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The Dinner Party That Started the Harlem Renaissance

Published by Veronica Chambers and Michelle May-Curry at March 21, 2024

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The painting "Barbecue" by Archibald J. Motley. A group of Black men and women celebrate, some sitting at tables with white tablecloths, others standing around. Lights are strung above them. A house is at the right of the frame; two cooks stand behind a counter at the left of the frame.

A black-and-white portrait of Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, a Black man seated on an elaborated carved chair. His dark hair is parted in the middle and and he has a thick mustache. He is wearing a suit and bowtie. One hand rests on an arm of the chair and the other on his folded legs.

Arturo Schomberg

Eugene O’Neill

Gwendolyn Bennett

James Weldon Johnson

Eva D. Bowles

W.E.B. Du Bois

A black-and-white portrait of an older woman with gray hair, wearing round glasses, a pearl necklace and a dark dress.

Mary White Ovington

Regina Anderson

Carl Van Doren

Charles S. Johnson

Jessie Fauset

Countee Cullen

A black-and-white photo of eight Black men and women working in an office, setting type, looking at newspaper pages. The second figure from right is W.E.B. Du Bois.

The orange, unadorned cover of the book “Quicksand.” It simply reads “Quicksand, by Nella Larsen.”

The blue-green cover of the book “The New Negro.”

The illustrated cover of the book “The Weary Blues,” featuring the black silhouette of a man playing piano against a red and yellow background. A light fixture appears just below the title. At the bottom, text reads “by Langston Hughes.”

The illustrated cover of the book “Black No More.” Two lines, one of black figures, the other of white figures, are filing into a large building colored in light green and black. Figures appear in some of the building’s windows. Text at the top reads “Black No More,” and “By George S. Schuyler” at the bottom.

The illustrated cover of an issue of the magazine “Survey Graphic.” The face of a Black man is in the middle, sandwiched between two blocks of texts: “Survey Graphic” at the top and “Harlem Mecca of the New Negro” at the bottom.Abstract blue and white designs line each side of the cover.

The illustrated cover of the book “Home to Harlem.” A black silhouetted figure of a man, with his arms raised in a shrugging motion, is in the middle, against a light red background. He is flanked by buildings, with musical notes and other design elements behind him. Above him, text reads “Home to Harlem by Claude McKay.”

The yellow and gray cover of the book “There Is Confusion.” At the top, text reads “There Is Confusion,” at the bottom “Jessie Redman Fauset” and an illegible block of text is in the middle.

The cover of the book “Color.” Against a yellow square, text reads “Color” and “Countee Cullen.” Surrounding that is a repeating geometric pattern of red, blue and yellow.

The illustrated cover of the magazine “Fire!!” Against a background of purple, the title and partially abstract figures, one of which appears to be a sitting lion, are in red.

The illustrated cover of the book “Their Eyes Were Watching God.” Against a dull gold background, a rectangle contains an illustration of a landscape, with a figure in the sky, surrounded by clouds. Above the illustration, text reads “Their Eyes Were Watching God” and below it, “Zora N. Hurston.”

The cover of the book “Cane.” Against a dull gray background, a dull yellow circle floats above stylized diagonal text that reads “CANE” and below that, “Jean Toomer.”

The illustrated cover of the book “The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man.” Against a light orange background, a black silhouette of a seated man, gazing upward. Black and white buildings are at tilted angles at the right, with black smokestacks behind them.

A century ago, a dinner party in New York set in motion one of the most influential cultural movements of the 20th century.

It was an interracial soirée that included intellectual and artistic luminaries.

It was barely covered at the time. But we explored archival material and have reconstructed much of it.

In the years after the dinner party, Black writers published more than 40 volumes of fiction, non-fiction and poetry.

But most importantly, it organized a creative movement that reverberates to this day.

If the Harlem Renaissance had a birthplace, this party was it.

The Dinner Party That Started the Harlem Renaissance

March 21, 2024, 5:03 a.m. ET

On March 21, 1924, Jessie Fauset sat inside the Civic Club in downtown Manhattan, wondering how the party for her debut novel had been commandeered.

The celebration around her was originally intended to honor that book, “There Is Confusion.” But Charles S. Johnson and Alain Locke thought the dinner could serve a larger purpose. What if the two Black academic titans invited the best and brightest of the Harlem creative and political scene? What if, over a spread of fine food and drink, they brought together African American talent and white purveyors of culture? If they could marry the talent all around them with the opportunity that was so elusive, what would it mean to Black culture, both present and future?

What the resulting dinner led to, nurtured over the years in the pristine sitting rooms of brownstones and the buzzing corner booths of jazz clubs, was the Harlem Renaissance: a flowering of intellectual and artistic activity that would give the neighborhood and its residents global renown.

While there are plenty of galas and gatherings today, the goal of the 1924 dinner was far broader: It was intended to bring together that talent and those opportunities.

“Benefits are celebrations. They’re not operational meetings,” said Lisa Lucas, the senior vice president and publisher at Pantheon and Schocken Books who was the first woman and African American to head the National Book Foundation. “It’s unusual to really have an honest space for people to meet and hammer out what’s working and what’s not.”

Alain Locke, one of the organizers of the dinner at the Civic Club. A column in a Black political and literary magazine called him “the high priest of intellectual snobocracy.”Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division, The New York Public Library

Charles S. Johnson was a sociologist and the founding editor of Opportunity magazine. He and Alain Locke chose the Civic Club as the venue for the dinner in part because it was the only private club in the city that would allow Black and white people, including women, to dine together.U.S. Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress. Photo by Gordon Parks

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Veronica Chambers and Michelle May-Curry

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