A warm and inviting, Black woman-owned cafe and event space is well worth checking out. The Ourtbox Cafe has now been in its cozy location at 2144 5th Ave for the past year and a half. The owner and mother of two, Lydia C. bakes pastries daily and brews fresh coffee to order with beans from Peru, Columbia and Ethiopia. She also makes delicious desserts. Homemade banana pudding was on the menu the day I visited.

Lydia, the owner, is a Harlem native who learned to bake from her grandmother and neighbor, Miss Barbara. After renovating and establishing the cafe, business has slowed and Lydia has fallen behind in rent. The landlord has begun legal action.

Please visit and help to save a local small gem of a business in Harlem. Ourt Box Cafe and Event Space 2144 5th Ave btw. 131-131nd St.

Harlem’s Bus Boycott

Before the activist Rosa Parks sparked the famous Montgomery Bus Boycott, which became a seminal movement within the American Civil Rights struggle, Harlem also had a bus boycott.

Years before Montgomery, African American New Yorkers protested the racist hiring practices of the New York Omnibus Corporation and 5th Avenue Coach Company.

Adam Clayton Powell Jr.'s Greater New York Coordinating Committee for Employment joined with other Harlem groups calling for a boycott of the two bus lines that refused to hire African Americans and the Transit Workers Union which refused to admit black members.

The Harlem protest lasted only a month and was sometimes violent. The Greater New York Coordinating Committee was successful, however, and the two bus lines signed an agreement with Powell’s group to hire 100 black drivers and 70 maintenance workers immediately. And it called for a continued quota system in hiring until 17 percent of the companies’ workforce was black.

Harlem residents formed a 'jitney' service during the boycott along major bus routes. Here is a photo of a Harlem woman getting into one of the improvised jitney cars: