URGENT REMINDER: The fundraiser for reopening the National Black Doll Museum ends February 28. If you are able to donate a few dollars please do, and either way, please share the fundraiser link as widely as you can. Many thanks! ☮️ -Iris.
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Since before I started this Black History Month series, one of my ideas for a post has been the Harlem Renaissance. I’ve been collecting snippets, links, materials, even writing a few words here and there, but I’ve come to realize there is so much material to cover, and from so many potential perspectives (culturally, politically, artistically etc.) that I have come to realize a blog post would invariably give short shrift to a subject of majestic depth and brilliance. Further, so much work has already been documented that the world reeeeally doesn’t need a white blogger regurgitating the words of Black historians, or worse, the words of the people who actually lived it.
Instead, I will post some resources that I found especially informatve. Whether you want to take a deep dive or stick a toe in the water is up to you. Just know that the legacies of those who lived and worked in Harlem during the 1920s are still very much with us today, so broad and profound was their impact, even on a white supremacist society.
BlackPast on the Harlem Renaissance. BlackPast’s mission:
“is dedicated to providing a global audience with reliable and accurate information on the history of African America and of people of African ancestry around the world. We aim to promote greater understanding through this knowledge to generate constructive change in our society.”
There is so much material here. It is an excellent resource and repository for Black history, not just USian but the African global diaspora as well. This is the kind of work I think of when I look for potentially powerful antidotes to erasure – provided white people and especially educators avail themselves of it.
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Louie Armstrong, circa 1938
(image: William P. Gottlieb Collection / Library of Congress)