As the Jazz age dawned in the early 1920’s, African American artists, writers, and musicians flocked to a district of Manhattan called Harlem. ‘The Mecca of the New Negro’ soon became home to a cultural revolution, repercussions of which would be felt around the world, from the USA to Europe and Africa. The rich artistic legacy of the Harlem Renaissance rages from the music of Duke Ellington and Bessie Smith, to the paintings of Aaron Douglas and the poetry of Langston Hughes.
(From an introduction to the exhibition Rhapsodies in Black: Art of the Harlem Renaissance, curated by David A. Bailey and Richard J. Powell and organized by the Hayward Gallery, London in collaboration with the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC, and the Institute of International Visual Arts [inIVA].)
1936 photo by Carl Van Vechten