Discover the District’s Jazz Age Poets
While the nucleus of the Harlem Renaissance was in New York, the movement took hold across the United States and Europe. In D.C., risk-taking, inventive poets created new forms of expression that wrestled with themes of racial oppression, African-American sexuality, and modern life during the roaring ’20s.
We will read and discuss poems of D.C.’s Jazz Age, looking at works by Washingtonians such as Angelina Weld Grimke and Sterling Brown, as well as Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston (who were both working and studying in D.C. just as the Harlem Renaissance was emerging). We will also consider the cultural and economic climate that allowed the literary scene to blossom in the nation’s capital.
Documentation
Location
Hamiltonian Gallery
1353 U Street NW
Washington,
DC
20009
Neighborhood: U Street
Past event