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When some nineteenth century New Yorkers said "Harlem",
they meant almost all of Manhattan above Eighty-sixth Street.
Toward the end of the century, however, a group
of citizens in upper Manhattan-want perhaps, to shape a closer 1._________
and more precise sense of community—designated a section that
they wished to have known as Harlem. The chosen area was the
Harlem which Blacks were moving in the first decades of the 2.________
new century as they left their old settlements on the middle and
lower blocks of the West Side.
As the community became predominantly Black, the very
word "Harlem" seemed to lose its old meaning. At time it was 3.________
easy to forget that "Harlem" was originally the Dutch name
"Harlem". the community it described had been founded by 4.________
people from Holland；and that for most of its three centuries—it
was first settled in the sixteen hundreds—it had been preoccupied 5.________
by White New Yorkers. "Harlem" became synonymous to 6.________
Black life and Black style in Manhattan. Blacks living there
used the word as though they had coined it on themselves—not 7.________
only to designate their area of residence but to express their
sense of the various qualities of its life and atmosphere. As the
years passed, "Harlem" asserted an even larger meaning. In 8.________
the words of Adam Clayton Powell, Sr., the pastor of the
Abyssinian Baptist Church, Harlem "became the symbol of liberty
and the Promised Land to Negroes everywhere".
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