Now Recorded on Film, Memories of ‘the Black Y’ Provoke Smiles and Tears

By DIRK JOHNSON

Known around town as “the black Y,” it served as the heart of the African-American community for more than 50 years after opening in 1914. Young people played basketball, learned to swim, box and play Ping-Pong. The little Y.M.C.A. branch hosted proms for black students, father-and-son banquets, even a performance by Nat King Cole.

The closing of the Emerson branch in 1969, part of the move toward racial integration, provoked a deep sense of sorrow in the black community here, a sense of loss that has not been fully voiced until lately.