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Harlem’s Own: A Look Back on Great Artists and Works of the Harlem Renaissance



Once known as a haven for the white elite, Harlem evolved to become the black mecca of the early 20th century. The ingenuity and craftiness of African-American realtor Philip Payton Jr., transformed Harlem from a majority white community to a thriving black one. With news of the expansion of the subway system scheduled to be built on Lennox Ave by 1904, speculators invested large amounts of capital, as real estate values increased. Huge profits were anticipated from this developmental explosion. Investors envisioned upper middle-class white commuters exiting the soon to be built subway stations to newly constructed housing. Unfortunately, an excess of developers with the same idea caused an overflow of new housing years before the completion of the subway expansion. Soon Harlem was overrun with new construction. Buildings were unoccupied and investors were almost begging for tenants. Desperate to avoid financial ruin, economics won out over racism, allowing Philip Payton Jr. to take full advantage of the situation.

In 1903, blacks in New York City lived in overcrowded, deteriorating, and overpriced tenements in Midtown. Payton organized the Afro-Realty Company and began to buy and lease homes to rent to black tenants. The company grew to 1 million in assets but was still not as successful as shareholders hoped. Succumbing to lawsuits and bad publicity, the company was forced to close. This failure did not stop Payton. Forming partnerships with other well off blacks he purchased more apartment houses, evicted white tenants and filled the properties with black tenants. The overwhelming increase of the black population to Harlem eventually caused a panic among whites and they fled the area. White landlords were left with empty properties, eventually having no choice but to sell at prices way below market value. Harlem had become the new black oasis. In his book, Black Manhattan (1930), noted author and educator James Weldon Johnson wrote, “In the middle and lower parts of the city you have, perhaps, noted Negro faces here and there; but when you emerge from the Park, you see them everywhere. Until nearly One Hundred and Thirty- Fifth Street, ninety percent of the people you see, including traffic officers, are negro.”


Original copy of the book Harlem Shadows by Claude McKay, published by Harcourt, Brace in 1922. Picture of the author on back cover.

Original copy of the book Harlem Shadows by Claude McKay, published by Harcourt, Brace in 1922. Picture of the author on back cover.

Claude McKay’s Collection of Poetry, Harlem Shadows (1922)

Born in 1889, Claude McKay was raised on a farm in Jamaica. In 1912 he traveled to United States to study at Tuskegee University, eventually transferring to Kansas State University to study agriculture. By 1914 McKay decided to forego college and moved to New York City. His impactful book of poetry, Harlem Shadows, set the tone for poets of the Harlem Renaissance. The book included poems such as, “If We Must Die”, “The White House”, and “America”. The poetry of Harlem Shadows brought awareness to the racist treatment of blacks in America. It is honest, unapologetic, and steeped in racial pride. In the preface of his book, Book of American Negro Poetry (1922), James Weldon Johnson commented on McKay’s groundbreaking book. “Mr. McKay gives evidence that he has passed beyond the danger which threatens many of the new Negro poets—the danger of allowing the purely polemical phases of the race problem to choke their sense of artistry.”

“America” by Claude McKay

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness, And sinks into my throat her tiger's tooth, Stealing my breath of life, I will confess I love this cultured hell that tests my youth! Her vigor flows like tides into my blood, Giving me strength erect against her hate. Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood. Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state, I stand within her walls with not a shred Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer. Darkly I gaze into the days ahead, And see her might and granite wonders there, Beneath the touch of Time's unerring hand, Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.

Jean Toomer’s Novel, Cane (1923)


Jean Toomer was born on December 26, 1894 in Washington, D.C. His father deserted the family not long after his birth and he was raised by his mother and maternal grandparents. Toomer was of African-American and European descent and often struggled with racial identity, referring to himself as an American, neither black nor white. In the summer of 1922 he traveled to Sparta, Georgia, taking a job as the interim principal for a black school. In rural Georgia, living as an African-American, Toomer saw first-hand the discrimination and violence black people faced in the South. The experience had a profound impact on Toomer and was the basis for his novel, Cane.


While categorized as a novel, Cane is a collection of poems and short fiction, weaved together in the style of a completed jigsaw puzzle, resulting in a unified narrative. It is an innovative literary masterpiece that goes beyond the boundaries of traditional literature and has also been considered experimental fiction. Cane was one of the first novels published by a white publishing company that displayed African-Americans as authentic emotional characters rather than variations of racial stereotypes. It presented concepts of self-confidence, self-sufficiency, and racial unity. The novel established the standard of the literature for writers of the Harlem Renaissance and was highly regarded by critics and writers of the day. William Stanley Braithwaite, a highly respected black literary critic, wrote, “Cane is a book of gold and bronze, of dusk and flame, of ecstasy and pain, and Jean Toomer is the bright morning star of a new day of the race in literature.”

Excerpt from Jean Toomer’s, Cane:

“Happy, Muriel? No, not happy. Your aim is wrong. There is no such thing as happiness. Life bends joy and pain, beauty and ugliness, in such a way that no one may isolate them. No one should want to. Perfect joy, or perfect pain, with no contrasting element to define them, would mean a monotony of consciousness, would mean death.”

The Weary Blues, A Poem by Langston Hughes (1925)


The Weary Blues, Book of Poetry published by Knopf, 1926

Langston Hughes was born on February 1, 1902 in Joplin, Missouri. His parents divorced not long after his birth, and he was raised by his maternal grandmother until her death when Hughes was thirteen. He then went to live with his mother and her husband, moving several times before settling in Cleveland, Ohio. Due to the racism in America, and what he saw as a limited life for a black man, Hughes’ father relocated to Mexico. He had little contact with his father until he graduated high school, spending time with him in Mexico.


Langston Hughes, Carl Van Vechten, © Van Vechten Trust. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

He had little contact with his father until he graduated high school, spending time with him in Mexico. Hughes moved to New York City obtaining odd jobs and even worked on a steam ship traveling to Africa and Europe. He returned to New York City in 1924. His poem, “The Weary Blues”, won first prize for poetry in Opportunity Magazine literary competition. The poem uses jazz rhythms and dialect to display the pain and pleasures of being black in America, using music and Harlem as the setting. “The Weary Blues” established his commitment to black themes and culture. The poem was later showcased in his first book of poetry also titled, The Weary Blues (1926).

In Du Bose Heyward’s review of the book, The Weary Blues, for the New York Herald Tribune in 1926, he wrote,” “Langston Hughes, although only twenty-four years old, is already conspicuous in the group of Negro intellectuals who are dignifying Harlem with a genuine art life. . . . It is, however, as an individual poet, not as a member of a new and interesting literary group, or as a spokesman for a race that Langston Hughes must stand or fall. . . . Always intensely subjective, passionate, keenly sensitive to beauty and possessed of an unfaltering musical sense, Langston Hughes has given us a ‘first book’ that marks the opening of a career well worth watching.”

“The Weary Blues” by Langston Hughes

Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,

Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,

I heard a Negro play.

Down on Lenox Avenue the other night

By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light

He did a lazy sway. . . .

He did a lazy sway. . . .

To the tune o’ those Weary Blues.

With his ebony hands on each ivory key

He made that poor piano moan with melody.

O Blues!

Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool

He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool.

Sweet Blues!

Coming from a black man’s soul.

O Blues!

In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone

I heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan—

“Ain’t got nobody in all this world,

Ain’t got nobody but ma self.

I’s gwine to quit ma frownin’

And put ma troubles on the shelf.”

Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor.

He played a few chords then he sang some more—

“I got the Weary Blues

And I can’t be satisfied.

Got the Weary Blues

And can’t be satisfied—

I ain’t happy no mo’

And I wish that I had died.”

And far into the night he crooned that tune.

The stars went out and so did the moon.

The singer stopped playing and went to bed

While the Weary Blues echoed through his head.

He slept like a rock or a man that’s dead.

James VanDerZee, Photographer of the Harlem Renaissance


James Van Der Zee

James VanDerZee was born on June 29, 1886 in Lenox Massachusetts. He received his first camera at the age of fourteen, taking hundreds of photos of family and of his hometown, Lenox. Besides photography he had gift for music and initially aspired to be a professional violinist (hyperlink to source: http://www.blackpast.org/aah/van-der-zee-james-1886-1983. In 1906, VanDerZee moved to New York City with his brother and father finding jobs as a waiter and telephone operator, while also creating and performing in a group known as the Harlem Orchestra. In 1916, he and his wife established the Guarantee Photo Studio in Harlem, becoming the most successful photographer in Harlem. VanDerZee took great pride in his work and retouched each photo ensuring that Harlem was displayed at its best. His photography subjects were of all backgrounds and occupations but his focus was mainly on black middle class life.


A Harlem Couple Wearing Raccoon Coats with a Cadillac, taken on West 127th Street, 1932, by James Van Der Zee

Harlem’s entertainers and literary elites such as Florence Mills and Countee Cullen were also photographed by VanDerZee. Marcus Garvey chose VanDerZee to chronicle the life of the Universal Negro Improvement Association. In 1968, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art featured his work in an exhibit titled, Harlem On My Mind, and VanDerZee received national recognition, including a Living Legacy Award from President Jimmy Carter. The day after receiving an honorary degree from Howard University, James VanDerZee passed away on May 15, 1983 in Washington, D.C., leaving us with compelling images of the Harlem Renaissance, portraying pride and beauty.


"Lady with Wide-Brimmed Straw Hat, 1934, by James Van Der Zee, in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum


Portrait of Young Man with Telephone,1929 , by James Van Der Zee, in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum

Due to the diligence and vision of men such as Philip A. Payton Jr, Harlem became a flourishing black community. This set the stage for an artistic explosion between 1918 to the mid 1930’s that we now know as the Harlem Renaissance. Originally known as the “The New Negro Movement”, after the 1925 anthology of Alaine Locke, this period in American History was a cultural awakening that continues to spark present and future generations. We have highlighted noted artists of the era whose works have become synonymous with the Harlem Renaissance.


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