Ethel Ray Nance was an African American activist and writer. During the 1920s, she broke various racial and gender barriers in Minnesota, participated in the Harlem Renaissance movement, worked as a secretary for the National Urban League, and contributed to Opportunity magazine.
As the literary editor of The Crisis (1919–1926) she introduced many Harlem Renaissance writers, including Langston Hughes and Jean Toomer, to the public, in addition to being a writer herself.
Harlem Renaissance poet, critic, journalist, and activist
Key figure in the Harlem Renaissance, an influential sculptor and educator
African American educator, writer, and women’s rights activist, renowned for her contributions to education and the fight for racial and gender equality.
Harlem Renaissance artist and educator
With Edmonia Lewis, Meta Vaux Warrick, and Augusta Savage, Waring is one of the foremost Black American female artists of the first half of the twentieth century.
Mary P. Burrill was a celebrated playwright whose works inspired many prominent writers of the New Negro Movement/Harlem Renaissance. She used her plays to confront many topics, including, but not limited to, lynching, the Black experience, and bodily autonomy for women.
Acknowledged as one of the greatest blues singers of the twentieth century, Bessie Smith reigned as the “Empress of the Blues” throughout most of the 1920s.
Georgia Douglas Johnson was one of the most well-known Black female writers and playwrights of her time. Known for writing most about love and womanhood, Douglas Johnson’s published works touched many and were featured in the most widely-read Black publications of the twentieth century.