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The Harlem Renaissance was a transformative period of African American cultural, artistic, and intellectual expression that flourished during the 1920s and 1930s.

The Harlem Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance was a transformative period of African American cultural, artistic, and intellectual expression that flourished during the 1920s and 1930s. Centered in Harlem, New York City, this movement spanned music, dance, literature, theater, fashion, visual arts, politics, and scholarship. Originally known as the "New Negro Movement"—a term inspired by Alain Locke’s 1925 anthology The New Negro—the Harlem Renaissance marked a significant shift in Black identity, creativity, and activism.

This cultural awakening extended beyond Harlem, influencing African American communities across the urban Northeast and Midwest, particularly as a result of the Great Migration, which saw Black Americans leaving the racially oppressive Jim Crow South in search of new opportunities. The movement’s impact also reached francophone Black writers in Africa and the Caribbean, particularly those living in Paris, France, who drew inspiration from its themes of racial pride and artistic innovation.

James Weldon Johnson described this era as a “flowering of Negro literature,” with its peak occurring between 1924 and 1929. The movement began to wane with the onset of the Great Depression, but its influence endured, shaping future generations of Black artists, writers, and intellectuals. Today, the Harlem Renaissance is widely recognized as a rebirth of African American arts and a defining moment in U.S. cultural history.

The Harlem Renaissance

With a Jim Crow south alive and well, many black Americans migrated north. This migration resulted in the formation of a creative urban hub in Harlem, New York, and the Harlem Renaissance became a time where black Americans flourished creatively. From writing to art, blues to jazz, a once suppressed black community greeted this newfound freedom by cultivating artistic expression in ways they were prohibited from doing before. Visionaries like Duke Ellington and Zora Neale Hurston thrived during this cultural revolution, and the Harlem Renaissance symbolized the power of the freed black mind in America.

The (Gay) Harlem Renaissance | The History You Didn't Learn

Scholars of this period point out that acknowledging the queer culture and nightlife of the Harlem Renaissance is essential in order to paint a full picture of the time—and also to show that there was a thriving LGBTQ+ scene in New York City that long predated the 1969 Stonewall uprising, even though that moment is often credited with ushering in the modern LGBTQ+ movement. For LGBTQ+ History Month and Monday’s National Coming Out Day, the above video looks back at the overlooked queer artists and writers of the Harlem Renaissance.