activism during the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s and '30s. This period set the scene for the legal and social strides made during the revolutionary Civil Rights Era.

Harlem was the nexus for many important figures, places and key events in 20th-century Black history. Langston Hughes wrote many powerful poems while in Harlem, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered one of his most important speeches, "Beyond Vietnam," at Riverside Church, located on Harlem's Riverside Drive. Both the National Urban League and the United Negro Improvement Association were founded in Harlem, the latter under ...