Dodson, Howard, Christopher Moore, and Roberta Yancy. The Black New Yorkers. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2000.
Chock full of photos and illustrations and details documenting 400 years of African-American culture and achievement in New York City.
Gates Jr., Henry Louis, Nellie Y. McKay, Eds. The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1997.
A massive representation of all genres of African American literature dating from 1746 to the present, including several complete works such as Toni Morrison’s Sula and August Wilson’s play, Fences.
Huggins, Nathan Irvin. Harlem Renaissance. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971.
A highly intelligent exploration of the multifaceted contradictions present among the African-Americans who created and participated in the Renaissance. Very thought-provoking! A smattering of photographs.
Johnson, James Weldon. God’s Trombones. New York: Penguin Books, l927.
Reproductions, in black and white, of Aaron Douglas’s illustrations of Johnson’s seven sermons in verse. The actual paintings in color range as large as four by three feet. (see Harlem Renaissance, Art of Black America for color
reproductions.) Poems in verse are powerful and full of imagery.
Lewis, David Levering, ed. The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader. New York: Penguin Books, 1995.
Approximately 45 Renaissance writers are well represented in this thick but highly manageable paperback volume.
Lewis, David Levering, When Harlem Was In Vogue. New York: Penguin Books, l997.
An in-depth assessment of black culture in white America, with photos, during the time, and in the place, called the Harlem Renaissance.
Minnesota Humanities Commission. Braided Lives: An Anthology of Multicultural American Writing. St. Paul: Minnesota Humanities Commission, 1991.
An anthology of Native American, Hispanic American, African American, and Asian-American literature.
Powell, Richard J., and Jock Reynolds. To Conserve A Legacy: American Art from Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Andover and New York: The Addison Gallery of American Art, and The Studio Museum of Harlem, 1999.
The fascinating account of a collaboration with historically black colleges and universities to gather and restore a remarkable wealth of their art that has become a traveling exhibition. The compelling book contains well over a hundred
paintings, illustrations, images, sculptures, and photographs.
Powell, Richard J.. Rhapsodies in Black: Art of the Harlem Renaissance. Berkley: University of California Press, 1997.
Documents the influence of Africa and Europe and big city life on the artists and art of the Harlem Renaissance. Replete with well over 100 beautifully reproduced images, paintings, illustrations, sculptures, and photographs, this book is equally weighted with readings and discussions of the art, artists and the times in which they lived.
Rampersad, Arnold, David Roessel, eds. The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999.
The complete collection of the 860 poems written by Langston Hughes.
Reynolds, Gary A., Beryl J. Wright. Against the Odds: African-American Artists and the Harmon Foundation. Newark: The Newark Museum, l989.
A catalogue of over100 paintings, images, sculptures, and photographs with text, based on the Newark Museum’s extensive exhibition of African-American artists supported by the Harmon Foundation. (Note that this catalogue and the video by the same name go hand in hand.)
Stokes, W. Royal. Swing Era New York: The Jazz Photographs of Charles Peterson. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, l994.
Photographs of Charles Peterson and text by Royal Stokes capture the swing era in New York.
The Studio Museum of Harlem. Harlem Renaissance Art of Black America. New York: Harry N. Abrams Publishers, 1987.
140 images, paintings, illustrations and sculptures with text offer a fine introduction to the Harlem Renaissance with special emphasis on paintings by Aaron Douglas, five of which were interpretations of James Weldon Johnson’s sermons in God’s Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse. (see bibliography)
Turner, Elizabeth Hutton, ed. Jacob Lawrence: The Migration Series. Washington DC: The Rappahannock Press, 1993.
All 60 of Lawrence’s Migration paintings, reproduced individually on large pages, preceded by several highly informative essays and photographs chronicling the period of history out of which the series came, and the period in
Lawrence’s life when he produced them. Lawrence was himself a child of the Migration.
Watson, Steve. The Harlem Renaissance: Hub of African-American Culture 1920-1930 . New York: Pantheon Books, 1995.
Rich in photos, images, maps, illustrations, quotes, and social, political, and intellectual phenomena unique to the Harlem Renaissance. So much information presented in a very appealing format.
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Willis-Braithwaite, Deborah. VanDerZee: Photographer 1886 – 1983. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, 1993.
An extensive collection of the best known photographer of the Harlem Renaissance, documenting his lengthy career, right up to a year prior to his death.