Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
The Harlem Renaissance has long been one of my favorite topics to discuss. It wasn’t quite a defined era; you can’t bookend it with agreed-upon, celebrated dates. What it was, though, is now the stuff of legend — an intellectual and creative revival featuring a collection of some of the most creative, interesting and revolutionary thinkers, writers, activists and creatives in Black history, all centered in and around the most romantic location in all of Black history: Harlem. Undoubtedly, the Harlem Renaissance is partially why the idea of Harlem looms so large in the Black consciousness and what happened there in the 1920s and 1930s is still important to the Black community today.
From Langston Hughes to Zora Neale Hurston. Countee Cullen to James Van Der Zee. Dorothy West to Jean Toomer. Wallace Thurman to Nessa Larsen. Alain Locke to Claude McKay. The list goes on and on, and those writers, poets, photographers and thinkers created bodies of work that responded to the times. Seeking liberation through art and activism — and not always agreeing on what that looked like — the figures of the Renaissance were often seeking ways to expand their footprint while being seen as the full beings they were. So when an opportunity came along in 1932 to make a movie in Moscow (in the now decade-old Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or U.S.S.R.), a group of 22 creatives and journalists tied to the Harlem Renaissance decided to make the trip to create a potentially star-making film called “Black and White” in what they hoped would be a land where color didn’t matter and their experiences wouldn’t be limited because of race as they were in the United States.
“Harlem and Moscow,” is an original audio play from theGrio Black Podcast Network based on the true story of the trip from Halrem to Moscow, told…
Read the full article here
