Utopia Children's House | 170 W. 130th St.

From 5th Ave., make a right onto W. 131st St. Turn left at Lenox/Malcolm X Blvd. and then right onto W. 130th St. Continue walking until you get to the building that once housed Utopia Children’s House (170 W 130th St.), which will be on the south side of W. 130th St.

By Leticia Robles-Moreno

Utopia Children’s House was a safe place where African American parents, especially single mothers, could keep their children busy and happy off the street while they were at work. It was also a creative space where children could learn arts and crafts while developing a sense of self-worth, belonging, and community. The well-known painter Jacob Lawrence started his career as a child at Utopia.

Utopia Children’s House provides a counter-narrative to the history of violence and racially motivated crimes that have taken the lives of many African American youth. In today’s world, a bag of Skittles and an iced tea can be mistaken for weapons, as they were in the case of Michael Brown, who was racially profiled and murdered by a police officer because of prejudices against Black youth. In contrast, Utopia Children’s House put paintbrushes in the hands of young children in need of a better life. This is the place where hope rose and where life could be celebrated. Here residents could answer the African American poet Lucille Clifton’s invitation, “Won’t you celebrate with me?”:

won't you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.

Recently, the Black Trans Media Project updated this poem with a musical installation, meant to commemorate the life of Islan Nettles, a transwoman of color who was murdered as the result of a hate crime in Harlem in 2013.*

As we will see in our walk, hope and hopelessness are ingrained in the everyday life of Harlem – a place where children’s games offer glimpses of a future that can be promising or terrifying, and always challenging. Maya Angelou, another African American poet, depicted this struggle in “Harlem Hopscotch.” The work of Utopia Children’s House made the difference so that winning and losing the game of life wouldn’t depend on the flip of a coin or the chances of a children’s game. Here’s her poem.

One foot down, then hop! It's hot.
Good things for the ones that's got.
Another jump, now to the left.
Everybody for hisself.
In the air, now both feet down.
Since you black, don't stick around.
Food is gone, the rent is due,
Curse and cry and then jump two.
All the people out of work,
Hold for three, then twist and jerk.
Cross the line, they count you out.
That's what hopping's all about.
Both feet flat, the game is done.
They think I lost. I think I won.

Against the odds of an uncertain future, we must remember that the name “Utopia” wants to transport us to a better Harlem and better worlds. Utopia Children’s House invited us to imagine the promise of hope. In the words of the late queer-of-color theorist José Esteban Muñoz: “How does one stage utopia? [...] Utopia is not prescriptive; it renders potential blueprints of a world not quite here, a horizon of possibility, not a fixed schema. It is productive to think about utopia as flux, a temporal disorganization, as a moment when the here and the now is transcended by a then and a there that could be and indeed should be.”

Click here to view the official music video for Maya Angelou's "Harlem Hopscotch" produced by the Oprah Winfrey Network.

*Editorial addition made by Nicole Marie Gervasio in July 2017.