Features essays, memoirs, poetry, and fiction from a select group of authors who wrote during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s.

Originally published: New York : Viking, 1994.

W.E.B. Du Bois: Returning Soldiers -- Carter G. Woodson: The Migration of the Talented Tenth -- W.A. Domingo: Gift of the Black Tropics -- Marcus Garvey: Africa for the Africans -- Liberty Hall Emancipation Day Speech -- Mary White Ovington: On Marcus Garvey -- James Weldon Johnson: from Black Manhattan -- Alain Locke: The New Negro -- Joel A. Rogers: Jazz at Home -- Paul Robeson: Reflections on O'Neill's Plays -- Arthur A. Schomburg: The Negro Digs Up His Past -- Elise Johnson McDougald: The Task of Negro Womanhood -- Langston Hughes: When the Negro Was in Vogue -- Harlem Literati -- Parties -- The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain -- George S. Schuyler: The Negro-Art Hokum -- W.E.B. Du Bois: Criteria of Negro Art -- Du Bois and J.W. Johnson: Critiques of Carl Van Vechten's Nigger Heaven -- Rudolph Fisher:The Caucasian Storms Harlem -- Aaron Douglas: Aaron Douglas Chats about the Harlem Renaissance -- Albert C. Barnes. Negro Art and America -- Alain Locke: The Negro Takes His Place in American Art -- Romare Bearden: The Negro Artist and Modern Art -- Zora Neale Hurston: from Dust Tracks on a Road -- Claude McKay: from A Long Way from Home -- The Harlem Intelligentsia -- The New Negro in Paris -- E. Franklin Frazier: La Bourgeoisie Noire -- Louise Thompson Patterson: With Langston Hughes in the USSR -- Claude McKay: Harlem Runs Wild -- Richard Wright: Blueprint for Negro Writing -- Charles S. Johnson: The Negro Renaissance and Its Significance -- Gwendolyn Bennett: Song -- Hatred -- Arna Bontemps: The DayBreakers -- Golgotha Is a Mountain -- Sterling Brown: Southern Road -- Odyssey of Big Boy -- Frankie and Johnny -- Ma Rainey -- Long Gone -- Georgie Grimes -- Remembering Nat Turner -- Mae Cowdery: The Young Voice Cries -- Joseph S. Cotter: The Wayside Well -- Countee Cullen: For a Lady I Know -- Incident -- Harlem Wine -- Yet Do I Marvel -- Heritage -- From the Dark Tower -To a Brown Boy -- Tableau. Saturday's Child -- Two Poets -- To France -- Nothing Endures -- Requiescam -- Waring Cuney: The Death Bed -- Jessie Redmon Fauset: La Vie C'est la Vie -- Dead Fires -- Langston Hughes: The Negro Speaks of Rivers -- I, Too -- America -- The Weary Blues -- Jazzonia -- Mother to Son -- Negro -- Mulatto -- Elevator Boy -- Red Silk Stockings -- Ruby Brown -- Elderly Race Leaders -- Dream Variation -- Goodbye, Christ -- Advertisement for the Waldorf-Astoria -- Fenton Johnson: Children of the Sun -- The Banjo Player -- Georgia Douglas Johnson: Let Me Not Lose My Dream -- Old Black Men -- Black Woman -- The Heart of a Woman -- I Want to Die While You Love Me -- Helene Johnson: My Race -- A Southern Road -- Sonnet to a Negro in Harlem -- Poem -- James Weldon Johnson: The White Witch -- The Color Sergeant -- O Black and Unknown Bards -- Go Down Death -- The Creation -- Claude McKay: If We Must Die -- Baptism -- The White House -- The Negro's Friend -- On a Primitive Canoe. The Tropics in New York -- When Dawn Comes to the City -- The Desolate City -- The Harlem Dancer -- St. Isaac's Church, Petrograd -- Barcelona -- Anne Spencer: Lady, Lady -- Jean Toomer: Song of the Son -- Georgia Dusk -- The Blue Meridian -- Eugene O'Neill: from The Emperor Jones -- Jean Toomer: Karintha -- Fern -- Bona and Paul -- T.S. Stribling: from Birthright -- Jessie Redmon Fauset -- from There Is Confusion -- from Plum Bun -- Walter White: from The Fire in the Flint -- Gwendolyn Bennett: Wedding Day -- Claude McKay: Snowstorm in Pittsburgh -- Spring in Harlem -- Banjo's Ace of Spades -- from Banana Bottom -- Nella Larsen: from Quicksand -- from Passing -- Angelina Weld Grimke: from The Closing Door -- Dorothy West: TheTypewriter -- W.E.B. Du Bois: from The Dark Princess -- Rudolph Fisher: from The Walls of Jericho -- Eric Walrond: The Wharf Rats -- The Yellow One -Richard Bruce Nugent: Smoke, Lillies and Jade -- Langston Hughes: Luani of the Jungles -- from Not Without Laughter. Thursday Afternoon -- from The Ways of White Folks -- Father and Son -- The Blues I'm Playing -- Wallace Thurman: Cordelia the Crude -- Harlem: A Forum of Negro Life -- from The Blacker the Berry ... -- from Infants of the Spring -- George Schuyler: from Black No More -- Arna Bontemps: from God Sends Sunday -- from Black Thunder -- Countee Cullen: from One Way to Heaven -- Zora Neale Hurston: Drenched in Light -- Color Struck -- from Jonah's Gourd Vine -- Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes: from Mule-Bone.