It's the Brian Laira show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Now we continue our WNYC

Centennial series, 100 years of 100 things. Today, 100 years of the Harlem Renaissance. It was a

blossoming of black culture across the arts centered in Harlem featuring writers like Langston

Hughes, Gene Tumor, and Zora Neal Hurston, the music of Duke Ellington and Fats Waller, also the

visual arts. Maybe you saw the big show of this work at the Met last year.

It is said to have ended by World War II, but its impact was felt beyond New York City and has

certainly lasted these hundred years. With us to talk about what gave rise to the Harlem Renaissance

and its lasting significance. We're joined now by Jacobia Dishi Carter, a philosophy professor at Howard

University, and director of the Elaine Leroy Locke Society, Elaine Locke, being the so-called

dean of the Harlem Renaissance. Professor Carter is the author of African-American

contributions to the America's cultures, a critical edition of lectures by Elaine Locke, and most recently co-editor of philosophizing the Americas.

Professor Carter, we're honored that you could join us for this Hundred Years of a Hundred Thing segment.

Welcome to WNYC.

Good morning, Brian. Thanks for having me.

I'm a longtime listener, yet to be a caller and happy to be a first time interviewing.

I'm so honored that you're a listener. Why the term Harlem Renaissance, first of all? If Renaissance is a rebirth of something, what was it, or why that name for this period or these movements in the arts?

Well, there's two answers to that question, Brian.

The first has to do with why Harlem, then the second has to do with why the Renaissance.

Why Harlem?

Because that was at the time the largest concentration of African-descended peoples in the

United States.

And it was as a result of the demographic shift that was taking place in the country at the time,

...