1919
o369th Regiment marched up Fifth Avenue to Harlem, February 17. oFirst Pan African Congress organized by W.E.B. Du Bois, Paris, February. oRace riots in Washington, D.C., Chicago, Charleston, Knoxville, Omaha, and elsewhere, June to September. oRace Relations Commission founded, September. oMarcus Garvey founded the Black Star Shipping Line. oBenjamin Brawley published The Negro in Literature and Art in the United States.
1920
oUniversal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) Convention held at Madison Square Garden, August. oCharles Gilpin starred in Eugene O'Neill, The Emperor Jones, November. oJames Weldon Johnson, first black officer (secretary) of NAACP appointed. oClaude McKay published Spring in New Hampshire. oDu Bois's Darkwater is published. oO'Neill's The Emperor Jones, starring Charles Gilpin, opens at the Provincetown Playhouse.
1921
oShuffle Along by Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake, the first musical revue written and performed by African Americans (cast members include Josephine Baker and Florence Mills), opened, May 22, at Broadway's David Belasco Theater. oMarcus Garvey founded African Orthodox Church, September. oSecond Pan African Congress. oColored Players Guild of New York founded. oBenjamin Brawley published Social History of the American Negro.
1922
oFirst Anti-Lynching legislation approved by House of Representatives. oPublications of The Book of American Negro Poetry edited by James Weldon Johnson; Claude McKay, Harlem Shadows.
1923
oOpportunity: A Journal of Negro Life is founded by the National Urban League, with Charles S. Johnson as its editor. oNational Ethiopian Art Players staged The Chip Woman's Fortune by Willis Richardson, first serious play by a black writer on Broadway, May. oClaude McKay spoke at the Fourth Congress of the Third International in Moscow, June. oThe Cotton Club opened, Fall. oMarcus Garvey arrested for mail fraud and sentenced to five years in prison. oThird Pan African Congress. oPublications of Jean Toomer, Cane; Marcus Garvey, Philosophy and Opinion of Marcus Garvey. 2 vols.
1924
oCivic Club Dinner, sponsored by Opportunity, bringing black writers and white publishers together, March 21. This event is considered the formal launching of of the New Negro movement. oPaul Robeson starred in O'Neill's All God's Chillun Got Wings, May 15. oCountee Cullen won first prize in the Witter Bynner Poetry Competition. oPublications of Du Bois, The Gift of Black Folk; Jessie Fauset, There is Confusion; Marcus Garvey, Aims and Objects for a Solution of the Negro Problem Outlined; Walter White, The Fire in the Flint.
1925
oSurvey Graphic issue, "Harlem: Mecca of the New Negro," edited by Alain Locke and Charles Johnson, devoted entirely to black arts and letters, March. oAmerican Negro Labor Congress held in Chicago, October. oOpportunity holds its first literary awards dinner; winners include Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and Zora Neale Hurston. oThe first Crisis awards ceremony is held at the Renaissance Casino; Countee Cullen wins first prize. oPublications of Cullen, Color; Du Bose Heyward, Porgy; James Weldon Johnson and J. Rosamond Johnson, eds. The Book of American Negro Spirituals; Alain Locke, The New Negro; Sherwood Anderson, Dark Laughter (a novel showing Black life).
1926
oCountee Cullen becomes Assistant Editor of Opportunity; begins to write a regular column "The Dark Tower." oSavoy Ballroom opened in Harlem, March. oPublications of Wallace Thurman, Fire!!; Langston Hughes, The Weary Blues; Carl Van Vechten, Nigger Heaven; Eric Walrond, Tropic Death; W. C. Handy, Blues: An Anthology; and Walter White, Flight.
1927
oIn Abraham's Bosom by Paul Green, with an all-black cast, won the Pulitzer Prize, May. oEthel Waters first appeared on Broadway, July. oMarcus Garvey deported. oLouis Armstrong in Chicago and Duke Ellington in New York began their careers. oHarlem Globetrotters established. oCharlotte Mason decides to become a patron of the New Negro. oA'Lelia Walker opens a tearoom salon called "The Dark Tower." oPublications of Miguel Covarrubias, Negro Drawings; Cullen, Ballad of the Brown Girl, Copper Sun, and Caroling Dusk; Arthur Fauset, For Freedom: A Biographical Story of the American Negro; Hughes, Fine Clothes to the Jew; James Weldon Johnson, God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse and The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (reprint of the 1912 edition); Alain Locke and Montgomery T. Gregory, eds. Plays of Negro Life.
1928
oCountee Cullen marries Nina Yolande, daughter of W.E.B. Du Bois, April 9; described as the social event of the decade. oPublications of Wallace Thurman, Harlem: A Forum of Negro Life; Du Bois, The Dark Princess; Rudolph Fisher, The Walls of Jericho; Nella Larsen, Quicksand; Jessie Fauset, Plum Bun; Claude McKay, Home to Harlem.
1929
oNegro Experimental Theatre founded, February; Negro art Theatre founded, June; National Colored Players founded, September. oWallace Thurman's play Harlem, written with William Jourdan Rapp, opens at the Apollo Theater on Broadway and becomes hugely successful. oBlack Thursday, October 29, Stock Exchange crash. oPublications of Cullen, The Black Christ and Other Poems;Claude McKay, Banjo; Nella Larsen, Passing; Wallace Thurman, The Blacker the Berry; and Walter White, Rope and Faggot: The Biography of Judge Lynch.
1930
oThe Green Pastures (musical), with an all-black cast, opened on Broadway, February 26. oUniversal Holy Temple of Tranquillity founded; Black Muslims opened Islam Temple in Detroit. oPublications of Randolph Edmonds, Shades and Shadows; Charles S. Johnson, The Negro in American Civilization: A Study of Negro Life and Race Relations; James Weldon Johnson. Black Manhattan; Langston Hughes, Not Without Laughter.
1931
oScottsboro trial, April through July. oA'Lelia Walker dies, August 16. oPublications of Arna Bontemps, God Sends Sunday; Jessie Fauset, The Chinaberry Tree; Langston Hughes, Dear Lovely Death, The Negro Mother, Not Without Laughter, Scottsboro Limited; Vernon Loggins, The Negro Author: His Development in America to 1900; George S. Schuyler, Black No More; and Toomer, Essentials.
1932
oTwenty young black intellectuals travel to Russia to make a movie, Black and White, June. oMass defection of blacks from the Republican party began. oPublications of Sterling Brown, Southern Road; Cullen, One Way to Heaven; Rudolph Fisher, The Conjure Man Dies; Hughes, The Dream Keeper; Claude McKay, Ginger Town; Schuyler, Slaves Today; Thurman, Infants of the Spring.
1933
oNational Negro Business League ceased operations after 33 years. oPublications of Jessie Fauset, Comedy, American Style; James Weldon Johnson, Along This Way; McKay, Banana Bottom.
1934
oRudolph Fisher and Wallace Thurman die within four days of each other, December 22 and 26. oW.E.B. Du Bois resigns from The Crisis and NAACP. oApollo Theatre opened. oPublications of Arna Bontemps, You Can't Pet a Possum; Randolph Edmonds, Six Plays for the Negro Theatre; Hughes, The Ways of White Folks; Zora Neale Hurston, Jonah's Gourd Vine; James Weldon Johnson, Negro Americans: What Now?; George Lee, Beale Street: Where the Blues Began.
1935
oHarlem Race Riot, March 19. oPorgy and Bess, with an all-black cast, opens on Broadway, October 10. oMulatto by Langston Hughes, first full-length play by a black writer, opens on Broadway, October 25. o50 percent of Harlem's families unemployed. oPublications of Cullen, The Medea and Other Poems; Zora Neale Hurston, Mules and Men; Willis Richardson and May Sullivan, Negro History in Thirteen Plays.
1937 Publications of McKay, Long Way From Home; Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God.
1939 Publication of Hurston, Moses: Man of the Mountain.
1940 Publications of Hughes The Big Sea; McKay, Harlem: Negro Metropolis.
(The above chronology is from Kellner, Harlem Renaissance: A Historical Dictionary for the Era and Watson, The Harlem Renaissance.)
