Deep dive
The Harlem Renaissance
The 1920s explosion of Black literature, music, and art that remade American culture.
10 min read
In the 1920s, Harlem became the capital of a Black cultural awakening. Writers like Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, artists, and musicians asserted a confident, modern Black identity.
Fueled by the great-migration-begins, the movement overlapped with the rise of jazz — see louis-armstrong-hot-five — and laid groundwork for every later flowering of Black art, from the Black Arts Movement to hip-hop-birth.
Sources & further reading
Book· 1937
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Zora Neale Hurston
A landmark of the Harlem Renaissance.
Website· Primary
NMAAHC — The Harlem Renaissance
Smithsonian NMAAHC
The 1918–mid-1930s flowering of Black art, literature, and music.
Website· Primary
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
New York Public Library
The world's leading research library on the African diaspora; 10M+ items.