January 1922

On January 26, 1922, the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill passed the U.S. House of Representatives, marking the first time either chamber of Congress voted for federal anti-lynching legislation. Championed by the NAACP through years of lobbying and Walter White's dangerous undercover investigations of lynchings, the bill was ultimately killed by a filibuster by Southern Democrats in the Senate—a defeat that galvanized the NAACP's legislative strategy for the next three decades.

Caribbean-born Robert L. Douglas founded the New York Renaissance (the 'Rens') basketball team in 1922, basing the squad at the Renaissance Casino Ballroom in Harlem. As the first Black-owned, fully professional basketball team—offering players guaranteed season-long contracts—the Rens became one of the most dominant teams in the country and a symbol of Black athletic excellence during the Black Fives era.

By 1922, Thomas 'Fats' Waller—a student of James P. Johnson—had established himself as Harlem's most gifted stride pianist and the first to master jazz organ for popular music. Waller began recording piano rolls and early discs while tutoring Duke Ellington at the Kentucky Club during the mid-1920s. His compositions included 'Ain't Misbehavin'' and 'Honeysuckle Rose,' written in the latter part of the decade, and his exuberant showmanship influenced virtually every jazz pianist who followed.

By 1922, Thomas 'Fats' Waller—a student of James P. Johnson—had established himself as Harlem's most gifted stride pianist and the first to master jazz organ for popular music. He tutored Duke Ellington at the Kentucky Club and began recording piano rolls. His compositions including 'Ain't Misbehavin'' and 'Honeysuckle Rose' would come in the latter part of the decade, and his exuberant showmanship influenced virtually every jazz pianist who followed.

By 1922, Thomas 'Fats' Waller—a student of James P. Johnson—had established himself as Harlem's most gifted stride pianist and the first to master jazz organ for popular music. He tutored Duke Ellington at the Kentucky Club during the mid-1920s. His compositions 'Ain't Misbehavin'' and 'Honeysuckle Rose' came later in the decade, and his showmanship influenced virtually every jazz pianist who followed.

Garland Anderson—a Black bellhop in San Francisco—wrote 'Appearances' and mounted a grassroots fundraising campaign to bring it to Broadway, meeting with President Calvin Coolidge in his effort. The play eventually opened on Broadway in 1925, making Anderson the first Black playwright to have a full-length play produced on Broadway. The story of a Black bellhop falsely accused of rape challenged both racial stereotypes and the limits of Black representation in mainstream theater.

Paul Robeson made his professional stage debut in the play 'Taboo' in 1922, beginning a theatrical career that would make him the preeminent Black actor on the American and British stage. His roles in Eugene O'Neill's 'All God's Chillun Got Wings' and 'The Emperor Jones' followed in 1924, establishing him as a transformative dramatic talent and provoking controversy over interracial casting. Robeson's career encompassed acting, singing, political activism, and civil rights advocacy.

In 1922, Alonzo Herndon's company was reorganized as the Atlanta Life Insurance Company and achieved legal reserve status—a financial standard met by only four other Black-owned insurance companies at the time. The company rapidly expanded into six new states during the 1920s, making it one of the largest and most important Black-owned financial institutions in the United States and Herndon Atlanta's wealthiest Black citizen by the time of his death in 1927.

Oscar Micheaux wrote, directed, produced, and distributed 'The Dungeon' in 1922, his first venture into the horror genre—an early Black take on the Bluebeard legend. One in an extraordinary run of independently produced race films during the decade, it demonstrates Micheaux's tireless creative output and his command of a distribution network serving Black theater circuits across the country.