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The Harlem Renaissance Lives on Inside Me
Entering the ’20s again with more Black pride than ever
The Harlem Renaissance was a tipping point in my education about Black history. It felt like a piece of our story that had been intentionally hidden from me — Black flourishing had no place in the American public education system, it seemed. My school’s textbooks went from slavery to segregation to civil rights to some mystical era of peace and equality that flat-out doesn’t exist.
I learned about the Harlem Renaissance on my own, mostly. And while I may resent a system that sought to diminish the value of this movement, nothing can take away from how much power it gives me to know the stories of those visionaries whose legacies I share.
We have made indelible marks on this country and in the world that can never be erased.
I have inherited a great many things as a Black woman: a painful history of torture, the ever-present threat of violence, the knowledge of centuries of irreplaceable life lost.
But I have also inherited my creativity, my ambition, and my soul from the generations of Black artists, thinkers, and history-makers who came before me. Despite White America’s attempts to gloss over stories of Black joy and…
