Introduction ixmajority of entries focus on the artists, works, and
issues of the day. However, in an effort to contextu-
alize the period and its evolution, impact, and lega-
cies, the book also includes citations that shed light
on the editors, publishers, mentors, patrons, and
critics who were active members of the Harlem
Renaissance literary and arts communities. Also
included is information about the literary organiza-
tions, informal and recognized networks, and com-
petitions that figured prominently in the lives of
many artists. In addition to its entries on authors,
works, publications, events, locations, and organi-
zations, this volume includes a selected bibliogra-
phy of Harlem Renaissance-era works by leading
figures of the movement. It also includes a bibliog-
raphy of major secondary publications, many of
which are cited throughout the text. The chronol-
ogy offers a general overview of the literary publi-
cations and key historical events of the time.
“Oh, if you knew my dreams! my vaulting
ambition! How I constantly live in fancy in seven
league boots, taking mighty strides across the world,
but conscious all the time of being a mouse on a
treadmill,” declared Zora Neale Hurston in 1926 to
Annie Nathan Meyer, her advocate and a Barnard
College trustee (Hurston 77). Hurston’s dueling
perspectives, which reveal the tension between daz-
zling transcendence and sobering reality, articulate
both the seductive possibilities and the unavoidable
realities with which she and her contemporaries
grappled. This volume has been inspired by these
competing tensions that compelled participants in
the Harlem Renaissance to craft eloquent testi-
monies of the nation’s collective past and their own
present, sustained them in the face of unexpected
tragedies, and allowed them to nurture “vaulting
ambition” that catapulted them onto the broad
stage of American literary history.Bibliography
Hurston, Zora Neale, to Eslanda Robeson. 18 April 1934.
In Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters,edited by
Carla Kaplan, 300. New York: Doubleday, 2002.
Hurston, Zora Neale, to Annie Nathan Meyer. 15
January 1926. In Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in
Letters, edited by Carla Kaplan, 77. New York:
Doubleday, 2002.
Hull, Gloria, ed. Give Us Each Day: The Diary of Alice
Dunbar-Nelson.New York: W. W. Norton, 1984. 185.
Roses, Lorraine Elena, and Ruth Elizabeth Randolph,
eds. Harlem’s Glory: Black Women Writing,
1900–1950.Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1996. 4, 5.
Thurman, Wallace, to William Jourdan Rapp. Undated.
In The Collected Writings of Wallace Thurman: A
Harlem Renaissance Reader,edited by Amritjit Singh
and Daniel M. Scott III, 149. New Brunswick, N.J.:
Rutgers University Press, 2003.