The early 20th century was a period of profound change for African Americans, marked by a massive demographic shift and an unprecedented cultural awakening. Between 1910 and 1970, more than six million Black Americans left the rural South and moved to urban centers in the North, Midwest, and West in what became known as the Great Migration. This movement wasn’t just about seeking economic opportunity; it was also about escaping the horrific racial violence and oppression of the Jim Crow South.

One of the most significant outcomes of the Great Migration was the concentration of Black populations in cities like Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, and—most famously—New York. In Harlem, a cultural revolution took shape that would come to be known as the Harlem Renaissance. This was more than just a population shift—it was a catalyst for social and political change which led to an artistic explosion that spanned music, literature, theater, and visual arts and resulted in a bold declaration of identity, pride, and political voice.

The Cultural Power of the Harlem Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance (roughly 1918–mid-1930s) produced a flowering of African American literature, music, philosophy, and visual art. It brought together artists, poets, scholars, and musicians who sought to define and celebrate Black identity on their own terms. While it was centered in Harlem, the movement’s influence spread nationally.

Artists working during this period were often in conversation with other cultural creators. Visual artists found inspiration in the jazz and blues scenes, in the writings of figures like Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, and in the everyday lives of Black Americans living in the cities reshaped by migration.

Jacob Lawrence and the Story of a People

Perhaps no artist captured the scope and spirit of this era more powerfully than Jacob Lawrence. His famous series The Great Migration (1941) is a 60-panel narrative, now split between the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Phillips Collection in Washington, that chronicles the mass movement of Black families from the South to the North. The imagery- bold, modern, and graphic, weaves together history and symbolism with narrative captions that read like poetry.

Lawrence’s series was groundbreaking not just for its content but for its reception—it was one of the first major presentations of a Black artist’s work in prominent American museums. Fortune magazine even published parts of the series in a 1941 article about the economic and social impacts of the Great Migration, marking a rare moment of mainstream recognition for a Black artist at that time.

Other Key Figures of the Movement

William H. Johnson was another powerful voice in this period. Trained in Europe and deeply influenced by artists like Vincent Van Gogh and Edvard Munch, Johnson returned to the U.S. and developed a distinct expressionist style. His paintings, often bold and almost childlike in color and form, captured the rhythms of Harlem life—from bustling streets to scenes of family and faith.

Harlem Renaissance artists also used their work to look back on their history. Horace Pippin, a self-taught artist and WWI veteran, brought a quiet gravity to the period’s visual culture. His paintings drew from memory and experience, depicting historical events, religious imagery, and critiques of American society. In Old Black Joe (1943), Pippin, whose grandparents had been enslaved, challenged nostalgic portrayals of slavery by presenting an elderly Black man tethered to a white child, his body tied, both literally and metaphorically, to a cruel past.

Augusta Savage: Sculptor and Mentor

One of the most inspiring figures of the Harlem Renaissance was Augusta Savage, a sculptor and educator whose influence went far beyond her own work. Savage broke barriers in the art world, becoming the first Black woman admitted to the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors in 1934. She also founded the Savage Studio of Arts and Crafts in Harlem, mentoring the next generation of artists—including the aforementioned Jacob Lawrence.

Her most famous work, The Harp (1939), was created for the New York World’s Fair and paid tribute to the musical contributions of African Americans. Inspired by James Weldon Johnson’s poem Lift Every Voice and Sing, the sculpture featured stylized Black singers forming the strings of a harp and symbolized traditional spirituals and hymns. Though the sculpture was widely praised, it was tragically destroyed after the fair due to lack of funding for preservation—an all-too-common fate for the era’s Black art.

A Community of Creativity

The Harlem Renaissance was unique in that it fostered collaboration across disciplines. Writers, visual artists, musicians, and thinkers were in constant dialogue, building a collective narrative of Black life that was complex, joyful, angry, and hopeful. This fusion of creative energy laid the groundwork for future movements and set the stage for the Civil Rights era’s explosion of political and artistic expression.

Coming next in Part IV: From Protest to Power — The Civil Rights Movement and the Rise of the Black Arts Movement

*This content was created for the ISA 2025 Assets Conference.