Harlem Youth Report #5, Youth in the Ghetto

Year: 1964

Significance: 

• A powerful and revolutionary black comic book long considered a ghost or a mystery by many black collectors, because only a few have managed to catch a glimpse of this rare comic book.
• Distributed only in Harlem, it’s a comic for and about the Black community which was part of an effort to seriously study and examine the issues facing the residents of Harlem in the 1960s, and to suggest a path forward.
• Published by Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited (HARYOU) an organization founded by psychologists, educators and Civil Rights activists who testified as expert witnesses in a case which evolved into Brown v Board of Education.
• There is no Harlem Youth Report #1-4, so the #5 numbering is a bit of a puzzle. Some have speculated that because HARYOU distributed the comic along with other items as part of an educational plan, it could simply mean that the comic was the fifth version or part of it.
• HARYOU issued a 644 page report called “Youth in the Ghetto: A Study of the Consequences of Powerlessness, and a Blueprint for Change” at this time as well, along with a brochure that summarizes that report which notes that “A brief pictorial summary (comic magazine)” was also available for the younger reader. The report was remarkably effective. In the year that Harlem Youth Report #5 was issued, HARYOU’s study and its blueprint for change convinced the Lyndon B. Johnson administration to earmark $100 million to back the changes it recommended over the subsequent three years.

Read a copy of Harlem Yout Report #5 online at Afrovana.com

Credit to Rico Jones (IG – Blackkeycomics) for info on this book.