Gates, Jr And Higginbotham, Eds., Harlem Renaissance Lives - From African American National Biography

Abstract

With hundreds of accessible entries on the lives of African Americans directly or indirectly associated with this period, Harlem Renaissance Lives is an ambitious effort to highlight, and sometimes uncover, the role of African Americans in shaping the United States in the twentieth century. While the entries are brief, the book's strength is its breadth with portraits of not only writers, artists, actors, and musicians but also educators, civil rights and labor activists, entrepreneurs, athletes, clergy, and aviators. Students of history will find familiar figures of the period such as Langston Hughes, Josephine Baker, Duke Ellington, Marcus Garvey, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. However, the real value of the work is in highlighting, however briefly, the lives of hundreds of lesser-known African Americans. Some figures, such as educator Roscoe Bruce, the son of a U.S. Senator, grew up relatively privileged, but many of the biographies involve African-Americans whose unlikely contributions begin with a background that included slavery and sharecropping. Regardless, each entry includes a valuable bibliography and information about relevant primary sources such as an obituary and archival collections.