uth had only just begun.
As thousands upon thousands more poured into Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee,
Newark, Boston, Harlem, and other Northern centers, housing became
increasingly scarce. Harlem, like the other Negro communities of the
North, became more and more crowded. At the same time, jobs became
harder to obtain. Poor "country cousins" streamed into "the promised
land" to share in the "milk and honey," but, unfortunately, there was not
enough to go around. As the Negro population of Harlem grew, white
resistance and discrimination also increased. Although Johnson had been
impressed with the wealth contained in Harlem, it was infinitesimal
compared to the great sums of money held by whites downtown.

Langston Hughes, who had also been impressed by the vitality of Harlem,
came to realize that Negro Harlem was, in fact, dependent on downtown
financing. As Harlem grew, downtown financiers became increasingly aware
that money could be made there. In the 1930s, in contrast to Johnson's
optimistic vision, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. and others pointed out that
almost all the stores on 125th Street, the major shopping district, were
owned by whites and that they employed whites almost exclusively. Harlem
soon became a center for both crime and exploitation.

However, in the 1920s Harlem throbbed with vitality and hope. Besides
attracting Afro-Americans from every walk of life, it became the focal
point for young intellectuals whose creativity resulted in the Negro
Renaissance.

The Negro Renaissance

In 1922, James Welden Johnson edited a volume of American Negro poetry,
and in the same year Claude McKay, who had come to Harlem from Jamaica,
published his first significant volume of poetry, "Harlem Shadows".
These twin events, however, were only the beginning of a vast outpouring
of cultural activity, and Harlem became, as Johnson called it, the
"culture capital" for this movement. Artists poured into Harlem from
across the country. Night clubs rocked with music and dance. Publishers
were besieged by poets and novelists, and, surprising to the young
writers, publishers were eager to see Negro authors. Besides the new
creative urge, thousands of Negroes and whites were hungry to consume the
fruits of this new renaissance. This artistic renaissance did not come
out of a vacuum. Negroes had been publishing poetry for over a century
and a half, since the time of Phillis Wheatley and Jupiter Hammon. Paul
Laurence Dunba