Harlem

In East Harlem, Puerto Rican families, African American neighbors, West Indian immigrants, and newcomers like my father from South Asia lived side by side, often sharing the same struggles and the same sidewalks.

By Alaudin Ullah 

I was born in a Jewish hospital — Mount Sinai — to devout Bangladeshi Muslim parents in Spanish Harlem. We lived in the George Washington Carver Houses. I often joke that I was born to be a comedian. I laughed to keep from crying.

Growing up, I felt like an outcast. In the mid-1970s I attended P.S. 171 in East Harlem. In kindergarten I was bullied badly. My mother would sometimes come to school wearing a sari and kids would make fun of her behind her back.

“Yo, why is your mother wearing a curtain?” one kid asked me.

At lunch they served ham and cheese sandwiches. As a Muslim I couldn’t eat it. Back then there were no alternatives — no peanut butter and jelly option. My classmates would wave their sandwiches around while my stomach growled.

“Wow, this ham and cheese sandwich is so good,” they’d say.

I cried often. I felt like a freak.

But one day a classmate said, “You’ll be Robin and I’ll be Batman.”

It started that simply. That’s how childhood alliances form. I still felt like an outsider in Spanish Harlem, but eventually I found a circle of friends, teachers, and mentors who made sure I wouldn’t disappear under the weight of teasing and loneliness. I began to feel seen.

My father had once felt like an outsider too.

He arrived in America as a teenager in the 1930s from what is now Bangladesh. He first lived in the Lower East Side, where he often felt isolated and alone. He told stories about the loneliness he felt working in restaurants downtown. His co-workers — Puerto Rican, African American, and West Indian men — encouraged him to move uptown.

“This is where you belong,” they told him.

When he arrived in Spanish Harlem he said he felt something he hadn’t felt before: home.

My uncle used to joke that people told my father, “If you can’t speak English, don’t worry — nobody in Spanish Harlem speaks English.”

My father eventually opened a small restaurant in the neighborhood. He worked endlessly. There was dignity in that work. Integrity. He never called himself an activist, but the way he lived carried a quiet sense of pride and responsibility to his community.

In East Harlem, Puerto Rican families, African American neighbors, West Indian immigrants, and newcomers like my father from South Asia lived side by side, often sharing the same struggles and the same sidewalks.

Looking back now, I realize something important: East Harlem was a place where many different outsiders found solidarity with each other. Puerto Ricans, African Americans, West Indians, and immigrants like my father from South Asia were all trying to carve out dignity in a city that often ignored them.

In many ways, East Harlem became an unlikely meeting ground for multiple diasporas — Puerto Rican, African American, West Indian, and South Asian — whose histories of migration, labor, and struggle quietly intersected on the same streets.

For me, growing up in East Harlem during the turbulent 1970s, the neighborhood also had another powerful presence: the Young Lords.

They were young Puerto Rican activists — teenagers and people in their early twenties — organizing food programs, cleaning streets, advocating for health care and social justice. I used to see them around the neighborhood, especially near the church on 111th Street and Lexington Avenue, just a couple of avenues away from Jefferson Park where I spent time as a kid.

As a child they looked intimidating. They wore berets and jackets and spoke with a confidence that felt larger than life. At first glance you might think they were a gang. But more often they were handing out flyers, selling newspapers, or talking to people about organizing their community.

Their presence was felt all throughout East Harlem. One of the Young Lords’ most important initiatives was the Free Breakfast Program for children. At the time many public schools in New York City did not provide free breakfast, and countless kids came to school hungry. The Young Lords organized volunteers to feed neighborhood children before school. Today, free breakfast programs exist in every public school in New York City. What began as a radical grassroots effort eventually became public policy.

In first grade our class took a trip to El Museo del Barrio. At the time it was a small storefront gallery on Third Avenue. The Young Lords had challenged the traditional idea of a museum. They believed art spaces should represent the people — not just European traditions but Latino artists and community voices.

During the visit we sat down for an art workshop led by a man named Hiram Maristany.

He had a presence you couldn’t ignore. His eyes were intense — the kind of eyes that suggested he had seen a lot of life — but there was warmth there too.

He went around the room asking each of us what we wanted to be when we grew up.

My hand shot up.

“Mr. Maristany,” I said confidently, “I want to be bat catcher for the New York Yankees — like Thurman Munson.”

He looked at me for a moment.

“What happens if you don’t make it?” he asked. “It’s hard to become a professional baseball player.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “If I don’t make it with the Yankees, I’ll be point guard for the New York Knicks. And if they don’t want me, I’ll play quarterback for the New York Jets.”

I had a backup plan.

Mr. Maristany sighed and handed me a camera.

“Here,” he said. “Hold this.”

Then he started explaining how it worked — the aperture, the lens, how you frame a subject.

“You watch life happen,” he said. “Then you document it.”

At the time I had no idea that the man teaching me about cameras was a founding member of the Young Lords.

In June of 1969, Hiram and several other activists had traveled by station wagon from New York to Chicago to meet José “Cha Cha” Jiménez, leader of the Young Lords Organization there. Inspired by Chicago’s transformation of a street gang into a political force allied with the Black Panthers, they returned to New York determined to build a similar movement.

Years passed before I saw Hiram again.

In 2013 I returned from Bangladesh where I had been filming my documentary, In Search of Bengali Harlem. I spent many afternoons editing at a coffee shop up the big hill on 100th Street and Lexington Avenue.

Walking up that hill always makes me feel like I’m home.

One afternoon I met an old friend from kindergarten there — the same kid who once declared himself Batman while I was Robin. Sitting next to him was Mr. Maristany.

He was older now. Grayer. Heavier. But he still had those piercing eyes and that unmistakable East Harlem swagger. He looked at me and smiled

“So,” he said, “I guess you didn’t make it as bat catcher for the Yankees.”

“No,” I said. “But I’m still waiting to hear from the Knicks and Jets.”

He laughed.

“Call me Hiram,” he said.

I showed him a rough trailer of my film on my laptop. The footage included archival scenes of East Harlem from the 1950s and 60s — kids playing stickball, people sitting on fire escapes, teenagers running across rooftops. Hiram leaned closer to the screen.

“Where did you get this footage?” he asked.“

“MIT’s digital archives,” I told him. “It was part of an old NBC special about a social worker in East Harlem helping a kid find a missing camera.”

Hiram stared at the screen.

He didn’t say anything.

Then his eyes began to fill with tears.

At first I didn’t understand what I was looking at.

“Hiram,” I asked quietly, “do you know this kid?”

He stayed silent.

Then suddenly it hit me.

“Hiram… is that you?”

He looked up slowly.

“Yes,” he said.

“I loved that man.”

And for a moment the room felt like it had folded time in half.

For the last ten years of his life we stayed in touch. We talked about East Harlem, about the Young Lords, and about documenting history before it disappears.

One of my last memories of Hiram was at a large exhibition of his photographs.

A reporter from the New York Times approached him and asked if they could interview him about his life.

Hiram waved them away. He didn’t trust authority.
And he definitely didn’t trust the press.

“If you want to know about me,” he said, pointing to the photographs on the wall, “go look at my pictures.”

“This is my people.”

“That’s who I am. That’s where I live.”

“I’m from East Harlem.”

“I gave my blood to the Young Lords. I gave my blood to this community.”

“That’s what you should write about.”

Years later, while finishing In Search of Bengali Harlem, I often thought about those words.

My father had come to this country with nothing and built a small restaurant in Spanish Harlem. He worked long hours with integrity and pride.

Hiram documented his people with a camera.

My father served his community through work.

And I realized that making this film — telling the story of Bengali Harlem and the forgotten history of South Asian immigrants in this neighborhood — was my own way of honoring both of them.

Hiram once told me that when you tell the story of your people, you don’t sugarcoat it.

You tell the truth.

That’s how he photographed the Young Lords.

And that’s how I tried to make my film.

Because in East Harlem, stories only survive when someone decides they are worth remembering.