Simon’s Rock alum Veronica Chambers explores Harlem Renaissance in NYT article

GREAT BARRINGTON, MA — The New York Times Editor of Narrative Projects and Simon’s Rock alum Veronica Chambers marks the 100th year anniversary of the iconic Harlem Renaissance with a retrospective of the luminaries and creatives from the era’s vibrant history in her new article “Revisiting the Harlem Renaissance,” featured in in the most recent issue of the Times’ digital morning newsletter The Morning

Deep-diving through archived photographs, snatches of rare film, and even peering into the lives of the artists and community members whose modern lives have been touched by the Renaissance’s legacy, Chambers touches on not only the well-known aspects of the Renaissance, but the little-known, such as the significance of a certain dinner party in Harlem society, and the history of sexual exploration and liberation that fortified the queer population in spite of the imposed racial barriers.

The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural and artistic movement born in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City in the flourishing 1920s, and was hailed as the intellectual and cultural revival specifically of African Americans. This period saw a boom in black literature, music, visual arts, and performance, and produced such seminal figures as Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Duke Ellington, and Ma Rainey as well as their ‘up-and-coming’ counterparts such as Gwendolyn Bennett and Countee Cullen, names which Chambers also references in her retrospective.