The Harlem Renaissance (1918-1935)

In the article below, cultural historian Otis Alexander describes the Harlem Renaissance, the early 20th Century outpouring of literature, art, theater, and music by African American artists and writers.

In the 1920s, Harlem, New York, underwent a significant transformation from its original identity as an upper-class white neighborhood, planned in the 1880s, to a vibrant cultural and entrepreneurial epicenter of New York’s Black community. This shift was largely driven by rapid real estate overdevelopment, which resulted in numerous empty buildings. Faced with rising vacancy rates and desperate to find tenants, landlords began to lower rents, making the area more accessible to Black individuals and families seeking a better life. This influx of residents included many African Americans fleeing the oppressive Jim Crow laws of the deep South as part of the Great Migration, a movement that intensified in the 1910s and 1920s. However, the narrative of Harlem during this period is not only about escape from oppression; it is also a story of resilience and creativity.

African Americans began to cultivate a rich cultural landscape characterized by a flourishing of literature, music, art, and intellectual thought which would be known as the Harlem Renaissance. Amidst this cultural blossoming, Metaliteracy played a crucial role involving the development of critical thinking skills and the ability to analyze and create information in various formats that empowered an elite group of Harlem residents to navigate the complex social and political issues they faced, enabling them to effectively communicate their experiences and challenge the mainstream narratives that marginalized them.

Through literary works, jazz music, painting, sculpture, and theater among other art forms, these African American women and men, artists, thinkers, musicians, articulated their struggles and aspirations, fostering a sense of unity and pride within this rapidly growing Black neighborhood that would emerge during the 1920s as the largest and most famous African American community in the world. Ultimately, the transformation of Harlem during the 1920s was about adapting to new circumstances, claiming space, asserting identity, and cultivating a cultural legacy in the face of systemic racial and gender oppression.

Prominent scholars, including the human rights activist and sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois, born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts in 1868, who in 1895 became the first African American to earn a Doctor of Philosophy from Harvard University. Du Bois’s seminal work, The Souls of Black Folk, published in 1903, played a significant role in shaping discussions around race and culture for the next two decades. The book would ignite intellectual exchanges among writers, social scientists, and members of the artistic community, contributing to the early development of the Harlem Renaissance.

In 1909, Du Bois co-founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) alongside Ida Wells-Barnett, a journalist and sociologist from Holly Springs, Mississippi, and other activists. The Crisis, the official publication of the NAACP, under Du Bois’s editorial guidance, provided an early platform for intellectuals and artists who later became prominent contributors to the Renaissance. It brought together Blacks relocating from the South and a growing number of West Indian immigrants who began to settle in Harlem.

It was Alain Leroy Locke, another Harvard-trained (1907) philosopher, literary critic, and the first African American Rhodes Scholar, who explained the Renaissance to the world through his 1925 anthology, The New Negro: Voices of the Harlem Renaissance. That anthology introduced the “New Negro Movement” which in a single phrase, set apart this new generation of scholars and artists, from those who had gone before. Locke, born in 1885 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, soon became known as the “dean” of the Harlem Renaissance, as he declared it a “spiritual coming of age.”

Harlem was also home to Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, an archivist, writer, and activist. His dedication to creating a bibliography of works by and about Black artists and writers both in the United States and around the world, helped establish the physical embodiment of the Renaissance. Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1874, Schomburg’s curiosity led him to Harlem at the age of 17 in 1891. His commitment to this emerging Black scholarship was recognized in 1922 when he was elected president of the American Negro Academy. Since his arrival in the United States, Schomburg amassed a collection of over 10,000 books, manuscripts, sheet music, photographs, newspapers, periodicals, pamphlets, and artwork by and about Blacks in numerous languages. His life-long dedication was recognized in 1926 when the Carnegie Corporation purchased his collection for $10,000 on behalf of The New York Public Library. That collection housed in the 135th Street Branch of the New York Public Library, now became the meeting place for scholars and intellectuals who continued to shape the Renaissance. Today that branch has been enlarged to become the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

While the nucleus of the Harlem Renaissance was in New York City, the movement also significantly influenced francophone countries, Spanish-speaking regions, and areas in Africa that had been colonized. A notable figure in this international (Pan-African) movement was Claude McKay, who was born in Nairne Castle, Jamaica in 1888 but moved to Harlem in 1914. McKay emerged as the first and most militant voice of the Harlem Renaissance with his poem “If We Must Die,” published in 1919. This powerful verse was so impactful that British Prime Minister Winston Churchill recited it to the United States Congress in an effort to encourage the country to join his troops in World War II. McKay’s resilience and determination were further demonstrated with the publication Spring in New Hampshire in 1920 and Harlem Shadows in 1922. His novel Banjo, released in 1929, received acclaim in France, making him a participant in the Négritude Movement, which was a spin-off of the Harlem Renaissance.

Poet, author, playwright, and songwriter Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri in 1901. By the early 1920s he was studying at Columbia University in Morningside Heights, on the edge of Harlem when he emerged as one of the most prominent poets of the Movement. Hughes reflected the international dimension of the Renaissance in that he had traveled to West Africa and France where he met the writers of the Négritude Movement. His most prominent poem, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” published 1n 1921 when he was 20 years old, praised the accomplishments of Blacks in the Diaspora and their resilience in the face of centuries of suffering. This poem, penned during his high school years, was a powerful expression to the strength and endurance of the Black community, and was published in 1921 in The Crisis and later in Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life sponsored by the National Urban League.

Jean Toomer was another notable figure of the Renaissance. Originally named Nathan Pinchback Toomer, Jean Toomer, born in Washington, DC in 1894, would become one of the most prolific writers of the Renaissance era. He authored 46 books, including his most popular novel, Cane, published in 1923. In this work, Toomer skillfully combined poetry and prose to explore the experiences of African Americans living in the rural South and those migrating to Northern cities during the Jim Crow era.

The novelist, playwright, and leading poet of the period, Countee Cullen, was born in 1903 in Louisville, Kentucky. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from New York University in 1925, earned an M.A. degree from Harvard the following year, and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1928 to study in Paris, France. His work explored race, identity, love, and faith. Cullen’s most notable works were Copper Sun (1927) and The Ballad of the Brown Girl (1928).

A number of Black women also emerged as prominent figures in the Harlem Renaissance. Novelist and short-story writer Nella Larsen was one of them. Larsen was born in 1891 in Chicago, Illinois to a father from St. Croix, Danish West Indies, and mother from Denmark. After briefly studying at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, she transferred to the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, an experience she later described, as influencing her writing. By 1912 she settled in Harlem and worked as a librarian and nurse. In 1928, Larsen’s first novel, Quicksand, appeared. The novel focused on a young biracial woman seeking both love and identity in Harlem. In 1929 her novel, Passing, continued to explore the theme of race, identity, and self-acceptance. Larsen’s international experiences, particularly her time in Copenhagen, greatly influenced her writing, adding a unique perspective to her exploration of race and identity.

Jessie Redmon Fauset, also emerged as a prominent Harlem Renaissance novelist. Born in Snow Hill, New Jersey in 1882, she earned both her undergraduate and graduate degrees from Ivy League institutions, graduating from Cornell University in 1905 and the University of Pennsylvania in 1919. Fauset taught French and Literature at a public high school in Washington, DC. While there she became a regular contributor to The Crisis, where she received encouragement from its editor, W.E.B. Du Bois. Fauset moved to Harlem in 1919 to serve as the literary editor of The Crisis. Here she worked with notable authors including Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, Langston Hughes, and Countee Cullen. Fauset’s first book, There is Confusion, appeared in 1924. It was followed in 1931 by Chinaberry Tree, and in 1933 by Comedy: American Style.

Zora Neale Hurston was arguably one of the most important novelists, folklorists, and activists to emerge during the Harlem Renaissance. Prominent until the 1960s, she was certainly the artist with the longest continuous influence on the literary scene. Zora Neale Hurston was born in 1891 in Notasulga, Alabama but reared in all-Black Eatonville, Florida, a place which profoundly influenced her research and writing. Upon leaving Eatonville in 1917, Hurston enrolled in Morgan College, now Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland, and then at Howard University, where she was one of the founders of its Hilltop newspaper. Hurston transferred to the all-woman’s Barnard College in New York City where she received a Bachelor of Arts in anthropology in 1928. She was the first African American to graduate from Barnard. While in New York City, Hurston formed friendships with Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen, who shared her passion for writing. These connections contributed to her links to Jamaica and Haiti, where she spent time observing various indigenous religions and investigating Négritude Literature. In addition to her extensive work in collecting, conserving, and preserving folklore about Africans in the diaspora, Hurston wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God. Released in 1937, this classic novel describes Janie Mae Crawford, a feminist figure who navigates three marriages. Hurston’s use of magnificent symbolism, particularly her hair, became a powerful metaphor for Crawford’s personal liberation.

While most scholars of the Harlem Renaissance focus on literature and visual art, the entertainment industry also played a role in this major cultural outpouring. Partly because New York itself was the center of the U.S. entertainment industry, the diverse array of talent which emerged in Harlem in the 1920s including dancers, orchestras, and actors developed reputations that extended across the nation. A few artists stand out partly because their work lives on through today. Among them are the composer and pianist Duke Ellington, the singer Billie Holiday, actress and singer Lena Horne, the “queen of jazz” Ella Fitzgerald, trumpeter Louis Armstrong, percussionist Chick Webb, and classical singer and pianist Hazel Scott.

Time and space limitations do not permit reference to the dozens of artists who emerged during the Renaissance, but we would be remiss in not mentioning painters Aaron Douglas and Jacob Lawrence, sculptor Augusta Savage, and photographer James Van Der Zee, all of whom contributed to this artistic explosion. Even numbers racketeer and St. Croix, Danish West Indies native Casper Holstein funded many of the emerging Renaissance artists as did A’Lelia Walker, the wealthy daughter of Madam C.J. Walker. In 1927 Walker converted a floor of the Harlem townhouse she owned into a salon and called it the “Dark Tower.” The salon was intended as a place to entertain and support young Harlem writers and artists. Walker underwrote the expenses of two Harlem Renaissance artists, the writer Eric Walrond and Montana-born singer and writer Taylor Gordon. She also opened Dark Tower to Renaissance figures Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Bruce Nugent, and Aaron Douglas who gathered for art exhibits and poetry readings.

The Harlem Renaissance, which inspired similar movements across the United States as well as Europe and Africa, was a time and place that saw the rebirth of the imagination about Black Artistic expression in all its myriad forms. It was where members of the African Diaspora came together to celebrate their racial heritage, embraced self-expression, and reject longstanding stereotypes. In the process, they redefined and reimagined who they were and who they wanted to be, taking control of the representation of Black culture. Their literature, dance, art, music, and philosophy, were exhibited to the world for the first time without seeking approval of outside cultural critics. Their global impact laid the groundwork for all subsequent diasporic movements in art, philosophy, cultural and political thought to this day. Harlem Renaissance participants brought Black and Pan-African consciousness to a global stage.

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