Video: Bruce D. Haynes on “What Makes Harlem Special?”

“Bruce D. Haynes’s story is a classic American tale—which combines the big themes of history with the gritty reality of a single family’s extraordinary story.”

~Jeffrey Toobin, staff writer at The New Yorker and senior legal analyst at CNN

Bruce D. Haynes is professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Davis and coauthor (with Syma Solovitch) of Down the Up Staircase: Three Generations of a Harlem Family. The book tells the story of one Harlem family across three generations, connecting its journey to the historical and social forces that transformed Harlem over the past century. In this video, Haynes answers the question, “What makes Harlem special.”