Disciplines

African American Studies

Abstract

Summary by Eliza Anderson.

Kazembe Balagun is a Harlem-born and Bronx-based leftist intellectual leader, community organizer, and current executive director of the Maysles Documentary Center.

Balagun was born Keith Alexander Mitchell, in 1976, to parents who had moved to New York City from South Carolina during the Great Migration in 1961. They were one of the first families to move into the Polo Grounds, the Harlem public housing development, before making the move to Co-op City in 1994. Balagun describes a “mythic” quality to Co-op City as a symbol of the Black middle class. In the interview, he recalls the shifting demographics of Co-op City in the 90s and 2000s, highlighting differences in Southern, West Indian, and West African Black communities living in the development.

Important to Balagun’s political actualization was his parents’ consciousness, and he recalls the pragmatic approach of his mother’s everyday activism and his father’s frank expression of political opinion as he was growing up. By age 16, Balagun was a self-identified Communist, and his peers at Cardinal Hayes called him ‘village.’ He talks about the importance of community institutions in Co-op City like the Building Association, and the enduring relevance of the Black church as a center for organizing.

As a current resident of Co-op City and in his new position at Maysles, Balagun discusses his commitment to uptown-centered activism and reflects on the political power of the third cinema. He expresses fears about the impact of gentrification, specifically the expansion of the Metro-North, on the affordability of Co-op City for its current residents. On the necessity of recording Black histories for the archive, Balagun says that “the importance of these types of projects is that I don’t want Black people to forget.”

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