Marcus Garvey Park, formerly Mount Morris Park, is a twenty-acre green oasis nestled within the densely developed blocks of Harlem in New York City. Serving as a physical and cultural nexus, the park lies just a block away from the kinetic energy of Harlem's most significant commercial corridor, 125th Street. The park also interrupts Fifth Avenue, Harlem's central axis, and the historical boundary between predominantly African American Central Harlem and Spanish East Harlem. Its most defining feature is the 70-foot-tall mount of Manhattan schist, comprising a third of the park's area. Mounted atop is a fire watchtower, built in 1856, the only surviving one in the city.

Sponsored by the NYS Historic Preservation Office and funded with an Underrepresented Communities Grant from the National Park Service, this National Register of Historic Places nomination documents the park's significance as one of the oldest public parks in the city; as a backdrop for milestone events associated with the Black Arts Movement, namely the first performance of the Last Poets in 1968 and the Harlem Cultural Festival of 1969; and as a WPA-era recreational landscape. The nomination also documents the community-driven planning efforts in the 1960s-1980s to improve the park for everyday residents.

This nomination was supported by oral histories with long-time Harlem residents and professionals, for whom the park played a prominent role in their lives during the 1960s and 1970s. Nomination collaborator Jenna Dublin-Boc conducted the interviews.