NYC – Street Co-Named for Judge Hubert Delany

by Michelle D. Stent

On Saturday, May  11, 2024, his birthday, the corner of 145^th Street was co-named Judge Hubert T. Delany Way after the Harlem civil rights pioneer, attorney, politician, Assistant US Attorney, the first Black Tax Commissioner of New York, and one of the first appointed NYC Black judges. Judge Delany was a 75+ years resident of Harlem at Riverside Drive and 145^th Street.  His children, Dr. Madelon Delany Stent and Dr. Harry M. Delany, their families’ and his great-granddaughter all lived on Riverside Drive.  

Sponsored by Council Member Shaun Abreu and supported by Congressman Charles B. Rangel,(ret.) who knew Judge Delany, stated “that the magnitude of those he represented and served made him a true trailblazer in the village of Harlem and the country.  I can think of no one more-deserving of a ceremonial street-naming then Judge Hubert T. Delany.” 

Hubert Thomas Delany,  May 11, 1901 – December 28, 1990,  was on the board of Directors for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Harlem YMCA and became an active leader in the Harlem Renaissance. During his career as a civil rights attorney, he represented many of the Renaissance writers, actors and artists. He also served as a Vice President of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. 

Judge Delany graduated from City College of New York in 1923. He received his law degree from New York University School of Law in 1926, admitted to the bar in 1926, and admitted to practice before the US Supreme Court in 1932. He served five years as Assistant US Attorney for the Southern District of New York and was appointed Manhattan Tax Commissioner by Mayor LaGuardia in 1934. He was a member of Sigma Pi Phi Fraternity, the first Greek-letter organization to be founded by Black men. 

Delany had a long career serving as both a justice in the New York City Domestic Relations Court as well as an attorney and adviser to civil rights activists Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., US Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr. and poet Langston Hughes. He also advised clients in the entertainment and sports industries including famed opera singer Marian Anderson, singer and actor Paul Robeson, cartoonist E. Simms Campbell, bandleader Cab Calloway, Josephine Baker and Jackie Robinson. 

In 1929, Delany ran for a House of Representatives seat from Manhattan’s 21^st District, now partially the 13^th Congressional District; he lost, but earned the life-long respect and friendship of Mayor LaGuardia.  In 1954, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt made a visit to Harlem and a reception was given in her honor at the Delany home on 145^th Street and Riverside Drive where Judge Delany and his wife Willetta became the first Black family to host an incumbent First Lady.

His love of Harlem was evident in his own words, “ Because I have ceaselessly fought against segregation, discrimination, Jim Crow-ism, injustice and oppression of human beings, wherever it exists, and for first-class citizenship for the Negro in America, my soil would not rest easy and would be in constant conflict with everything the Southland stands for if even my body was buried there and permitted, in the course of time to become a part of the Southand of the United States.

I have therefore requested my remains buried in the State of New York, which, while not a place that measures up to the highest standard of the freedom and equality that the children of the God should enjoy, nevertheless gave me the opportunity to develop whatever was good in me, and permitted me the right and freedom, at least to engage in the fight to achieve the good things in life for all mankind.