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Great Migration
Between 1910 and 1920, in a movement known as the Great Migration, hundreds of thousands of African Americans had uprooted themselves from their homes in the South and moved north to the big cities in search of jobs. -
Louis Armstong joined the Creole Jazz Band
Louis Armstrong joined Joe "King" Oliver and his Creole Jazz Band. Oliver's band was the best and most influential hot jazz band in Chicago in the early 1920s, at a time when Chicago was the center of jazz. -
Louis Armstrong joins Fletcher Henderson's band
Two years after joining the Creole Jazz Band, Armstrong moved to New York to join the band of Fletcher Henderson- then the most important big jazz band in New York City. Armstrong went on to become perhaps theh most important and influential musician in the history of jazz. -
"The New Negro" Published
Harvard-educated former Rhodes scholar ,Alain Locke, published the "The New Negro", a landmark collection of literary works by many promising young African-American writers. -
Langston Hughes, "The Weary Blues"
Missouri-born Langston Hughes was the movement's best-known poet. Many of his poems described the difficult lives of working-class African Americans. Some of his poems moved to the tempo of jazz and the blues. -
Duke Ellington began to play at the Cotton Club
Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington, a jazz pianist and composer led his ten-piece orchestra at the Cotton Club. He later won renown as one of America's greatest composers. -
Paul Robeson performed in Shakespeare's "Othello"
Paul Robeson, the son of a one-time slave, becme a major dramatic actor. His performance in Shakespeare's "Othello", first in London and later in New York City, was widely acclaimed. -
Claude Mckay publishes "Cane"
Claude Mckay was a novelist, poet, and a Jamaican immigrant. His experimental book "Cane"- a mix of poems and sketches about blacks in the North and the South- was among the first full-length literary publications of the Harlem Renaissance.
