In 1920, Perry Bradford, a Black composer and publisher, had the crazy idea that African Americans would buy music recorded by Black artists and musicians. He convinced Okeh Records to shellac a vaudeville and cabaret singer from Harlem named Mamie Smith backed by Black jazz musicians. “Crazy Blues” proved to be a smash hit. Within two months of release, it had sold 75,000 copies. Record company executives (all white) woke up. There was a market here! Money to be made! And so

Americans with a moderate knowledge of musical history know about the minstrel shows that originated in the 19th century — how could they not? Some of them might even be aware that the Black musical reentered and transformed the Broadway stage during the 1920s. But there is this gap from the last decade of the 19th century to the 1920s where only fragments of Black musicality (ragtime, the cakewalk) flicker through the imposed amnesia of the time. Why? Take a deep breath and

Cotton Club dancers circa 1930s This is a still from a British Pathé newsreel, filmed sometime during the 1930s of dancers at the Cotton Club. Up until the advent of the internet, it would have been impossible to find this episode titled "Harlem (AKA Harlem, New York)." Although the footage, long since recovered and incorporated into every Harlem Renaissance history, is now recognized as a unique and invaluable moving image window on Harlem during the waning days of the Renai

Year one of the Harlem Renaissance

In 1924, Carl Van Vechten, a white writer, music critic, and promoter of African American cultural art forms, met Langston Hughes at a Harlem party. "Kingston" he called him in the journal he kept at the time, but when he met Langston a second time as the winner of the first poetry contest sponsored by a Black magazine, Langston’s recital of “The Weary Blues” knocked him off his feet. Then and there he committed to getting Langston's first book of poems accepted by his own pu

The real history behind the song "Hound Dog"

Emma Lazarus, a privileged Sephardic Jewish poet, transformed her awakening Jewish identity into passionate advocacy for Eastern European refugees and, through her sonnet The New Colossus, redefined the Statue of Liberty as a beacon of welcome for immigrants.

An in depth look at Portrait of Jason by Shirley Clarke

MAGA bludgeons the libs with antisemitism

Prime Minister Golda Meir and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan meet with troops on the Golan Heights On October 5, 1973, the State of Israel...

Alice Dunbar-Nelson painted by Laura Wheeler Waring “A rising tide lifts all boats,” as the saying goes, but in the case of the possible...

Arna Bontemps For scholars and historians of the period, it is well understood that the Harlem Renaissance refers to a quickening of...

A panel from the AIDS quilt The list of evil queer Jews with any sort of public profile isn't long, but Roy Cohn, lawyer to the worst...

Our home town Christmas tree, Union Square, San Francisco Jewish holidays fall broadly into two categories – those confirming the...

Nous quatre a Paris Jazz paved the way for the establishment of an African American expatriate community in Paris. The French were blown...

Ethiopian Jews Airlifted to Israel During the height of King Solomon’s reign of glory, o Best Beloved!, the dark-skinned Queen of Sheba,...

The Commandment Keepers of Harlem    First of all, they’re not Jews – at least not as understood by Jewish consensus. (Jews are either...

Garvey handcuffed to U.S. Marshal on his way to prison.  Marcus Garvey was, without question, one of the most consequential and...

Alain Locke’s claim to immortality rightly rests on his epochal 1925 anthology, “The New Negro” and midwifing the first generation of...

Of the many visual artists born at the turn of the last century who came of age during the Harlem Renaissance, only one has been pegged...