Nellallitea "Nella" Larsen was an American novelist. Working as a nurse and a librarian, she published two novels, Quicksand (1928) and Passing (1929), and a few short stories. Though her literary output was scant, she earned recognition by her contemporaries.
James Weldon Johnson was an American writer and civil rights activist. He was married to civil rights activist Grace Nail Johnson. Johnson was a leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), where he started working in 1917. In 1920, he was chosen as executive secretary of the organization, effectively the operating officer. He served in that position from 1920 to 1930. Johnson established his reputation as a writer, and was known during the Harlem Renaissance for his poems, novel and anthologies collecting both poems and spirituals of Black culture. He wrote the lyrics for "Lift Every Voice and Sing", which later became known as the Black National Anthem, the music being written by his younger brother, composer J. Rosamond Johnson.
Festus Claudius "Claude" McKay OJ was a Jamaican-American writer and poet. He was a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance.
Countee Cullen was an American poet, novelist, children's writer, and playwright, particularly well known during the Harlem Renaissance.
The Crisis is the official magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). It was founded in 1910 by W. E. B. Du Bois (editor), Oswald Garrison Villard, J. Max Barber, Charles Edward Russell, Kelly Miller, William Stanley Braithwaite, and Mary Dunlop Maclean. The Crisis has been in continuous print since 1910, and it is the oldest Black-oriented magazine in the world. Today, The Crisis is "a quarterly journal of civil rights, history, politics and culture and seeks to educate and challenge its readers about issues that continue to plague African Americans and other communities of color."
Jessie Redmon Fauset was an editor, poet, essayist, novelist, and educator. Her literary work helped sculpt African-American literature in the 1920s as she focused on portraying a true image of African-American life and history. Her black fictional characters were working professionals which was an inconceivable concept to American society during this time Her story lines related to themes of racial discrimination, "passing", and feminism.
Niggerati was the name used, with deliberate irony, by Wallace Thurman for the group of young African-American artists and intellectuals of the Harlem Renaissance. "Niggerati" is a portmanteau of "nigger" and "literati". The rooming house where he lived, and where that group often met, was similarly christened Niggerati Manor. The group included Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, and several of the people behind Thurman's journal FIRE!!, such as Richard Bruce Nugent, Jonathan Davis, Gwendolyn Bennett, and Aaron Douglas.
George Samuel Schuyler was an American writer, journalist, and social commentator known for his outspoken political conservatism after repudiating his earlier advocacy of socialism.
Wallace Henry Thurman was an American novelist and screenwriter active during the Harlem Renaissance. He also wrote essays, worked as an editor, and was a publisher of short-lived newspapers and literary journals. He is best known for his novel The Blacker the Berry: A Novel of Negro Life (1929), which explores discrimination within the black community based on skin color, with lighter skin being more highly valued.
Joel Augustus Rogers was a Jamaican-American author, journalist, and amateur historian who focused on the history of Africa; as well as the African diaspora. After settling in the United States in 1906, he lived in Chicago and then New York City. He became interested in the history of African Americans in the United States. His research spanned the academic fields of history, sociology and anthropology. He challenged prevailing ideas about scientific racism and the social construction of race, demonstrated the connections between civilizations, and traced achievements of ethnic Africans, including some with mixed European ancestry. He was one of the earliest popularizers of African and African-American history in the 20th century. His book World's Great Men of Color was recognized by John Henrik Clarke as being his greatest achievement.
"New Negro" is a term popularized during the Harlem Renaissance implying a more outspoken advocacy of dignity and a refusal to submit quietly to the practices and laws of Jim Crow racial segregation. The term "New Negro" was made popular by Alain LeRoy Locke in his anthology The New Negro.
Passing is a novel by American author Nella Larsen, first published in 1929. Set primarily in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City in the 1920s, the story centers on the reunion of two childhood friends—Clare Kendry and Irene Redfield—and their increasing fascination with each other's lives. The title refers to the practice of "racial passing", which is a key element of the novel. Clare Kendry's attempt to pass as white for her husband, John (Jack) Bellew, is significant and is a catalyst for the tragic events.
The Messenger was an early 20th-century political and literary magazine by and for African-American people in the United States. It was important to the flowering of the Harlem Renaissance and initially promoted a socialist political view. The Messenger was co-founded in New York City by Chandler Owen and A. Philip Randolph in August 1917.
The Harlem Renaissance was an intellectual and cultural revival of African American music, dance, art, fashion, literature, theater, politics and scholarship centered in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City, spanning the 1920s and 1930s. At the time, it was known as the "New Negro Movement", named after The New Negro, a 1925 anthology edited by Alain Locke. The movement also included the new African American cultural expressions across the urban areas in the Northeast and Midwest United States affected by a renewed militancy in the general struggle for civil rights, combined with the Great Migration of African American workers fleeing the racist conditions of the Jim Crow Deep South, as Harlem was the final destination of the largest number of those who migrated north.
Archibald John Motley, Jr., was an American visual artist. Motley is most famous for his colorful chronicling of the African-American experience in Chicago during the 1920s and 1930s, and is considered one of the major contributors to the Harlem Renaissance, or the New Negro Movement, a time in which African-American art reached new heights not just in New York but across America—its local expression is referred to as the Chicago Black Renaissance. He studied painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago during the 1910s, graduating in 1918.
The Blacker the Berry: A Novel of Negro Life (1929) is a novel by American author Wallace Thurman, associated with the Harlem Renaissance. The novel tells the story of Emma Lou Morgan, a young black woman with dark skin. It begins in Boise, Idaho and follows Emma Lou in her journey to college at USC and a move to Harlem, New York City for work. Set during the Harlem Renaissance, the novel explores Emma Lou's experiences with colorism, discrimination by lighter-skinned African Americans due to her dark skin. She learns to come to terms with her skin color in order to find satisfaction in her life.
Eulalie Spence was a writer, teacher, director, actress and playwright from the British West Indies. She was an influential member of the Harlem Renaissance, writing fourteen plays, at least five of which were published. Spence, who described herself as a "folk dramatist" who made plays for fun and entertainment, was considered one of the most experienced female playwrights before the 1950s, and received more recognition than other black playwrights of the Harlem Renaissance period, winning several competitions. She presented several plays with W.E.B. Du Bois' Krigwa Players, of which she was a member from 1926 to 1928. Spence was also a mentor to theatrical producer Joseph Papp, founder of The Public Theater and the accompanying festival currently known as Shakespeare in the Park.
Cane is a 1923 novel by noted Harlem Renaissance author Jean Toomer. The novel is structured as a series of vignettes revolving around the origins and experiences of African Americans in the United States. The vignettes alternate in structure between narrative prose, poetry, and play-like passages of dialogue. As a result, the novel has been classified as a composite novel or as a short story cycle. Though some characters and situations recur between vignettes, the vignettes are mostly freestanding, tied to the other vignettes thematically and contextually more than through specific plot details.
Theophilus Lewis (1891–1974) was an African-American drama critic, a writer, and a magazine editor during the Harlem Renaissance whose contributions primarily appeared in The Messenger, the socialist African-American magazine founded by A. Philip Randolph and Chandler Owen. Lewis was well known for his staunch support of the advancement of a black aesthetic in the arts, particularly the advancement of plays that represented African-Americans well.
The Negro Problem is a collection of seven essays by prominent Black American writers, such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Paul Laurence Dunbar, edited by Booker T. Washington, and published in 1903. It covers law, education, disenfranchisement, and Black Americans' place in American society.
