Website logo for 100th Anniversary of the Harlem Renaissance The exact start of the Harlem Renaissance cannot be easily identified––nor, for that matter, can its end. There are in fact those who maintain that the Harlem Renaissance has never come to full head-on conclusion. It has instead adapted, evolved, and shifted forms like a chameleon of cultural consciousness and moved with steady unimpeded grace from one decade to the next and from one century to the next. As for when it started: the physical migration of African Americans out of rural areas of the South, from the Caribbean and elsewhere into the New York City neighborhood of Harlem during the 1910s, certainly set the stage for the dazzling explosion of creative genius that would come to be known as the Harlem Renaissance . The people of African descent who made their way to Harlem “on the first thing smoking,” as Zora Neale Hurston put it, not only became captivating subjects of paintings, plays, novels, poetry, ...