Skip to Main Content

Writings of the New Negro Movement


Schedule a Research Appointment

Email Us

Chat with a Librarian

TOPIC | Writings of the New Negro Movement


The Dream Keeper by Langston Hughes

The Dream Keeper: and Other Poems (1932)

A collection of fifty-nine poems by Langston Hughes. These include lyrical poems, songs, and blues, many exploring the black experience.

Find in the Library: Main Collection PS3515 .U274 D7 1932

The Negro and His Music (1936)

The Negro and His Music (1936)

The Negro and His Music sums up "a great deal of Locke's learning in music… [and] sketches a short but sweeping background about the role of music in American culture." He identifies three basic categories: folk, popular and classical, and pays close attention to spirituals, the blues, ragtime and jazz. "

Find in our Library: Main Collection ML3556.L6 N4

Find Online at Alexander Street Press

Plays of Negro Life: A Source-Book of Native America Drama

Plays of Negro Life: A Source-Book of Native America Drama

Jacket flap advertisement in Countee Cullen's "Caroling Dusk": "Plays of Negro Life" is described as:
"The first definite collection of contemporary drama of negro life is a source book of an increasingly important aspect of native American drama. The anthology is edited by the sponsors and former directors of a negro laboratory theater group at Howard University, and contains the worth-while repertoire of the negro theater to date. 

Find in the Library: Main Collection PS6287 .N4 L6

Negro Art: Past and Present (1936)

Negro Art: Past and Present (1936)

This is generally considered the first substantial study of African-American artists, written by the first African-American Rhodes Scholar and a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance. The work of the most important African artists is presented in detail, including descriptions of their principal works in all visual mediums.

Find in the Library: Main Collection N6538 .N5 L63

The New Negro: An Interpretation (1925)

The New Negro: An Interpretation (1925)

From the man known as the father of the Harlem Renaissance comes a powerful, provocative, and affecting anthology of writers who shaped the Harlem Renaissance movement and who help us to consider the evolution of the African American in society.

Find in our Library: Main Collection E185.82.L75 1969

The Journal of Negro History (1916-2001)

The Journal of Negro History (1916-2001)

The Journal of Negro History, now known as the Journal of African American History, is a quarterly academic journal covering African-American life and history. Founded in 1916 by Carter G. Woodson the journal seeks to cover all aspects of the African American Experience.  Its publication was initially overseen by the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH).

Find Online in JSTOR

The Messenger (1917-1928)

The Messenger (1917-1928)

The Messenger was a literary article that ran from 1917 to 1928. Founded by socialists A. Philip Randolph and Chandler Owen, the it became a platform for socially and economically oppressed African American voices. 

Find Online at the Marxist Internet Archive

Fire!!: Devoted to Younger Negro Artists

Fire!!: Devoted to Younger Negro Artists

Although it only had one issue, Fire!!: Devoted to Younger Negro Artists contains work form some of the biggest literary names of the New Negro Movement including Hurston, Hughes, Nugent,  Bennett, Cullen, and Thurman, all set to the artwork of Aaron Douglas. 

Find Online at ISSUU

Find in the Library: Main Collection PS153.N5 F6 1982

Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life

Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life (1923-1949)

"Opportunity is a venture inspired by a long insistent demand, both general and specific, for a journal of Negro life that would devote itself religiously to an interpretation of the social problems of the Negro population.... The policy of Opportunity will be definitely constructive. It will aim to present, objectively, facts of Negro life. It hopes, thru an analysis of these social questions, to provide a basis of understanding; encourage interracial co-operation in the working out of these problems."

Find Online in the Internet Archive

The Crisis (1910- Present)

The Crisis (1910- Present)

"The object of this publication is to set forth those facts and arguments which show the danger of race prejudice, particularly as manifested today toward colored people. It takes its name from the fact that the editors believe that this is a critical time in the history of the advancement of men...Finally, its editorial page will stand for the rights of men, irrespective of color or race, for the highest ideals of American democracy, and for reasonable but earnest and persistent attempts to gain these rights and realize these ideals."

Find Online in the Internet Archive

The Works of Alain Locke

The Works of Alain Locke

The Works of Alain Locke provides the largest collection available of his brilliant essays, gathered from a career that spanned forty years. They cover an impressively broad field of philosophy, literature, the visual arts, music, the theory of value, race, politics, and multiculturalism. Alongside seminal works such as "The New Negro" the volume features essays like "The Ethics of Culture," "Apropos of Africa," and "Pluralism and Intellectual Democracy." 

Find Online at ProQuest Ebook Central

Complete Poems of Claude McKay

Complete Poems of Claude McKay

Containing more than three hundred poems, including nearly a hundred previously unpublished works, this unique collection showcases the intellectual range of Claude McKay (1889-1948), the Jamaican-born poet and novelist whose life and work were marked by restless travel and steadfast social protest.

Find Online at ProQuest Ebook Central

Comedy, American Style by Jessie Redmond Fauset

Comedy, American Style (1933)

Fauset's fourth and last published novel is the tragic story of how color prejudice and racial self-hatred result in the destruction of a family. The work is filled with vivid characters: Olivia Cary, whose mania in passing for white poisons her relationships with those closest to her; her daughter, Teresa, compelled by her mother to make choices that ruin her life; Phebe Grant, a woman of integrity who refuses to deny her race; and Oliver Cary, rejected by a mother unable to accept the color of his skin and her own heritage.

Find Online at ProQuest Ebook Central

Color (1925)

Color (1925)

Published the same year Cullen entered Harvard to pursue a masters in English, Color was a brilliant debut by a poet who had already gained a reputation as a leading young artist of the Harlem Renaissance. Cullen’s relationship to place, whether Africa, America, or Baltimore, is inextricably linked to his experience of racial violence. He navigates the spaces between these places, inhabiting a language and a poetic tradition thrust upon him at birth.

Find in the Library: Main Collection PS3505 .U287 C6 1925

Cane by Jean Toomer

Cane (1923)

Cane is a powerful work of innovative fiction evoking black life in the South. Visions of smoke, sugarcane, dusk, and flame permeate the Southern landscape: the Northern world is pictured as a harsher reality of asphalt streets. Impressionistic, sometimes surrealistic, the pieces are redolent of nature and Africa, with sensuous appeals to eye and ear.

Find in the Library: Main Collectionn PS3539 .O478 C3

Find Online in ProQuest

Black Thunder by Arna Bontemps

Black Thunder (1936)

"Gabriel Prosser's 1800 slave revolt allowed Bontemps to warn of the rebellion that would come of poverty and racial oppression. This metaphor of revolution is at the same time a highly pertinent representation of black masculinity that will reward students of gender, slavery and the sensibilities of the 1930s."
-Nell Irvin Painter

Find in the Library: Main Collection PS3505 .0474 B56

Banjo by Claude McKay

Banjo (1929)

Lincoln Agrippa Daily, known to his drifter cohorts on the 1920s Marseilles waterfront as "Banjo," passes his days panhandeling and dreaming of starting his own little band. At night he and his friends talk about their homes in Sengal, the West Indies, or the American South; about Garvey's Back-to-Africa Movement; about being Black. When Ray, a writer, joins the group, it triggers his rediscovery of his African roots and his feeling that, at last, he belongs to a race, "weighted, tested, and poised in the universal scheme.

Find in the Library: Main Collection PS3525 .A24785 B35

Banana Bottom by Claude McKay

Banana Bottom (1933)

First published in 1933, the richly lyrical Banana Bottom is often regarded as McKay's finest novel. His innovation lies in the directness with which he speaks of social and political injustice for Afro-Caribbeans and in his choice of the working class as his focus. 

Find in the Library: Main Collection PS3525 .A24785 B3

Along This Way by James Weldon Johnson

Along This Way (1933)

he life story of James Weldon Johnson is that of a truly remarkable man who triumphed over a system of institutionalized racism to become one of black America’s leading educators, men of letters, and reformers.

Find in the Library: Main Collection E185.97 .J69 

Find Online at ProQuest Ebook Central

The Weary Blues by Langston Hughes

The Weary Blues (1926)

Knopf editor Carl Van Vechten wrote in a brief introduction to the original 1926 volume, "His cabaret songs throb with the true jazz rhythm; his sea-pieces ache with a calm, melancholy lyricism; he cries bitterly from the heart of his race...Always, however, his stanzas are subjective, personal" and, he concludes, they are "the expression [of] an essentially sensitive and subtly illusive nature."

Find in the Library: Main Collection PS3515 .U274 F5 

Africa: its geography, people, and products: and, Africa: its place in Modern History

Africa: its geography, people, and products: and, Africa: its place in Modern History

Written in very accessible prose, these two booklets, originally published in 1930, allowed W. E. B. Du Bois to reach a wide audience with an interest in Africa. Coupling Du Bois's breadth of scholarship with his passion for the subjects, the analyses in these booklets are integral to the study of Africa.

Find Online at ProQuest Ebook Central

Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey, Part 2 (1925)

Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey, Part 2 (1925)

The Philosophy and Opinions Part 2 was published in 1925. Marcus Garvey and the "Universal Negro Improvement Association" form a critical link in black America's centuries-long struggle for freedom, justice, and equality. As the leader of the largest organized mass movement in black history and progenitor of the modern "black is beautiful" ideal, Garvey is now best remembered as a champion of the back-to-Africa movement. In his own time he was hailed as a redeemer, a "Black Moses." 

Find Online at Alexander Street Press

Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey, Part 1 (1923)

Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey, Part 1 (1923)

The Philosophy and Opinions Part 1 was published in 1923. Marcus Garvey and the "Universal Negro Improvement Association" form a critical link in black America's centuries-long struggle for freedom, justice, and equality. As the leader of the largest organized mass movement in black history and progenitor of the modern "black is beautiful" ideal, Garvey is now best remembered as a champion of the back-to-Africa movement. In his own time he was hailed as a redeemer, a "Black Moses." 

Find Online at Alexander Street Press

The African Background Outlined; or, Handbook for the Study of the Negro (1936)

The African Background Outlined; or, Handbook for the Study of the Negro (1936)

Woodson wrote this text to educate teachers and the general public about Africa. Part I of the book presents a brief summary of Africa’s past, including chapters on "The Negro in Africa," "The Negro in the European Mind," "The Negro in America," "The Negro in Literature," "The Negro in Art," "The Education of the Negro," "The Religious Development of the Negro," and "Economic Imperialism." Part II contains bibliographical notes and comments on these chapters and the others in the book.

Find in the Main Collection: Main Collection DT351 .W89 1968

The Negro Wage Earner

This seminal work is one of the earliest comprehensive studies of African Americans' roles in the U.S. economy, examining their labor contributions from the Reconstruction era through the early 20th century. Key themes include systemic barriers such as racism, segregation, and economic exploitation, as well as the resilience and agency of African American workers. Woodson and Greene document African Americans' participation in industries ranging from agriculture to urban industrial labor, emphasizing their adaptability and contributions to the nation's economic development despite widespread discrimination. 

Find in the Library: Main Collection E185.8.G79

The History of the Negro Church

The History of the Negro Church (1921)

Published in 1921, The History of the Negro Church traces the construction of the black church in America from colonial times through the early years of the twentieth century. The book unfolds a series of biographical sketches of male church leaders through the decades, and offers a broad critique of church experience.

Find Online at ProQuest Ebook Central

The Negro in Our History (1922)

The Negro in Our History (1922)

The Negro in Our History is a comprehensive study of the role of African Americans in American history. The book provides a detailed account of the contributions made by black Americans from the time of slavery to the early 20th century. Woodson explores the social, political, and economic conditions that shaped the lives of African Americans and examines the ways in which they struggled for freedom and equality. 

Find in the Library: Main Collection E185 .W89 1931

The Mis-Education of the Negro

The Mis-Education of the Negro

The Mis-Education of the Negro is one of the most important books on education ever written. Carter G. Woodson shows us the weakness of Euro-centric based curriculums that fail to include African American history and culture. This system mis-educates the African American student, failing to prepare them for success and to give them an adequate sense of who they are within the system that they must live. Woodson provides many strong solutions to the problems he identifies.

Find in the Library: Main Collection LC2801 .W6 1990

Rope and Faggot: A Biography of Judge Lynch

Rope and Faggot: A Biography of Judge Lynch (1929)

Rope and Faggot debunked the "big lie" that lynching punished black men for raping white women and it provided White with an opportunity to deliver a penetrating critique of the southern culture that nourished this form of blood sport. White marshaled statistics demonstrating that accusations of rape or attempted rape accounted for less than 30 percent of all lynchings. Despite the emphasis on sexual issues in instances of lynching, White insisted that the fury and sadism with which white mobs attacked their victims stemmed primarily from a desire to keep blacks in their place and control the black labor force.

Find in the Library: Main Collection HV6457 .W45

Find Online at Alexander Street Press

Black Reconstruction in America (1935)

Black Reconstruction in America (1935)

This pioneering work was the first full-length study of the role black Americans played in the crucial period after the Civil War, when the slaves had been freed and the attempt was made to reconstruct American society. Hailed at the time, Black Reconstruction in America 1860–1880 has justly been called a classic.

Find in the Library: Main Collection E668 .D83 1992

Fine Clothes to the Jew by Langston Hughes

Fine Clothes to the Jew by Langston Hughes

Turning his focus from the tender and nostalgic depiction of the culture, Hughes opts to reveal the raw and unfiltered realities of Harlem; the depression, the poverty, and the struggle of those outside the purview of the Talented Tenth; creating what is arguably, one of the most significant collections of poetry ever published and one of the most-overlooked pieces of work in African-American literary history.

Find in the Library: Main Collection PS3515 .U274 W4 1926 

The Gift of Black Folk: The Negroes in the Making of America (1924)

The Gift of Black Folk: The Negroes in the Making of America (1924)

Du Bois chronicled the role of blacks in the early exploration of America, the crucial parts they played in developing the country’s agricultural industry, and the courage they displayed on the many battlefields of our young nation. He documented their creative genius in virtually every aspect of American culture―music, painting, sculpture, literature, theater, and invention. He also highlighted the unique contributions of black women, proposing the idea that their freedom could lead to freedom for all women.

Find Online at Alexander Street Press

The Second Book of Negro Spirituals

The Second Book of Negro Spirituals (1926)

This stirring collection of Negro spirituals, edited by the great Negro poet James Weldon Johnson and arranged for voice and piano by his brother J. Rosamond Johnson, contain melodic and intensely moving religious folk songs for contemporary performance. 

Find in the Library: Main Collection M1670 .J67 1927

The Book of Negro Spirituals (1925)

The Book of Negro Spirituals (1925)

This stirring collection of Negro spirituals, edited by the great Negro poet James Weldon Johnson and arranged for voice and piano by his brother J. Rosamond Johnson, contain melodic and intensely moving religious folk songs for contemporary performance. 

Find in the Library: Main Collection M1670 .J672

Book of American Negro Poetry (1921)

Book of American Negro Poetry (1921)

Johnson compiled this work because it was his belief that a group of people is not known for their greatness until their art and literature is known. Johnson believed that the status of the American Negro would be improved by making their literature known to the general public.

Find in the Library: Main Collection PS591 .N5 J6

Negro Americans, What Now? (1934)

Negro Americans, What Now? (1934)

James Weldon Johnson r outlines the possible channels of action available to Negroes to effect a change in their condition.

Find Online at Alexander Street Press

Black Manhattan (1930)

Black Manhattan (1930)

Black Manhattan is by no means simply history; It illuminates Johnson and his contributions to both black literature and black organizations; it provides us with an intimate account of the black theatrical and musical world of which Johnson had been a part; and it raises searching questions about the black people's struggle to find their identity. 

Find in the Library: Main Collection F128.9.N3 J67 1969

When Africa Wakes: The “Inside Story” of the stirrings and Strivings of the New Negro in the Western World (1920)

When Africa Wakes is a collection of over fifty articles that detail his pioneering theoretical, educational, and organizational role in the founding and development of the militant, World War I era "New Negro Movement." Harrison was a brilliant, class and race conscious, writer, educator, orator, editor, book reviewer, political activist, and radical internationalist who was described by J. A. Rogers as "perhaps the foremost Aframerican intellect of his time" and by A. Philip Randolph as "the father of Harlem Radicalism."

Find Online at Alexander Street Press

The Negro and The Nation

The Negro and The Nation (1917)

. In this compelling anthology, Harrison presents a thorough examination of the systemic issues plaguing the lives of Negroes, categorizing problems into four main groups: political disenfranchisement, economic exploitation, inadequate education, and social discrimination. Through powerful rhetoric and factual evidence, he critiques the legal and societal frameworks that perpetuate inequality, such as voter suppression laws and the prevalence of lynching.

Find Online at Alexander Street Press

The Political Plays of Langston Hughes

Political Plays of Langston Hughes

Each play reflects Hughes' remarkable professionalism as a playwright as well as his desire to dramatize the social history of the African American experience, especially in the context of the labor movements of the 1930s and their attempts to attract African American workers.

Find Online at EBSCOhost Ebook Collection

Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson

Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912)

This novel unfolds the life of a biracial protagonist, who navigates the complexities of racial identity in early 1900s America, shedding light on the societal dynamics between blacks and whites. The story explores themes of self-discovery, identity, and the impact of prejudice, as the main character grapples with his position in a racially divided society.

Find in the Library: Main Collection PS3519 .O2625 A8

God’s Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse

God’s Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse (1927)

In God's Trombones, one of his most celebrated works, inspirational sermons of African American preachers are reimagined as poetry, reverberating with the musicality and splendid eloquence of the spirituals. This classic collection includes "Listen Lord (A Prayer)," "The Creation," "The Prodigal Son," "Go Down Death (A Funeral Sermon)," "Noah Built the Ark," "The Crucifixion," "Let My People Go," and "The Judgment Day."

Find in the Library: Main Collection PS3519 .O2625 G6

Plum Bun: A Novel Without Moral by Jessie Redmon Fauset

Plum Bun: A Novel Without Moral (1929)

Plum Bun is the story of Angela Murray, a young black girl who discovers she can pass for white. After the death of her parents, Angela moves to New York to escape the racism she believes is her only obstacle to opportunity. What she soon discovers is that being a woman has its own burdens that don't fade with the color of one's skin, and that love and marriage might not offer her salvation.

Find Online at ProQuest

The Collected Poems of Jean Toomer

The Collected Poems of Jean Toomer

The fifty-five poems here -- most of them previously unpublished -- chart a fascinating evolution of artistic consciousness. The book is divided into sections reflecting four distinct periods of creativity in Toomer's career. The Aesthetic period includes Imagist, Symbolist, and other experimental pieces, such as "Five Vignettes," while "Georgia Dusk" and the newly discovered poem "Tell Me" come from Toomer' s Ancestral Consciousness period in the early 1920s.

Find Online at JSTOR

Jonah’s Gourd Vine: A Novel by Zora Neale Hurston

Jonah’s Gourd Vine: A Novel (1934)

Jonah's Gourd Vine tells the story of John Buddy Pearson, “a living exultation” of a young man who loves too many women for his own good. Lucy, his long-suffering wife, is his true love, but there’s also Mehaly and Big ‘Oman and the scheming Hattie who conjures hoodoo spells to ensure his attentions.

Find in the Library: Main Collection PS3515 .U789 J6 1990

The Ballad of the Brown Girl by Countee Cullen

The Ballad of the Brown Girl (1927)

The Ballad of the Brown Girl is a good example of Cullen’s debt to time-honored forms, namely the medieval ballad. He revised a traditional English folk ballad that exposes the tensions between black & white folks.

Find in the Library: Main Collection PS3505 .U287 B3 1927

He revised a traditional English folk ballad that exposes the tensions between black & white folks.

Mules and Men (1935)

Mules and Men is the first great collection of black America's folk world. In the 1930's, Zora Neale Hurston returned to her "native village" of Eatonville, Florida to record the oral histories, sermons and songs, dating back to the time of slavery, which she remembered hearing as a child. 

Find in the Library: Main Collection GR103 .H8 1978a

Zora Neale Hurston: Collected Plays

 Even avid readers of Hurston’s prose may be surprised to know that she was also a serious and ambitious playwright throughout her career. Filled with lively characters, vibrant images of rural and city life, biblical and folk tales, voodoo, and, most importantly, the blues, readers will discover a “real Negro theater” that embraces all the richness of black life.

Find Online at ProQuest Ebook Central

Gay Rebel of the Harlem Renaissance: Selections from the Work of Richard Bruce Nugent

Gay Rebel of the Harlem Renaissance: Selections from the Work of Richard Bruce Nugent

Protégé of Alain Locke, roommate of Wallace Thurman, and friend of Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, the precocious Nugent stood for many years as the only African-American writer willing to clearly pronounce his homosexuality in print.

Find Online at EBSCOhost LGBTQ+ Source

The Plays of Georgia Douglas Johnson: From the New Negro Renaissance to the Civil Rights Movement

The Plays of Georgia Douglas Johnson: From the New Negro Renaissance to the Civil Rights Movement

This volume collects twelve of Georgia Douglas Johnson's one-act plays, including two never-before-published scripts found in the Library of Congress.  As an integral part of Washington, D.C.'s, thriving turn-of-the-century literary scene, Johnson hosted regular meetings with Harlem Renaissance writers and other artists, including Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, May Miller, and Jean Toomer, and was herself considered among the finest writers of the time. 

Find Online at JSTOR

The Heart of a Woman, and Other Poems by Georgia Douglas Johnson

The Heart of a Woman, and Other Poems(1918)

Marking Johnson’s debut as one of the leading poets of the Harlem Renaissance, The Heart of a Woman and Other Poems is an invaluable work of African American literature for scholars and poetry enthusiasts alike. Comprised of Johnson’s earliest works as a poet, the collection showcases her sense of the musicality of language while illuminating the experiences of African American women of the early twentieth century. 

Find Online at ProQuest

Dark Princess: A Romance by W.E.B. Du Bois

Dark Princess: A Romance (1928)

The Dark Princess is a story of magical love and radical politics, a romance facing obstacles in a white-dominated world. Du Bois's allegorical tale follows Mathew Townes from his political disillusionment to his association with a powerful and seductive revolutionary leader, Kautilya, the princess of the Tibetan Kingdom of Bwodpur. 

Find in the Library: Main Collection PS3507 .U147 D37 1974

Fire in the Flint by Walter White

Fire in the Flint (1924)

Written by a lifelong champion of civil rights, this is the story of Kenneth Harper, a young black physician who, after having studied in the North in the early part of the twentieth century and believing the days of oppression for blacks in the South were waning, returns to his hometown of Central City in South Georgia to practice medicine. Harper finds all too soon that the roots of intolerance grow deep.

Find in the Library: Main Collection PS3545 .H6165 F5

Flight by Walter White

Flight (1926)

Flight focuses on the dilemma of Mimi Daquin, a New Orleans creole who, for a time, passes as white. An unexpected pregnancy causes Mimi to abandon her prosperous family and move to Harlem.

Find in the Library: Main Collection PS3545 .H6165 F52

The Sleeper Wakes: Harlem Renaissance Stories by Women

The Sleeper Wakes: Harlem Renaissance Stories by Women

A collection of Harlem Renaissance stories written by women includes works by Jessie Redmon Fauset, Dorothy West, Angelina Weld Grimke, Zora Neale Hurston, and Nella Larson

Find in the Library: Main Collection; PS647 .A35 S58 1993a

The Negro Mother and Other Dramatic Recitations by Langston Hughes

The Negro Mother and Other Dramatic Recitations (1931)

This narrative poem features a Black mother speaking to her descendants about her journey from enslavement in Africa to her current role as an ancestor figure. She recounts the brutal hardships she endured—separation from family, forced labor, and systematic oppression—while emphasizing how her unshakeable hope and resilience have paved the way for future generations. 

Find in the Library: Main Collection PS3515 .U274 N3 1990

Not Without Laughter (1930)

Hughes award-winning first novel, about a black boy's coming-of-age in a largely white Kansas town. Hughes gives the longings and lineaments of black life in the early twentieth century an important place in the history of racially divided America.

Find in the Library: Main Collection PS3515 .U274 N6

The Ways of White Folk (1934)

A collection of vibrant and incisive short stories depicting the sometimes humorous, but more often tragic interactions between Black people and white people in America in the 1920s and ‘30s.

Find Online at ProQuest

Plays to 1942: Mulatto to the Sun Do Move

Plays to 1942: Mulatto to the Sun Do Move

Volume 5 of The Collected Works of Langston Hughes includes the plays Hughes wrote between 1930 and 1942, alone and in collaboration. His early plays endeavor to provide "authentic" representations of African American life, both to counter and correct the stereotypical stage portrayals of African Americans in white theater and to provide suitable plays for black theater companies hungry for scripts that would entertain and challenge black audiences.

Find Online at ProQuest Ebook Central

Home to Harlem by Claude McKay

Home to Harlem (1928)

With sensual, often brutal accuracy, Claude McKay traces the parallel paths of two very different young men struggling to find their way through the suspicion and prejudice of American society. At the same time, this stark but moving story touches on the central themes of the Harlem Renaissance, including the urgent need for unity and identity among blacks.

Find in the Library: Main Collection PS3525 .A24785 H6

Find Online at ProQuest Ebook Central

Harlem Shadows by Claude McKay

Harlem Shadows (1922)

With pure heart, passion, and honesty, Claude McKay offers an acute reflection on the complex nature of racial identity in the Caribbean diaspora, encompassing issues such as nationalism, freedom of expression, class, gender, and sex.

Find in the Library: Main Collection PS3525 .A24785 H3 1922

The Passion of Claude McKay

The Passion of Claude McKay

This anthology includes both previously unpublished and published work of McKay. Of especial interest are the letters he wrote to W.E.B. Du Bois and Max Eastman.

Find in the Library: Main Collection PS3525 .A24785 A6 1973

Constab Ballads by Claude McKay

Constab Ballads (1912)

"Not that I ever openly rebelled; but the rebellion was in my heart, and it was fomented by the inevitable rubs of daily life trifles to most of my comrades, but to me calamities and tragedies. To relieve my feelings, I wrote poems, and into them I poured my heart in its various moods. This volume consists of a selection from these poems."

-Claude McKay

Find Online at Alexander Street Press

Tropic Death by Eric Walrond

Tropic Death (1926)

This book of stories viscerally charts the days of men working stone quarries or building the Panama Canal, of women tending gardens and rearing needy children. Early on addressing issues of skin color and class, Walrond imbued his stories with a remarkable compassion for lives controlled by the whims of nature.

Find Online at ProQuest

In Search of Asylum: The Later Writings of Eric Walrond

In Search of Asylum: The Later Writings of Eric Walrond

n Search of Asylum compiles Walrond’s European journalism and later fiction, as well as the pieces he wrote during the 1950s at Roundway Hospital in Wiltshire, England, where he was a voluntary patient. Louis Parascandola and Carl Wade have assembled a collection that at last fills in the biographical gaps in Walrond’s life, providing insights into the contours of his later work and the cultural climates in which he functioned between 1928 and his death in 1966.

Find Online at ProQuest Ebook Central

One Way to Heaven by Countee Cullen

One Way to Heaven (1923)

One Way to Heaven by Countee Cullen is a novel that portrays life in Harlem, New York, during the early 20th century, focusing on the struggles and experiences of African Americans living in a racially segregated society, with the "one way to heaven" likely symbolizing the hope for a better life beyond the limitations of their current reality

Find in the Library: Main Collection PS3505 .U287 O5

Caroling Dusk

Caroling Dusk (1927)

This selection from the work of thirty-eight poets was made by Countee Cullen in 1927. His stated purpose at the time was to bring together a miscellany of deeply appreciated but scattered verse.Most of the poets became well known and widely published in the years that followed. These poems remain powerful statements of what it means to be human, whatever the race.

Find in the Library: Main Collection PS591 .N4 C8

The Complete Fiction: Passing, Quicksand, and the Stories

Throughout her short but brilliant literary career, Nella Larsen wrote piercing dramas about the Black middle class that featured sensitive, spirited heroines struggling to find a place where they belonged. 

Find in the Library: Main Collection PS3523.A7225 A6 2023

Copper Sun by Countee Cullen

Copper Sun

Copper Sun, a collection of over fifty poems, is his second book of poetry. Cullen explores the emotional consequences of race, religion, and sexuality in Jazz Age America. His lyrics are moving, eloquent, and poignant and are as powerful today as when they were first published nearly a century ago.

Find in the Library: Main Collection PS3505 .U287 C65 1927

The Black Christ and Other Poems by Countee Cullen

The Black Christ and Other Poems

Countee Cullen was one of the leading poets and intellectuals of the Harlem Renaissance. Cullen's poetry drew connections between the suffering of the crucified Christ and the suffering of African Americans from racial violence in the 1920's. 

Find in the Library: Main Collection PS3505 .U287 B6 1929

Their Eyes Were Watching God

Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)

One of the most important and enduring books of the twentieth century, Their Eyes Were Watching God brings to life a Southern love story with the wit and pathos found only in the writing of Zora Neale Hurston.

Find in the Library: Main Collection PS3515 .U789 T5 1978

                                  Main Collection PS3515 .U789 T5 1978

Sad-Faced Boy by Arna Bontemps

Sad-Faced Boy (1937)

A tender and very amusing story of Slumber, a sad-faced, harmonica-playing black boy from Alabama who goes to Harlem with his two brothers and forms a band

Find in the Library: Main Collection PZ7 .B6443 Sad

God Sends Sunday by Arna Bontemps

God Sends Sunday (1931)

God Sends Sunday was inspired by Arna Bontemps's great-uncle Buddy, whose down-home folk spirit animates this racy story of Little Augie, an irrepressible black jockey of the romantic 1890s. As a frail, undersized youngster, Little Augie leaves his grown sister's home and with luck and charm rises to fame and fortune on the Mississippi River racetrack circuit. But sudden wealth and hopeless rivalry for a beautiful woman change Little Augie's character and set him on a path of self-destruction.

Find in the Library: Main Collection PS3505 .0474 G6

The Blacker the Berry: A Novel of Negro Life by Wallace Thurman

The Blacker the Berry: A Novel of Negro Life (1929)

Emma Lou was born black. Too black for her own comfort and that of her social-climbing wannabe family. Resented by those closest to her, she runs from her small hometown to Los Angeles and then to Harlem of the 1920's, seeking her identity and an escape from the pressures of the black community. 

Find in the Library: Main Collection PS3539 .H957 B5

Infants of the Spring (1932)

Infants of the Spring (1932)

This minor classic of the Harlem Renaissance centers on the larger-than-life inhabitants of "Niggerati Manor," an apartment building modeled on the rooming house where the author once lived among other celebrated black artists and writers. Enlivened by characters based on Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Alain Locke, Wallace Thurman's rollicking novel satirizes the cultural confusion surrounding a golden age of African-American art and literature.

Find in the Library: Main Collection PS3539 .H957 I5

Fifty Years and Other Poems

Fifty Years and Other Poems (1917)

This compilation reflects the experiences, struggles, and aspirations of the African American community in the aftermath of emancipation, weaving together themes of racial identity, social justice, and personal longing through lyrical verse and dialect expressions.

Find in the Library: Main Collection PS3519 .O2625 F5

A Long Way from Home (1937)

In his 1937 autobiography, A Long Way from Home , McKay explains what it means to be a black “rebel sojourner” and presents one of the first unflattering, yet informative, exposés of the Harlem Renaissance. 

Find Online at ProQuest Ebook Central