Meet Joseph (Continued)
Joseph, attorney, entrepreneur, and writer, moved to Harlem about 40 years ago with the desire to serve the Harlem community. He owned the Ben & Jerry’s on 125th Street in the 90’s as a part of a social initiative to help men who were homeless to get starter jobs and get back on their feet. The men were from the Harkhomes shelter he had founded in a church basement on 128th Street, and would also gain other life skills that Joseph refers to as “holistic hardware,” to help them move forward in their lives. Although the physical shelter is no longer there he has the “holistic hardware” curriculum available online in video form to help others access the information. Later in life, he would also get involved in Bethel Gospel Assembly and would partner to create the Beth Hark Counseling Center that is still doing outreach to this day. He started his Harlem story after rejecting a job on Wall Street to serve the Harlem community.
He first moved to Sugar Hill, on 148th Street and Convent Avenue. Remarking on what drew him to Harlem in particular, he says, “I have to say that it was a divine revelation… It was my second year in law school that I was at the church where I was attending, and the preacher was preaching, and it was a moment where... he said, 'Someone here has a special calling in your life. It's not what you think it might be. But it's going [somewhere]... you've never thought of going, but you have to be obedient to God's plan.' And… that week I'm in [a real estate law] class, and… the professor… starts talking about Harlem… as an example of real estate law not being applied immediately. But it was one of those, 'Hmm, I feel like this is for me,' right? …And so there were a number of those experiences… where it confirmed that this is where I should go.” In his third year of law school, he visited his older sister who was living in Manhattan at the time, “She had a friend in Harlem that she was going to visit. And I'm like, 'Oh, in Harlem? Okay, I'll come with you.' So we go to visit this friend, her friend Kathy and we're sitting in Kathy's apartment, and we're just talking. And there's a man across the street, and she points at him and says, 'Oh, yeah… He's an African diplomat. And he just bought that house and he's fixing it up. And I talked to him the other day, and he's looking for tenants.' So we leave Kathy and he's out there and divine moment, right? So I go over to him, I introduce myself, and he looks at me and says, 'You want to move to Harlem? I'll rent you this spot.' …That's how it happened. So, you know, I put all those people's pieces together... God's order in the footsteps.”
“Standing on my values and convictions and saying, ‘No, I’m going to go forward into Harlem, where I’m feeling God is calling me,’ really showed me that you can make a difference. You can really contribute to lives getting better and [the] community getting better… if you make a decision and you stick to that.”
His start in Harlem was difficult, at times struggling to pay the rent, find his footing and determine how to fulfill his purpose, but he was able to find his path through creativity and mentors. He found community through the arts, his faith, and through business. He got involved in the Harlem Arts Alliance, gaining support as a writer, and the Harlem Business Alliance, which supported him as an entrepreneur, and at Bethel Gospel Assembly, where he found his “spiritual family.” Harlem has been extremely influential in his life and to him as a person, “I could have gone corporate… I had the credentials, and it was a tough decision. My parents looked at me like I was crazy… But standing on my values and convictions and saying, 'No, I'm going to go forward into Harlem, where I'm feeling God is calling me,' really showed me that you can make a difference. You can really contribute to lives getting better and [the] community getting better… if you make a decision and you stick to that.” He also fell in love with Harlem through learning more about its history, “I was a history major in college. And that was really the foundation for me understanding the Harlem Renaissance and the writers and what they did, what they created and really created through their intellectual work, a movement that not only changed the community, but impacted America and the world… Whenever I had free time I'd be at the Schomburg library, reading and writing… And then I have this creative dimension, right? And so I got involved in the arts community… pretty much early on as a playwright. And so I wrote one play that got produced at City College and ran at the Aaron Davis Hall at City College. And then my second play was at the National Black Theater here in Harlem, and that was called ‘Homegrown.’ It was actually based on my experiences with the homeless, which I was able to bring to life. So it was both through my research and love of history at Schomburg, as well as my involvement with the arts, that I really got to know and got connected with Harlem.”
“We had the Harlem Renaissance… and that’s 100 years ago now but… the legacy is still here and it’s still strong… For me, if you are really trying to understand, you know, who you are and what you can be as a Black person, Harlem is that place of self discovery…”
The significance of Harlem to the culture cannot be overstated, “The best way to describe Harlem is, it's really the center of Black culture. It's still that… We had the Harlem Renaissance… and that's 100 years ago now but… the legacy is still here and it's still strong… For me, if you are really trying to understand, you know, who you are and what you can be as a Black person, Harlem is that place of self discovery… We as a Black people need to understand that history and those role models, the trailblazers that made a difference when there were obstacles much greater than we face today. But they did it, so we should be able to do it, too.” Looking to the future he says, “I really see my contributions now more in the creative literary space. I'm a writer. I just had my sixth book published. And, you know, it's called ‘Make Your Own History: Timeless Truths from Black American Trailblazers,’ where I have 120… people who made a difference from the past, and I draw life lessons so that we can apply them in the present… And then for Harlem, you know, the work goes on. This is the centennial for the Harlem Renaissance. And I think we in Harlem need to think intentionally and creatively about a second Harlem Renaissance… so that the work that they began, which has been disrupted in some ways and has gone off the track, the work that they started in the first Harlem Renaissance can go to the next level.” Joseph looks toward the youth to carry the torch and take Harlem to that “next level,” to be “the cultural visionaries of this time in order to make a difference for our people and move them along this journey of freedom and justice and power that so many of us still need.”