What is Harlem to me? It is the earthly heights and peace pipes of the Lenape and Wappinger; it is the Dutch colonizers spray-painting the community of “Nieuw Haarlem” as if the Indigenous were an abandoned subway tumbling down mean streets; it is the ghetto cries of immigrant Italian, Jewish, Irish and German babies nestled in Lady Liberty’s copper-green arms; it is the crossroads blues of the Great Migration to America’s ebony Casbah; and it is, indisputably, the most iconic and historic village of African descendants—from Down South, from the West Indies, from the sub-Saharan motherland, from Latinx strongholds like Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, from like everywhere—on this here whole planet.
Harlem is also where William Greaves, the late, legendary Black filmmaker, was born and nurtured, and where he determined, in August of 1972, to assemble, at Duke Ellington’s regal townhouse, 26 artistic and social justice luminaries who had marched and mingled through the Harlem Renaissance and the Garvey Movement of the roaring 1920s.
Greaves had been an actor and dancer, among other imaginative endeavors, but realized early on it was behind the camera—as director, writer, producer and cinematic revolutionary—that he not only could and should elevate narratives ignored or forgotten because of racism, but would also have full creative control over his mind, his soul and his content.
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Which is why, for four hours at that sun-washed summer rendezvous in Harlem in the age of Vietnam and Nixon and Black Panthers and Watergate and The Godfather saga, we see smartly attired “New Negro” influencers of literature, intelligentsia, theater, the visual arts and political dissent like Eubie Blake (composer) and Noble Sissle (lyricist), who were the innovators of Shuffle Along, the first Broadway musical ever written, produced and performed exclusively by African Americans; like prolific portraitist, muralist and illustrator Aaron Douglass; like the celebrated people’s photographer James Van Der Zee (10 years later in 1982, at 96, he would shoot a 21-year-old Jean-Michel Basquiat); like Richard Bruce Nugent, multitalented and multidisciplined truth-teller who was one of the first and only openly queer voices of the Harlem Renaissance; like the women present who highlighted, methodically, the critical contributions of their gender so they would not be taken for granted in this space, nor deleted from memory (speak, Regina Andrews, speak); and like the women and men who worked and/or roamed Harlem libraries, salons, parties and the inner sanctums of Marcus Garvey’s mass appeal, which still happens to be the largest African American protest crusade in the annals of the United States, despite the fact that Garvey was an expat from the Caribbean island of Jamaica.
But little did Greaves know a great day in Harlem would become a 50-plus-years odyssey to complete what he proclaimed as the most important motion picture of his life. Greaves, who died in 2014, would have been 100 in 2026. Thankfully his son David Greaves, one of four camerapersons that August afternoon, is the director of the finished documentary, Once Upon a Time in Harlem. Meanwhile, William Greaves’ granddaughter, Liani Greaves, who had a super-close relationship with her grandpa, is the producer. And William Greaves’ beloved widow, Louise Archambault Greaves, co-carried the torch of this project tirelessly, until she passed, in 2023.
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So, yes, every now and again a movie comes along that effortlessly swipes my breath away, and dabs at the raw and delicate parts of my ancestral emotions. Once Upon a Time in Harlem is unequivocally such a movie. It is an automatic classic, a mesmerizing movie of its time, of these times, and for all times. Nestled in the upheavals and footprints of the Civil Rights era, it is a marvel to view and hear elders ruminate on the past while grappling with a tumultuous contemporary scene most of them had but just a few pages left to digest.
In that regard, Once Upon a Time in Harlem is a joyous, thoughtful, powerful and thrilling example of cinematic achievement and persistence. For sure, what the Greaves have done with Once Upon a Time in Harlem is not simply and meticulously craft one of the greatest and most engrossing documentary films I have ever experienced, but they have also rescued from the vaults of indifference and woeful ignorance a crucial and undeniably American and African American chapter of history. A history which, quite frankly, made it possible for writers like me to exist and be 100 years since the jazzy bustle and glow of the Harlem Renaissance.
Indeed, I sat there captivated by the cast of otherworldly characters who gathered in the spacious home of an absent Duke Ellington (his sister and business manager, Ruth, is present as Duke was ill). Because Once Upon a Time in Harlem is actually about three distinct periods in this nation’s journey: the 1920s, which saw Black wordsmiths like Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes dreaming a world, with their collective genius and excellence, in a way that could not have been imagined a mere 60 years before, as the brutality, shame and horror of American slavery was violently ending. Although Zora and Langston were dead and gone before this 1972 moment, I could not help but think of them both, two of the brightest stars of the Harlem Renaissance. Or how I was not taught the Harlem Renaissance, not in grade school, not in high school, in spite of attending some of the best alleged educational institutions in my hometown of Jersey City.
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Which was precisely William Greaves’ point, and the point of David and Liani Greaves, in seeing this monumental idea through to 100 minutes of unapologetic glory and reclamation. It is because William Greaves understood, intuitively, if history, any history, but especially Black history on this soil, is not documented properly, it will rapidly disappear, be removed, be banned, as we are witnessing, to the dismay of multitudes, in 21st century America.
Only in college, and only because of a Civil Rights Movement-inspired piece of legislation which took me from ferocious poverty to a pristine campus, did I finally have a class aptly titled “Harlem Renaissance.” The course exploded my brain with possibilities comparable to how Once Upon a Time in Harlem blew my wig back even as I was familiar with many of the names and faces on the screen.
In that sense, William Greaves foreshadowed our current stretch of mean-spirited and misguided leadership obsessively washing away entire contributions to the quilted and multicolored fabric of our society. Once Upon a Time in Harlem is a heart-shaped box from a gifted man and a gifted family who merely ask us to come to it as we are, to watch, to listen, to feel, just as Mr. Greaves and his crew were compassionate flies on a towering wall that August day.
So, truly, there are two massive discoveries and recoveries with Once Upon a Time in Harlem. One, clearly, is the Harlem Renaissance itself. The other is William Greaves’ work as a filmmaker, with dozens upon dozens of films and numerous awards. His mission, alas, was to be the eyeballs on the prize of democracy and freedom and justice for all, to spearhead permanent records that said, loudly, you can’t erase us. Well, with this singular piece of art we now know William Greaves will never be erased either.
Kevin Powell is a GRAMMY-nominated poet, humanitarian, filmmaker, public speaker, Webby Award-winning contributor to Newsweek, and author of 17 books, including his newest poetry collection, A Poem for Evangeline, And Other Songs (Get Fresh Books Publishing). His next book will be a biography of Tupac Shakur. Kevin lives in New York City. You can find him on social media platforms by typing poet kevin powell.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.