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African American literature

The Harlem Renaissance > Playwrights and editors

Although the most memorable literary achievement of the Harlem Renaissance was in narrative prose and poetry, the movement also inspired dramatists such as Willis Richardson, whose The Chip Woman's Fortune (produced 1923) was the first nonmusical play by an African American to be produced on Broadway. African American editors such as Charles S. Johnson, whose monthly Opportunity was launched in 1923 under the auspices of the National Urban League, and the respected Caribbean-born short-story writer Eric Walrond, who published young black writers in Negro World, the organ of Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association, provided significant visibility for New Negro writers. Anthologies, particularly of poetry, abounded during the Harlem Renaissance, enhancing the literary reputations of both the writers represented in them and their editors. The editors included James Weldon Johnson (The Book of American Negro Poetry [1922] and The Book of American Negro Spirituals [1925, 1926]), Charles S. Johnson (Ebony and Topaz [1927]), and Cullen (Caroling Dusk [1927]), to mention only a handful of the most noteworthy.

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