New York Amsterdam News

[laughs] I'm looking for the New York Times, Financial Times.

And of course in New York I can pick up a copy of the Amsterdam News and some of the other stuff.

And of course, this is j- just ...

Or as I was coming up here overnight, of course we saw news of what had happened the day before, so I got a chance to get a feel for some of what's going on here in the city, uh, in the wake of Mark Wayne Mullin's jackbooted thugs shooting at grown men with a five-year-old child in the backseat.

Um, so, uh, in this wave, one of the new projects we're working on, we're traveling across the country, and interviewing different people.

And in New York, MJ Gray is the editor of, uh, the Amsterdam News.

So if a person knows, keeps up with Black press, the Amsterdam News is Harlem's paper.

And, uh, and he was like, "Look, I'm gonna be honest with you.

I learned so much under Angelo Henderson," and then actually, his father is a year and a half.

So a lot of people got well, but the message was contained just to the African-American community.

Bill Tatum, publisher of the Amsterdam News, he was there all the time.

And Isaac Hayes, Cicely Tyson, some of the Dick Gregory's, who was a close friend of mine.

In fact, he used to come down here, stay down here.

Working at the New York Times.

I mean, if she's really so concerned about equity, why isn't she working at the Amsterdam News in Harlem? Living in a townhouse worth close to $2 million.

Well, equity would suggest you live at the same level as most Black people in New York City who don't live at that level.

So – That's what I kept on thinking.

Uh, you can look this up.

I don't know if it's, you know, maybe Amsterdam News or something.

Uh, I don't...

You know, legend has it he thought the guy was sleeping with my grandmother.

Yeah.

And she saw that and had them published in the papers, uh, you know, had, in, in the Amsterdam News.

All part of the same creative stream.

Mm-hmm.

The primary job that he often did was work as a dishwasher in a restaurant.

And so the way that he found work was often by, he'd pull out the New York Amsterdam News, the black newspaper in New York City, and look at the Help Wanted section, and then one day he came across this ad that said, Actors Wanted, American Negro Theater.

And he said, you know, I've been a dishwasher, I've done all these other jobs, I'll try this.

So Poitier came to the American Negro Theater, which was housed in the 135th Street Library in the heart of Harlem.

She and her husband moved to England and fought for black equality.

Here's a story from the Amsterdam News published out of New York City.

Hip Hop Museum moves projected opening date to 2027.

Stories by Matthew Allen, and again, it was published in the Amsterdam News.

The highly anticipated opening of the Hip Hop Museum has been postponed yet again.

The institution, dubbed Hip Hop's Forever Home, has moved its grand opening from fall 2026 to spring of 2027, as listed on its website and social media pages.