Famous African American Writers

Langston HughesLangston Hughes was one of the most important writers and thinkers of the Harlem Renaissance, which was the African American artistic movement in the 1920s that celebrated black life and culture. Hughes's creative genius was influenced by his life in New York City's Harlem, a primarily African American neighborhood.

Langston Hughes

His literary works helped shape American literature and politics. Hughes, like others active in the Harlem Renaissance, had a strong sense of racial pride. Through his poetry, novels, plays, essays, and children's books, he promoted equality, condemned racism and injustice, and celebrated African American culture, humor, and spirituality.

Zora Neale Hurston

A novelist, folklorist, and anthropologist, Zora Neale Hurston was the prototypical authority on black culture from the Harlem Renaissance. She first gained attention with her short stories such as "John Redding Goes to Sea" and "Spunk" which appeared in black literary magazines.

Zora Neale HurstonAfter several years of anthropological research financed through grants and fellowships, Zora Neale Hurston's first novel Jonah's Gourd Vine was published in 1934 to critical success. In 1935, her book Mules and Men, which investigated voodoo practices in black communities in Florida and New Orleans, also brought her kudos. The year 1937 saw the publication of what is considered Hurston's greatest novel Their Eyes Watching God. And the following year her travelogue and study of Caribbean voodoo Tell My Horse was published. It received mixed reviews, as did her 1939 novel Moses, Man of the Mountain. Her autobiography Dust Tracks on a Road was a commercial success in 1942, despite its overall absurdness, and her final novel Seraph on the Suwanee, published in 1948, was a critical failure. 

Zora Neale HurstonZora Neale Hurston was a utopian, who held that black Americans could attain sovereignty from white American society and all its bigotry, as proven by her hometown of Eatonville. Never in her works did she address the issue of racism of whites toward blacks, and as this became a nascent theme among black writers in the post World War II ear of civil rights, Hurston's literary influence faded. She further scathed her own reputation by railing the civil rights movement and supporting ultraconservative politicians. She died in poverty and obscurity. 

Alice Dunbar-Nelson

Alice Ruth Moore was born on July 19, 1875 in New Orleans. Dunbar-Nelson graduated from a 2-year teacher training program at Straight College, now Dillard University. She later studied at Cornell University, Columbia University , and the University of Pennsylvania where she specialized in psychology and English educational testing.

Alice Dunbar-NelsonOn March 6, 1898 she married the celebrated poet Paul Laurence Dunbar after a courtship by correspondence, and moved to Washington, DC. They separated in 1902. Her final marriage, one which lasted until her death, was to Robert J. Nelson, a journalist, in 1916. Dunbar-Nelson, who was very light complexioned, often passed for white, and was sometimes frustrated in her relations with darker-skinned African Americans because of it. A complex woman who was a poet, journalist, playwright, and unpublished novelist, Alice engaged in intimate relationships with both men and women.

Alice Dunbar-NelsonDuring her life, Alice was a columnist for the Pittsburgh Courier and the Washington Eagle. From 1921 to 1931, Dunbar-Nelson kept a diary which chronicles her life and contains portraits of such friends and associates as Langston Hughes, James Weldon Johnson, Georgia Douglas Johnson, W.E.B. DuBois, and Mary McLeod Bethune. Alice Dunbar-Nelson died on September 18, 1935 of heart failure.

Countee Cullen

Countee Cullen won more major literary prizes than any other black writer of the 1920s.  On March 30, 1903 Countee Cullen, was born. His grandmother raised him until she died. When she passed away, a couple by the name of Reverend Frederick A. and Carolyn Belle (Mitchell) Cullen adopted him.

Countee Cullen

     Cullen attended DeWitt Clinton High School (1918-1921). He edited the school's newspaper, assisted in editing the literary magazine, Magpie, and began to write poetry that achieved notice. Cullen was a very intelligent individual. He went to school at New York University (1921-1925), which is where he wrote many of his poems for his book Color (1925), Copper Sun (1927), and The Ballad of the Brown Girl (1927).  After graduating from NYU he attend Harvard University (1925-1927). He graduated from Harvard with a masters in French and English.           

Countee Cullen

       On April 9,1928 he married Yolande Dubois at the Salem Methodist Church in Harlem. A teacher in Baltimore, Yolande was the only child of W.E.B. Dubois, the founder and editor of the NAACP publication, The Crisis. After a brief honeymoon the couple went to France and Cullen pursued his Guggenheim research. A third volume of poetry, The Ballad of the Brown Girl, was published in 1928 and a fourth, The Black Christ and Other Poems, came the following year.Cullen liked to write about his culture. His use of racial themes in his verse was striking at the time. His material was never alike and every poem he wrote had a different feel to it.               

Countee Cullen

   In 1934, Cullen began teaching English and French at Frederick Douglass Junior High School on West 140th Street in Harlem.  Cullen died on January 9,1946 at the age of 42 from complications resulting from high blood pressure.    

Jessie R. Fauset

Jessie Redmon Fauset was a novelist, poet, and editor during the Harlem Renaissance period. Fauset was born in Fredericksville, New Jersey. Her father was a minister and her mother died when she was a child. In 1905, Fauset graduated from Cornell University, and began working as a teacher in Washington, D.C.

Jessie R. Fauset

In 1919, she received her master’s from the University of Pennsylvania. After graduating Fauset moved to New York where she served as the literary editor for the NAACP’s magazine, The Crisis. She published works written by such writers as Countee Cullen, Jean Toomer, Langston Hughes, and Claude McKay. She also edited the children’s periodical, The Brownies’. In 1926, she left The Crisis, and began teaching in New York City schools. Fauset wrote four novels, There is Confusion (1924), Plum Bun: A Novel Without a Moral (1928), The Chinaberry Tree: A Novel of American Life (1931), an Comedy American Style (1933).

Claude McKayClaude McKay is regarded as one of the first significant writers of the Harlem Renaissance. Born in Jamaica, he arrived in the United States in 1912 at the age of 21 and had already gained recognition as a poet with his book Songs of Jamaica, published in 1911.

Claude McKay

He attended Tuskegee Institute and Kansas State University, then traveled to New York and participated in the literary movements there, both in Harlem and in Greenwich Village. His sonnet, "If We Must Die," is his most popular poem. He earned his living as a porter on the railroad and was a resident of Harlem. His book of poems, Harlem Shadows, published in 1922, was a precursor to the Harlem Renaissance. He also became associate editor of The Liberator, a socialist magazine of art and literature. Working closely with Max Eastman, he traveled to Moscow in 1923 in sympathy with the Bolshevik Revolution and became a sort of national hero there.

Claude McKay

Other books by Claude McKay include Banjo, Harlem: Negro Metropolis, and his autobiography, A Long Way From Home. Home to Harlem, published in the spring of 1928, became the first novel by a Harlem writer to reach the bestseller list.

Famous African American Musicians

The Cotton Club

The Apollo Theater

Louis Armstrong

Louis Armstrong

Louis Armstrong is the most important figure in jazz history.  He played innovative, powerful, yet technically brilliant solos that took jazz from a fun "dance" music to an art form.  With his divine and unmistakable sound, he more-or-less invented the jazz solo, as well as the concept of "swing."           

Louis Armstrong

He took was born in New Orleans in 1901.  He was raised in the tough part of town.  On New Year's Eve, 1912, he fired his father's gun in celebration and was arrested and sent to the Colored Waifs' Home.  There, he quickly excelled in music and was promoted to bugler.  Afterwards, he played around town and on riverboats.  He joined his idol, King Oliver.  In 1922, two years after Oliver left for Chicago, he summoned Armstrong to join him and he did.  In Chicago, they became the top group, and in the group, Armstrong met his second wife, pianist Lil Hardin.  With Hardin's urging, he eventually left Chicago and joined Fletcher Henderson's orchestra in New York.  There, he continued influencing countless musicians.

Louis Armstrong

He returned to Chicago in the late 1920s and recorded a series of records for $50 a side.  These recordings, the Hot Fives & Sevens, became revered and thoroughly studied by jazz musicians and enthusiasts through the ages.  During the timeframe of these recordings, Armstrong started working with Earl Hines, a pianist who was Armstrong's counterpart on piano. According to legend, while Armstrong was singing in the studio, his music fell off the stand.  Armstrong looked at the producer in the booth, who signaled for him to continue, so he started "singing" a solo with nonsensical phrases.  This is the supposed birth of "scat singing" which Armstrong invented and which has become a standard part of jazz singing.

Louis Armstrong

In the 1930s, Satchmo (a nickname that came from the word "Satchelmouth") fronted a big band and toured the United States and Europe.  His popularity increased even more as he appeared in films, such as Pennies from Heaven with Bing Crosby. During the 1940s, he gave up the big band in favor of a smaller group called the All-Stars.  He toured the world and rose to the top of the pop charts with his recordings of What a Wonderful World and Hello, Dolly. Louis Armstrong died of hart trouble in 1971.  More than 20,000 came to pay respects and his funeral was televised.

Duke Ellington

Born 29 April 1899 in Washington DC, composer, bandleader, and pianist Edward Kennedy ("Duke") Ellington was recognized in his lifetime as one of the greatest jazz composers and performers.

Duke EllingtonNicknamed "Duke" by a boyhood friend who admired his regal air, the name stuck. A genius for instrumental combinations, improvisation, and jazz arranging brought the world the unique "Ellington" sound that found consummate expression in works like "Mood Indigo," "Sophisticated Lady," and the symphonic suites Black, Brown, and Beige (which he subtitled "a Tone Parallel to the History of the Negro in America") and Harlem ("a Tone Parallel to Harlem").

Duke EllingtonBeginning keyboard studies at the age of seven, Ellington's earliest influences were the ragtime pianists. He taught himself harmony at the piano and at 17, made his professional debut. Encouraged by Fats Waller, he moved to New York in 1923 and, during the formative Cotton Club years, experimented with and developed the style that would quickly bring him worldwide success and recognition. Ellington would be among the first to focus on musical form and composition in jazz using ternary forms and "call-and-response" techniques in works like Concerto for Cootie (known in its familiar vocal version as Do Nothin' till You Hear from Me) and Cotton Tail and classic symphonic devices in his orchestral suites. In this respect, he would influence the likes of Monk, Mingus, and Evans.

Duke Ellington

Among Ellington's many honors and awards were honorary doctorates from Howard and Yale Universities, membership in the American Institute of Arts and Letters, election as the first jazz musician member of the Royal Music Academy in Stockholm, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Cab Calloway

Cab Callway (born Cabell Calloway III) is one of the greatest Jazz performers. In the 1920's, Cab worked with a band called The Alabamians while studying law at Chicago's Crane College. Cab was the Master of Ceremonies and a singer. He later joined The Missourians which changed its name to Cab Calloway and His Orchestra.

Cab Calloway

His band set trends and introduced a whole new vocabulary as they toured.

In 1930, he was hired to replace Duke Ellington at the exclusive Cotton Club in Harlem. His most famous song, Minnie the Moocher, was written in 1931 and sold over 1,000,000 copies. He was also known for the tunes Are You Hip To That Jive and Hi-De-Ho Man. His career including singing, songwriting, band leader and actor.

The band broke up in the 1940's when bad financial decisions (gambling problems) caught up with Cab. He would go on to appear on Broadway including an all-black Hello Dolly. In 1980, a new generation was introduced to 73-year-old Cab by way of the film The Blues Brothers.

Count BasieBasie was born in Red Bank, NJ to Harvey Lee Basie, and Lillian Ann Childs. Basie toured the T.O.B.A. vaudville circuit starting in 1924 as a soloist and accompanist to blues singers. His touring took him to Kansas City MO where he met many jazz musicians in the area.

Count BasieIn 1928 he joined Walter Page's Blue Devils, and the following year became the pianist with the Bennie Moten band based in Kansas City. After Moten died in 1935, Basie became leader and started referring to himself as "Count Basie". At the end of 1936 he moved his band to New York City where the Count Basie Orchestra remained until 1950. The big band era appeared to be at an end, but Basie reformed his as a 16-piece orchestra in 1952. Basie remained faithful to the Kansas City jazz style and helped keep jazz alive with his distinctive piano playing. Basie’s music was characterized by his trademark "jumping" beat and the contrapuntal accents of his own piano.

Famous African American Singers

Rose McClendon

From Greenville, North Carolina, her name at birth was Rosalie Virginia Scott. She was the daughter of Sandy and Lena Jenkins-Scott. Around 1890, the family moved to New York City where young Rosalie attended public schools.

Rose McClendonShe studied acting at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City, made her stage debut in 1919, appeared in Deep River and In Abraham's Bosom (both 1926), in Langston Hughes' Mulatto, and in the original production of Porgy and Bess (both 1935). That same year, McClendon was a co-founder of the Negro People's Theatre. Rose McClendon died in 1936. In 1946, Carl Van Vechten established the Rose McClendon Memorial Collection at Howard University, a collection of one hundred photographs of prominent African-American artists and writers.

Florence MillsFlorence Mills was one of the most acclaimed entertainers of the 1920s, and she used her status as a performer to comment on the nation's racial ills. Mills first appeared in "Shuffle Along," a work written, directed and acted entirely by African-Americans. Mills was an international success, starring in Paris and London.

Florence MillsUpon her return to New York, she was offered a major role in the "Ziegfeld Follies," which Mills turned down in order to participate in an all-Black show. Mills hoped that her "own success makes people think better of other colored folk," and she was a major contributor to the growth of the Harlem Renaissance. Following an illness, she died in New York City on November 1, 1927. Thousands attended her funeral at the Mother Zion A.M.E. Church in Harlem and more than 150,000 people crowded Harlem's streets in tribute, the largest funeral in its history.

Bessie Smith

Known as the "Empress of the Blues," Bessie Smith was born in Chattanooga, Tenn. on April. 15, 1894 and died Sept. 26, 1937. She was the most successful female blues singer of the 1920s. Smith began her career as a singer in honky-tonks and tent shows, but in 1923 went to New York for her first recording session.

Bessie SmithShe was an immediate sensation, and during the succeeding decade she recorded and toured extensively. She was hearty, forthright, and totally uninhibited in her performance as well as in her life. Because of her impeccable rhythmic sense and her ability to improvise around the structural confines of the blues, Gunther Schuller, in his book Early Jazz, calls her the first important jazz singer. The circumstances of her death, in an automobile accident in Mississippi, were the subject of a play by Edward Albee (The Death of Bessie Smith, 1960). Smith was driven miles to a black hospital when she was critically ill despite the nearness of a whites-only hospital. This disgraceful decision to deny treatment at the nearest hospital is believed by many to have resulted in her death. Her black lesbian circle included the equally legendary Ma Rainey and the male impersonator Gladys Fergusson.

Bille Holliday

Billie "Lady Day" Holiday was born in Baltimore in 1915.   She endured a hard childhood -- her musician father left the family early, and her mother wasn't able to keep her consistently which resulted in Billie often being put in care or relatives who abused her. 

Bille HollidayShe was raped at age 11 and grew up in poverty.  She sums it up best in the first line of her famous autobiography Lady Sings the Blues, "Mom and Pop were just a couple of kids when they got married.   He was eighteen, she was sixteen, and I was three.“ In 1929, she moved to New York, where she worked as a maid and then as a teenage prostitute.  According to legend, in 1930 (at the age of 15), to keep her mother from being evicted, she sang Body and Soul and reduced the audience to tears.  She began singing in bars and restaurants.  Four years later, she made her first record with Benny Goodman.  In 1935, she got her big breakthrough when she recorded What a Little Moonlight Can Do, and Miss Brown to You. 

Bille HollidayShe landed her own recording contract, and while the songs given to her were run-of-the-mill (versus the ones saved for the top white singers), she made the songs classics because of her singing ability.  She poured her heart and soul into every song and her ability to interpret a song and make you feel it was unheard of. Her recording career is divided into 3 periods.  The first is the aforementioned period in the 1930s, recorded with Columbia, marked by her time with Wilson, Goodman, and Young.  Her music was made for jukeboxes, but she turned them into jazz classics. 

Bille HollidayHer popularity never matched her artistic success, but she was widely played on Armed Forces Radio during World War II.   From this period came the anti-racism song Strange Fruit, in which she paints a terrifying picture of lynched black bodies hanging from trees.  The lyrics of the song were adapted from a poem by Louis Allen. The next period is her Decca (record company) years in the Fourties, marked by recordings with string orchestra accompaniment.  This period featured Loverman as well as her self-written classics Don't Explain, and God Bless the Child.  In late 1947, she was arrested on drug charges and spent 18 months in a federal reformatory.

Bille Holliday

Unlike her singing, in life, her instincts were far from perfect.  She fell in love with men who stole money from her, abused her, and introduced her to heroin.  When she got out of prison, she went back to heroin.   By the Fifties, the third period, her voice was going  her voice was more croaky, and she sometimes missed notes, but her ability to interpret songs was enhanced.   It isn't known if misery, drugs, or drink (or all three) killed her, but in an unbearable macabre touch, she was arrested on narcotics charges while on her death bed in 1959.

Ethel WatersEthel Waters was one of the most popular African-American singers and actresses of the 1920s. She moved to New York in 1919 after touring in vaudeville shows as a singer and a dancer. She made her recording debut in 1921 on Cardinal records with “The New York Glide" and “At the New Jump Steady”.

Ethel WatersShe performed in a number of musical revues throughout the rest of the decade and appeared a couple of films, including "Check and Double Check" with Amos 'n' Andy and Duke Ellington. By the end of the 1930s she was a big star on Broadway. In 1949, she was nominated for an Oscar for best supporting actress in the film "Pinky", and the next year she won the New York Drama Critics Award for best actress. Waters got religion in the late Fifties and performed and toured with evangelist Billy Graham until her death in 1977.

Josephine BakerJosephine Baker was born in St. Louis, Missouri. She left school early for the stage, and was performing professionally at the age of 13. She performed on Broadway in 1922 ("Shuffle Along") and was a star by 1924 ("Chocolate Dandies").

Josephine BakerIn 1925 she went to Paris, and became famous for her performances in the Revue Negre on the stage of the Theatre des Champs-Elysees. Even critics who gave the show negative reviews thought highly of Baker's performance. She performed in the Folies Bergere, and during the 1926-27 season she was doing her popular Banana Dance. Finding more acceptance as a "colored" performer in France then she had in the United States, she stayed in Paris. Baker is considered to be one of the most sensual performers of all times. She served with the French Red Cross during WWII. With the fall of France in 1940 she became active in the resistance movement. Using her career as a cover she became an intelligence agent. In 1961 she received the Legion d'Honneur for her efforts from Charles deGaulle.

Josephine BakerBaker's celebrity allowed her to travel much more freely. She once carried military intelligence reports out of France to Portugal, written in invisible ink on her sheet music. She also used her charm to persuade foreign consulates to process visas for associates, some of who traveled with her as a cover. She was awarded the Croix de Guerre, and received a Medal of the Resistance in 1946. She married 4 times, and adopted 12 children of different races ... her "Rainbow Tribe". She often combined performance with civil rights activism, refusing to perform in clubs that would not permit an integrated audience. Her performances, which usually included songs in a number of languages, can be viewed as an extension of her personal philosophy and belief in racial harmony. At 69 she died quietly, in her sleep, of a cerebral hemorrhage.

Famous African American Artists

Aaron DouglasThe leading painter and illustrator of the Harlem Renaissance, Aaron Douglas was born in Topeka, Kansas. He received B.A. degrees from the University of Nebraska in 1922 and from the University of Kansas in 1923. After working briefly as a high school teacher in Kansas City, Douglas moved to New York and earned an M.F.A. from Columbia University Teachers College.

Aaron Douglas

In 1928-29, he studied in Paris on a grant from the Barnes Foundation. In 1937 Douglas founded the art department of Fisk University in Nashville, Tenn., and served as its chair until 1966,. Douglas explored African themes and sought to make his cultural heritage relevant to contemporary African-American experience.

Aaron Douglas

For this, he won critical praise and attention, and was dubbed the father of black American art. " His illustrations appeared with Reiss's in the 1925 book, The New Negro; this volume is said to have played an important role in giving an identity to the literary circle of the Harlem Renaissance.

Aaron Douglas

As a member of the Renaissance circle, Douglas illustrated books by Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, and James Weldon Johnson., Douglas and his wife, Alta, lived on Strivers' Row at 227 West 139th Street in the 1920s. They were popular hosts to Harlem's cultural elite. Aaron Douglas lived in Nashville after his retirement from Fisk University in 1966.

Augusta SavageAugusta Savage was born on February 29, 1892 in Green Cove Springs, Florida. Augusta knew at an early age that she wanted to become a sculptor. At a 1919 county fair, Savage was given an award for a group of her sculptures and was inspired to become a professional artist. In 1921, Augusta Savage moved to New York believing that the North would provide her with the artistic opportunity she desired; a belief shared by many blacks.

Augusta Savage

Most of Savage's sculptures, reflect an aspect of African-American culture. A bust of her nephew entitled Gamin won Augusta Savage the Julius Rosenwald Fellowship in 1929 and the opportunity to study in Paris for one year. After returning home from Europe, Savage shared her art with the Harlem community through teaching.

Augusta Savage

In 1932, Augusta established the Savage Studio of Arts and Crafts at 163 West 143rd Street. Savage used this studio as a way to provide adults with art education. In 1937, she became the first director of the Harlem Community Arts Center, an institution funded by the Works Progress Administration.

Augusta Savage

After 1945, Augusta Savage reduced the amount of sculpting she did and fell into seclusion. Though no longer in the spotlight, Savage continued to teach sculpting and other art to both children and adults throughout New York.

Hale Woodruff

Hale Woodruff was born in Cairo, Illinois. He received his early art training at the John Herron Art Institute in Indianapolis and the Fogg Art Museum of Harvard University. In 1927 he received the Harmon Foundation Award of one hundred dollars and went to Paris.

Hale WoodruffHe was Art Director at Atlanta University from 1931 to 1946 and founded the Annual Atlanta University Art Exhibits, historically one of the most important contributions to the development of African American art in this country.

Hale Woodruff

During the years in Atlanta, Woodruff spent a summer (1936) in Mexico, studying mural painting with Diego Rivera. In 1945, he became a teacher at New York University. He is especially noted for his murals in the Savery Library at Talladega College, Alabama. The murals tell two stories. The first recounts an uprising of slaves on the slave ship Amistad, the second recounts the history of Talladega College from its founding in 1867 to the present. In 1967, the New York University alumni Association named him "Teacher of the Year."

Hale Woodruff