Description: The celebrated era of the Harlem Renaissance is traditionally held by academics to have stretched from 1924-29 and to include a specific canon of writers. But this tradition is wrong. The era was much longer and deserves to include the rich, varied voices of everyday Harlemites. Lionel C. Bascom collects more than fifty pieces written for the WPA Writer's Project which record these voices: fish vendors and war veterans, Pullman porters and prostitutes, fly-by-night preachers and the black "trail-breaker" who was the first American to plant the US flag at the North Pole. In addition, several of these pieces are by then-unknown literary giants of the Renaissance: Ralph Ellison (whose portraits eventually found their way into Invisible Man) and Dorothy West, as well as by undiscovered laureates such as Vivian Morris. This is a revolutionary work on a important time featuring fascinating material that has languished unseen in the Library of Congress since 1939.

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