Black innovators were the force behind a burst of cultural creativity, from the poetry of Langston Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance to the crossover dance craze of the Charleston to jazz, the soundtrack of the age—“the tom-tom of joy and laughter, and pain swallowed in a smile,” as Hughes called it. But daily life for millions was a reminder that the American promise was not for them.
This is still true. So many people profit off of Black culture but look sideways at it when it’s done BY Black people.
