River to river to river–– love and beauty and death stretching for miles the skin of my heart from high tide to low. Thinking about America and the best way to go. That morning sun, he always come up bleeding, and sweet sugar moon, she mostly go down screamin’. Between a woman and the door and the man beneath the floor I keep sweatin’ bout America and which way I should go. Whereas my skin is black my world is sho’ nuff white. Hand jivin’ just to beat the blues and waiting fast for the night. It’s true I ponder as I wander, but most times I think I know. On the road to my taste of heaven I don’t mind travelin’ slow. Love and beauty and death— river to river to river lynching these dreams swinging naked in my heart, screaming for mercy from high tide to low, I think hard about America and the best way for me to go. (graphic of Langston Hughes by Winold Reiss) © by Aberjhani co-author of ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE and author of I MADE MY BOY OUT OF POETRY

    This 1941 portrait of celebrated author James Baldwin, entitled “Dark Rapture,” is one of numerous masterworks created by the equally celebrated Harlem Renaissance artist Beauford Delaney (1902-1979). Delaney (whose brother Joseph, 1904-1991, was also an accomplished artist) enjoyed a remarkable career that spanned some five decades. That he was a visual artist whose creative aesthetics profoundly influenced the work of a major literary artist like James Baldwin is one indicator of how powerfully charged the creative energy of the Harlem Renaissance truly was. Aberjhani Co-author of ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE And the author of I MADE MY BOY OUT OF POETRY

Magazines that prominently featured the works of poets, visual artists, historians, sociologists, dramatists, and fiction writers were a principle mainstay of the original Harlem Renaissance. Those famous writers and thinkers of the movement whose names today for many are commonplace––i.e., poet Countee Cullen, sociologist E. Franklin Frazier, artist Aaron Douglas––first gained widespread exposure in magazines like The Crisis , Opportunity , The Messenger , and The Negro World . In addition to providing contributors with prestige and bankable prize monies, these early twentieth century magazines also took and recorded frequent measures of the state of black culture. Many contemporary magazines in 2005 retain elements of the classic Harlem Renaissance periodicals but few embody the tradition so fully in spirit and substance as AFRICAN VOICES Magazine . Founded in 1992, African Voices entered the new century as a premier publisher of works by both emerging and established cultural worker...

The media treated itself to a field day in 2001 when former President Bill Clinton announced that he had signed a 10-year lease, at $354,000 per year, for office space in Harlem on West 125th Street. The news brought much needed hope and inspiration to those who had witnessed the United States’ most famous neighborhood struggle to survive the ravages of decayed buildings, a decreased population, dwindling employment, and the same debilitating drug traffic that crippled communities all over the country. That Clinton’s ever-so-cool Harlem shuffle lent a major boost to the community’s profile and real estate business is not to be denied. However, few things could better symbolize the in-progress twenty-first century Harlem Renaissance than the restoration of a Harlem brownstone sponsored by ESSENCE Magazine and the Abyssinian Development Corporation (ADC). As part of its year-long 35th anniversary celebration, ESSENCE Magazine entered into a partnership with the Abyssinian Development C...