A Brief History of Harlem Renaissance Literature

Harlem Renaissance literature encompasses the poetry, fiction, and non-fiction written by Black American writers during the early twentieth century. During the Harlem Renaissance movement, Black writers created work that celebrated Black culture and folklore. Harlem Renaissance writers also openly explored the hardships endured by Black people during slavery as well as during Jim Crow-era segregation in the United States.

The Harlem Renaissance was an intellectual, cultural, and artistic movement that centered around the Black American experience and spanned from the 1910s to the 1930s. While it was rooted in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City, Black American writers, musicians, and artists contributed from across the country.

The movement included Black artists from several disciplines—including music, visual art, fashion, and literature. Musicians like Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Bessie Smith reinvented jazz in popular nightclubs, while painters like Aaron Douglas incorporated traditional African imagery into new styles. Writers like Nella Larsen and Georgia Douglas Johnson created novels, plays, and poems that reframed what it meant to be a Black American in the early twentieth century.

Harlem Renaissance literature grew out of the turmoil of slavery, segregation, and institutional racism.

• The Great Migration: During World War I, Black Americans began moving out of the Southern United States and relocating to the West, Midwest, and Northeast. By 1920, hundreds of thousands of Black people had moved from the South to new areas, including neighborhoods like Harlem in New York City.
• New publishing opportunities: In 1917, Marcus Garvey, an immigrant from Jamaica, founded the first chapter of the Universal Negro Improvement Association in Harlem. Garvey contributed to the organization’s weekly newspaper, The Negro World, which promoted racial pride and celebrated Black American culture. More organizations like the National Urban League and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) formed print magazines and publications, creating new opportunities for writers to share their work.
• Writers in Harlem: By the late 1920s, the Harlem Renaissance was in full swing, with Black American artists creating a vast range of work. Black poets, authors, and essayists wrote thousands of pieces that helped lay the framework for the civil rights movement to follow decades later.

To learn more about the Harlem Renaissance movement, explore the work of these influential writers.

1. 1. Claude McKay (1889–1948): Born in Jamaica, Claude McKay moved to Harlem in 1914 and became a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance movement. One of Claude McKay’s first novels, Home to Harlem (1928), follows a young soldier who deserts his army position during World War I and lands in Harlem. His poem “If We Must Die” (1919) was published in the magazine The Liberator, which he co-edited for a brief time.
2. 2. Jessie Redmon Fauset (1882–1961): Jessie Redmon Fauset began her career writing for the NAACP’s magazine, The Crisis, which was founded by W.E.B. Du Bois. After a few years, she became the magazine’s literary editor, working alongside other Harlem Renaissance writers like Anne Spencer, Alice Dunbar Nelson, Arna Bontemps, and Gwendolyn Bennett. Her first novel, There is Confusion (1924), received widespread acclaim.
3. 3. James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938): James Weldon Johnson was a writer and activist best known for his poem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” which was set to music by his brother and adopted as the official song of the NAACP in 1919.
4. 4. Langston Hughes (1901–1967): One of the most prolific poets of the Harlem Renaissance movement, Langston Hughes published his first book of poetry, The Weary Blues, in 1926. Hughes often contributed to the National Urban League’s magazine, Opportunity. Although he predominantly wrote poetry, he also wrote essays, including an influential piece called “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” (1926).
5. 5. Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960): Writer and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston grew up in Alabama. She moved to Harlem in the 1920s and wrote for a literary magazine called Fire!! that was edited by Wallace Thurman. Her most popular novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), dives into themes of race and gender roles as it follows the life of a woman in Florida during the early twentieth century.
6. 6. Alain Locke (1885–1954): Writer, philosopher, and educator Alain Locke became the first Black Rhodes scholar in 1907. Nearly two decades later, he compiled a highly influential anthology called The New Negro (1925), which contained works from prominent Harlem Renaissance intellectuals and writers like Jean Toomer, Langstone Hughes, and Countee Cullen.

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