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It's the Brian Larry 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, Jean 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 Jacobi Adishi 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

100 Years of 100 Things 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?

The name, 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, the cultural center

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