Story Behind The People and Event That Started The Harlem Renaissance

The dinner party that started the Harlem Renaissance was originally intended as a celebration for poet and author Jessie R. Fauset and her debut novel, 1924's “There Is Confusion.”

It was W.E.B. Du Bois who convinced Fauset to leave her teaching position at an all-black secondary school in Washington, D.C. to come to New York City to be The Crisis magazine’s literary editor.

Philosopher, writer and educator Alain Locke was one of the organizers of the dinner for Fauset at The Civic Club and considered by many as the dean of the Harlem Renaissance. After graduating from Harvard with honors, he became the first Black Rhodes scholarship recipient in 1907.

Another of the originators of the Harlem Renaissance, Charles S. Johnson worked with Alain Locke to plan the March 21 dinner. Believing that art and literature could help uplift African Americans, he did his best to promote their work as editor of Opportunity: A Journal for Negro Life, the National Urban League’s magazine.

The March 21 dinner was held at New York’s Civic Club, one of the few places in the city where Black and white creatives could freely socialize at the time. “It was the only upper crust New York club without a color bar where Afro-American intellectuals and distinguished white liberals foregathered, more often than not around a table haloed by Benson and Hedges cigarette smoke exhaled by [W.E.B .] Du Bois,” wrote historian David Levering Lewis.

Locke and Johnson’s dinner was attended by a who’s who of Black creatives and intellectuals, thanks in part to Regina Andrews, who helped curate the guest list. In the 1920s, Black librarians were few and far between – even in New York City. Regina Andrews was the first Black woman to head up a New York Public Library branch. During her time at the Harlem branch, she brought in writers and speakers. She also hosted writers and artists at her nearby apartment to share their work – and occasionally crash when they needed.

The first African American to earn a Ph.D. at Harvard University, sociologist, historian and “The Souls of Black Folk” author W.E.B. Du Bois was one of the most well-respected intellectuals in the Black community and one of the most well-known dinner guests on March 21. Jessie Fauset called him her “best friend and severest critic.”

Just 21 years old at the time, poet and essayist Gwendolyn Bennett read a poem at the event entitled “To Usward,” which she dedicated to Fauset and “every Black youth who have a song to sing, a story to tell or a vision for the sons of Earth.” A key figure in the Harlem Renaissance, Bennett wrote for The Crisis and Opportunity, eventually becoming a columnist and editor at Opportunity.  

After the March 21 dinner, Locke, Du Bois and Johnson were energized and set out to bring more creatives to Harlem, including Kansas-born painter Aaron Douglas. Douglas left his position as a high school art teacher to come to New York. While working in the mailroom at The Crisis, he studied African and European art. Douglas eventually became The Crisis’ art critic and went on to create an artistic style influenced by his studies that would symbolize the Harlem Renaissance.

Award-winning poet Countee Cullen was an undergraduate student at NYU on March 21, 1924. The promising artist read a selection of his work to the guests at the dinner event. Cullen would go on to graduate Phi Beta Kappa from NYU, earn a master’s degree from Harvard and join the editorial staff of Opportunity.

Cullen also had a special connection to W.E.B. Du Bois as he was briefly married to his daughter, Nina Yolande Du Bois.

Actor Paul Robeson’s career took off during the Harlem Renaissance. But the All-American football player and Phi Beta Kappa student at Rutgers University could have taken his career in a completely different direction. After earning his law degree at Columbia, Robeson worked at a New York City law firm and acted in his free time. But when the racism he experienced at work became too much for him, he decided to leave his law career and pursue acting full-time.

The first Black student at Barnard College, author Zora Neale Hurston came to Harlem in 1925 and went on to become one of the most important voices in the Harlem Renaissance. The author, known best for her novel, “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” is well-respected in literary circles for being able to capture the essence of the Black experience in her work.

In 1926, poet, playwright and activist Langston Hughes published a piece in The Nation that is considered the manifesto of the Harlem Renaissance, writing: “The younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, it doesn’t matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly, too.”