THE WORLD'S FIRST ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE


In September 2003, Facts On File of New York City published the worlds first ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE by authors Aberjhani and Sandra L. West. This momentous event did more than help to insure the ongoing celebrations focused on that early twentieth century explosion of cultural creativity known as the Harlem Renaissance. It also helped to place the movement within its rightful context as one of the greater triumphs of both African-American creative genius and American spiritual democratic vision.
Taking place as it did from the 1920s to the 1940s (though some stop at the 1930s) the Harlem Renaissance marked a period in African-American history when the rhymes of poets, the images created by painters, and those worlds constructed inside novels and upon the stage could not afford to limit themselves to pleasurable fantasies or uncaring indulgence. Government-sanctioned racism, the social and political oppression of women, war ripping across the planet, and daily adjustments to increasingly sophisticated technology meant that creative works by inspired thinkers needed to stand for something in order to make some kind of difference in the world.
Less than a century before the Harlem Renaissance, the act of reading or writing could cost an African-American his or her life. During the Harlem Renaissance, reading and writing became principle methods that often saved black lives and raised white consciousness. Therefore, what one read and what one wrote was always significant.
Rap music, the blues, jazz, gospel, classic black comedy, and classic black theatre were all products of the Harlem Renaissance. So were the poems of Gwendolyn Brooks and Langston Hughes, the films of Oscar Micheaux and Paul Robeson, the novels of Zora Neale Hurston and Claude McKay, the art of Miguel Covarrubias and Elizabeth Catlett, and the teachings of Carter Godwin Woodson and W. E. B. Du Bois. With the traumatizing nightmare of American slavery now in the past and the shimmering vision of the American dream glowing in the future, the era was one like no other.
It may be said that the seed which gave life to the Harlem Renaissance was planted in the hearts and souls of more than a million people of African descent who made their way during the Great Migration to the neighborhood of Harlem in New York City. However, once that seed germinated and sprouted, it blossomed all over the world.

Aberjhani
Co-author of ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE
And author of I MADE MY BOY OUT OF POETRY

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