Harlem Renaissance Lives

The Harlem Renaissance is the best known and most widely studied cultural movement in African American history. Now, in Harlem Renaissance Lives, esteemed scholars Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham have selected 300 key biographical entries culled from the eight-volume African American National Biography, providing an authoritative who's who of this seminal period. Here readers will find engagingly written and authoritative articles on notable African Americans who made significant contributions to literature, drama, music, visual art, or dance, including such central figures as poet Langston Hughes, novelist Zora Neale Hurston, aviator Bessie Coleman, blues singer Ma Rainey, artist Romare Bearden, dancer Josephine Baker, jazzman Louis Armstrong, and the intellectual giant W. E. B. Du Bois. Also included are biographies of people like the Scottsboro Boys, who were not active within the movement but who nonetheless profoundly affected the artistic and political statements that came from Harlem Renaissance figures. The volume will also feature a preface by the editors, an introductory essay by historian Cary D. Wintz, and 75 illustrations.

William Gargan - Library Journal

Gates and Higginbotham, both Harvard professors, coedited the eight-volume African American National Biography(2008), a reference work of over 4000 entries designed to supplement Oxford's American National Biography's coverage of African Americans. This work culls 300 entries from the larger set, those with some connection to the Harlem Renaissance. Langston Hughes, Alain Locke, Eubie Blake, and other leaders of the movement are, of course, included, but so are less-celebrated figures like Peg Leg Bates, a tap dancer who lost his leg in a cotton-seed gin mill accident. Written by scholars in the field, the articles cover a range of disciplines, including art, music, literature, history, and politics. Suggestions for further reading and information on archival resources round out most entries. Seventy-five black-and-white illustrations enliven the text. BOTTOM LINE This authoritative reference work will prove a useful acquisition for high school, public, and academic libraries, particularly for smaller institutions that lack the African American National Biography. William Gargan, Brooklyn Coll. Lib, CUNY

Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, Harvard University.
Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham is Professor of History and Afro-American Studies at Harvard University and chair of the department.