Many memorable poets did their best writing during the decades of the 1920s and 1930s.
The Harlem Renaissance offered up a vast array of poets. Some-like Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, Jessie Fauset, Gwendolyn Bennett, and Claude McKay-wrote fiction, plays, articles, and other writings. Other poets were magazine and anthology editors. All of them contributed to the literary energy of 1920s and 1930s, and after.
Before the start of the Renaissance, the son of ex-slaves, Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906) was the first African-American poet to rise to national prominence. His poetry took two paths: for one he used standard English; for the other, a variation on African-American dialect. His books include Oak and Ivy, Majors and Minors, and Lyrics of a Lowly Life.
Jessie Redmon Fauset (1881-1961) was an editor of the NAACP's magazine, The Crisis. She is known for her four published novels, however, her poetry is also published in anthologies.
If you know the "Negro National Anthem"-"Life Every Voice and Sing"-you know James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938). This is one of the songs that he wrote with his brother, Rosamond. Johnson edited volumes of spirituals, wrote a novel The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, and published God's Trombones, Seven Negro Sermons in Verse, a collection of poems.
Countee Cullen (1903-1946) was a prize-winning poet who published several poetry collections including Color, Copper Sun, The Ballad of the Brown Girl, and The Black Christ and Other Poems. He wrote a novel and other works. As a teacher in the New York City public schools, Cullen had James Baldwin as a student.
Georgia Douglas Johnson's (1880-1966) Washington, D.C., home was a meeting place for the likes of Jean Toomer, W.E.B. DuBois, Langston Hughes, and other movers and shakers of the Renaissance period. Her own poetry collections were The Heart of a Woman and Other Poems, An Autumn Love Cycle. Bronze, Selected Works, and Share My World.
Gwendolyn Bennett (1902-1981) was a very versatile graphic artist and writer. Her poetry was published in important magazines, like The Crisis and Opportunity. Countee Cullen, William Stanley Braithwaite, and James Weldon Johnson included her work in their poetry anthologies.
Prolific author, Arna Wendell Bontemps (1902-1973) produced novels, anthologies, poetry, nonfiction and children's books, memoirs, and much more. He collaborated with Langston Hughes on several books. His poetry was collected in Personals.
