Voices from the Harlem Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s symbolized black liberation and sophistication--the final shaking off of slavery, in the mind, spirit, and character of African-Americans. It was a period when the African-American came of age, with the clearest expression of this transformation visible in the remarkable outpouring of literature, art, and music. In these years the "New Negro" was born, as seen in the shift of black leadership from Booker T. Washington to that of W.E.B. Du Bois, from Tuskegee to New York, and for some, even to the African nationalism of Marcus Garvey. In Voices from the Harlem Renaissance, Nathan Irvin Huggins provides more than 120 selections from the political writings and arts of the period, each depicting the meaning of blackness and the nature of African-American art and its relation to social statement. Through these pieces, Huggins establishes the context in which the art of Harlem Renaissance occurred.^ We read the call to action by pre-Renaissance black spokesmen, such as A. Philip Randolph and W.E.B. DuBois who--through magazines such as The Messenger ("the only radical Negro magazine"), and the NAACP's Crisis--called for a radical transformation of the