Harlem Renaissance

A guide to the major figures of the Harlem Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance was a multidisciplinary arts movement that included literature, music, dance, film, theater, photography, visual art, political activism, and more. This primer includes some of its most influential artists, including Oscar Micheaux, Zora Neale Hurston, Paul Robeson, Fats Waller, WEB DuBois, and more, and allows you to explore their lives and major works.

Browse a collection of Harlem Renaissance poetry

This guide from the Poetry Foundation walks you through the movement's major poems, including works by writers like Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Anne Spencer, James Weldon Johnson, and more. Helpfully, it's organized them into four major eras, allowing you to analyze the movement's steady evolution.

The Great Migration helped transform Harlem into the epicenter of Black culture

Starting in 1910, millions of Black Americans moved from the South to escape segregation, violence, and dismal work opportunities. They moved to urban areas in the North, Midwest, and West. Chief among them was Manhattan's Harlem neighborhood, which became an especially desirable location for Black people around 1910.

The NAACP encouraged and accommodated the early Harlem Renaissance

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, a civil rights organization better known as the NAACP, recognized the disenchantment Black soldiers who served in World War I experienced when returning home to a segregated country and began advancing, and, in many ways, funding a "New Negro Movement," which would lead to the Harlem Renaissance.

'Shuffle Along' helped pave the way for Black theater on Broadway

The 1921 musical revue featured an all-Black cast and brought jazz music and dance to Broadway. It opened at the 63rd Street Theater and ran for over 500 performances, attracting white and Black audiences alike. It was so popular, in fact, that in 1948 Harry Truman used one of its songs in his presidential campaign. Theater historian Loften Mitchell later credited the show with effectively launching the Harlem Renaissance.

Alain Locke's 'The New Negro' anthology helped define the Harlem Renaissance

The 1925 collection of poetry, drama, short fiction, lyrics, and essays by Black writers was intended to document what Locke, a Harvard-trained philosopher and the first Black Rhodes Scholar, believed was a burgeoning Black consciousness that was "vibrant with a new psychology." The book is now considered one of the major impetuses for the Harlem Renaissance.

Read 'The New Negro,' the influential collection edited by Alain Locke

The 1925 anthology features early works by Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Zora Neale Hurston, Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, WEB DuBois, and more. You can read it in its entirety—for free—through the Internet Archive.

Langston Hughes wrote a foundational text for the Harlem Renaissance

Although the 1920s artistic movement lacked formal leaders, Hughes' 1926 essay "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain" established him as one of its figureheads. Hughes' piece argues that Black artists should not be ashamed of their race; instead, they should embrace it, while simultaneously pursuing their own individual artistic visions.

Jazz was an integral part of the Harlem Renaissance

The Great Migration transformed New York City's Harlem neighborhood into the epicenter of Black American art, with artists such as Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Bessie Smith regularly performing. The music not only provided the backbeat to the cultural scene—it often influenced it, with Harlem Renaissance poets, in particular, inspired by jazz's approach to rhythm and improvisation.

Explore a map of the Harlem Renaissance's nightclubs

Many of the Harlem Renaissance's greatest performances happened after hours, in one of the neighborhood's many nightclubs. This 1932 map, illustrated by Elmer Simms Campbell, highlights key hotspots, with insider tips on when to arrive, who to see, and how to fit in.