The Black Women's Contribution to the Harlem Renaissance 1919-1940

Abstract

Black women, writers, poets or artists, play a crucial role and have had a significant contribution to African American Literature. This extended paper examines the black women's contribution to the Harlem renaissance. Additionally, It seeks to find out and explore why the majority of black female and feminist works were overlooked, marginalized and excluded from the academic sphere and numbers among were ignored and unrecognized and neglected. The era of Harlem Renaissance is significantly highlighted by works of male writers such as Hughes, Alain Locke, Claude Mackey and others who defined as the pioneers of this artistic movement, but magnificent products by Zora Neale Hurston along with other works of writers and poets such as Alice Dunbar Nelson, Georgia Douglas Johnson, and Jessie Fauset are few to name whose participation has been only recognized after several years by anthologists and critics, mainly Black feminist critics’ analysis of African American women literary productions show how these women were genderless and how they were alienated from the aspects of mainstream.