The Opportunity Reader: Stories, Poetry, and Essays from the Urban League's Opportunity Magazine [Paperback]

Modern Library Harlem Renaissance

In 1923, the Urban League's Opportunity magazine made its first appearance. Spearheaded by the noted sociologist Charles S. Johnson, it became, along with the N.A.A.C.P.'s Crisis magazine, one of the vehicles that drove the art and literature of the Harlem Renaissance. As a way of attracting writers such as Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, Johnson conducted literary contests that were largely funded by Casper Holstein, the infamous Harlem numbers gangster, who contributed
several essays in addition to money.
        Dorothy West, Nella Larsen, and Arthur Schomburg were among Opportunity's contributors. Many of the pieces included in The Opportunity Reader have not been seen since their publication in the magazine, whose motto was "Not alms, but opportunity."

The fertile artistic period now known as the Harlem Renaissance (1920-1930) gave birth to many of the world-renowned masters of black literature and is the model for today's renaissance of black writers.Sondra Kathryn Wilson, Ph.D., is a researcher at Harvard University's W. E. B. Du Bois Institute. She is the literary executor of the James Weldon Johnson estate, and the editor of several volumes of his work. She is also the editor of Modern
Library's The Crisis Reader. She lives in New York City.INTRODUCTION

The story of African-Americans, the oldest minority group in this nation, began in 1619. For more than three centuries, black cultural sources and experiential themes have been the chief basis of African-American literature and art. Scholars have noted that this literary tradition was perpetuated because black writers studied the vernaculars, techniques, and themes by earlier writers with whom they felt a kindred spirit. This tradition, handed down from slavery, has always been dependent on itsl3¹