1929

In 1929, a photograph of Augusta Savage's plaster bust 'Gamin' (French for 'street urchin')—a portrait of her nephew Ellis Ford—appeared on the cover of Opportunity magazine. The image so impressed the Julius Rosenwald Fund that it awarded Savage a fellowship to study in Paris. 'Gamin' is considered her finest work and one of the masterpieces of Harlem Renaissance sculpture, now held at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Oscar De Priest of Chicago became the first Black member of Congress from a Northern state when he was seated in 1929, and the first Black congressman since 1901. His election ended a 28-year absence of Black representation in Congress and signaled the growing political power of Northern Black urban communities.

In 1929, Jessie Fauset published her second novel 'Plum Bun: A Novel Without a Moral,' exploring the experiences of a light-skinned Black woman who passes as white in New York City. The novel interweaves themes of race, gender, and the costs of assimilation, while depicting a broader range of Black women's experience than most fiction of the era. Fauset, as literary editor of The Crisis, had simultaneously been nurturing virtually every major Harlem Renaissance writer.

Larsen's novel of two light-skinned women on opposite sides of the color line becomes a classic of the era.