Book Reviewed by:.jpg "Aspects of Negro Life: From Slavery to Reconstruction by Aaron Douglas")
Tia Williams' novel A Love Song for Ricki Wilde contains flashbacks to the Harlem Renaissance, considered a golden age for Black culture and art in the United States. This movement, centered in Manhattan's Harlem neighborhood, took place between the 1910s and 1930s.
During the period known as the Great Migration, when large numbers of Black families from the American South began to move north, many landed in Harlem. The neighborhood became a cultural destination as nightclubs and underground speakeasies opened at a time when jazz music was beginning to flourish. Greats like Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington regularly performed in Harlem, often accompanied by large stage shows. Integrated bars like The Savoy featured dancing late into the night. It was in bars like these that iconic 1920s dance fads, such as the Charleston and tap dancing, began to gain popularity.
The first Broadway musical to be written and produced by Black people, Shuffle Along, debuted in 1921 ...
