JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. Clark Atlanta University is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Phylon (1960-). living in Northern cities, was evidenced in a variety of ways in the early twentieth century. It found general expression in orthodox religion, esoteric sects, labor-based brotherhoods, and a host of organizations ranging from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (N.A.A.C.P.) to Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association. More specific demonstrations of this spirit camein the form of a group of events, such as the Harlem Silent Parade of 1917 protesting the East St. Louis race riots. Other evidence can be found in individual artistic efforts, such as Claude McKay's sonnet, "Harlem Dancer," generally considered the premiere work of what our generation calls the "Harlem Renaissance," and what Contemporaries knew as the "Negro Renaissance" and "The New Negro Movement."This "Renaissance" has been described a number of times, but it rarely has been placed in general historical perspective. Typically, it has been ignored (like most black literature) in the standard literary histories,1 or else dismissed as "bizarre" and "exotic," by some scholars, and condemned by others for having failed to create a distinct cultural identity for blacks.2 Still others have argued that the literature of the Harlem Renaissance evolved from a culture whose aspirations and thematic expressions bear little resemblance to "established" literature.3While is is undeniably true that the literature of the Harlem Renaissance is integrally related to the black experience, it also is bound inseparably to a more general experience common to all Americans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This experience is not yet fully understood, but a number of works written during the past two decades point to related trends in American history at the turn of the century. The period from 1890 to 1930 was characterized See, e.g., Leon Howard, Literature and the American Tradition (