Brooklyn bridge

City tales | Larry Holcomb has one year to reach new immigrants in Bedford-Stuyvesant, and he,s teaching them English to do it | Hope Hodge

James Walker for WORLD

NEW YORK CITY— The languages are French, Arabic, Pulaar, Fulani, Wolof, and Mandinka—but not English. The vendors sell African clothing and Arabic pastries. The local mosque calls for prayer five times a day. Morocco? No, this is Fulton Street on the southern edge of the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in Brooklyn, and the front line for a new ministry, Urban Impact.

"Bed-Stuy" has a recent past filled with violence, racial tension, drugs, and poverty. It used to be called the largest ghetto in the United States, and "the Harlem of Brooklyn" because of its 70 percent African-American population. Billy Joel mentioned it in his 1980s hit song "You May Be Right," singing, "I've been stranded in the combat zone / I walked through Bedford Stuy alone." Decreased crime and slow re-gentrification have changed Bed-Stuy, but dirty streets and rundown convenience stores remain, and so do many ethnic microcosms. Today, most of the residents of Bed-Stuy's southern edge are recent immigrants from North Africa.