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The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is founded and W.E.B. Du Bois becomes editor of the Crisis.
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Marcus Garvey arrives in Harlem and founds the United Negro Improvement Association, an organization that urges blacks to unite and form their own nation.
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The first major book of the Harlem Renaissance appears when Claude McKay's novel Harlem Shadows is published by Harcourt, Brace.
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The National Urban League establishes Opportunity magazine, which will not only publish the work of Harlem Renaissance writers and artists but will help to support them through an annual contest.
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Marcus Garvey is convicted of mail fraud and imprisoned in the Atlanta Penitentiary.
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Wallace Thurman moves from Los Angeles to New York and soon becomes a leader of the younger generation of Harlem Renaissance writers and artists.
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A number of important Harlem Renaissance works are published, including Rudolph Fisher's Walls of Jericho, Nella Larsen's Quicksand, Jessie Redmon Fauset's Plum Bun, W.E.B. Du Bois's Dark Princess, and Claude McKay's Home to Harlem (which becomes the first bestseller by a black author).
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Palmer Hayden's work is featured in a one-man exhibition at a Paris art gallery, and Archibald Motley exhibits his paintings at the New Galleries in New York.
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Marc Connelly's play The Green Pastures, notable for its African American characters and content, opens to great acclaim on Broadway.
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Aaron Douglas is commissioned to create a series of murals, which will be entitled Aspects of Negro Life, for the 135th Street (Harlem) branch of the New York Public Library