The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), founded in 1909, holds a conference on lynching. Following the conference, the NAACP publishes Thirty Years of Lynching in the United States 1889-1918

Race riots take place in Charleston, South Carolina; Longview, Texas; Washington, D.C.; Omaha, Nebraska; and Chicago, Illinois

W.E.B. Du Bois organises the Pan-African Congress in Paris

Claude McKay publishes If We Must Die in The Liberator joumal

Oscar Micheaux's first film, The Homesteader, is released in Chicago

1920
Marcus Garvey's Organisation, the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), holds its First International Convention of the Negro Peoples of the World at Madison Square Gardens, New York

Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones is performed for the first time by the Province town Players in New York, starring Charles Gilpin

1921
Representative L.C. Dyer of Missouri sponsors an anti-lynching bill inCongress to make lynchings a federal crime

Shuffle Along, the first musical revue written and performed by African-Americans opens in New York. Music by Eubie Blake and lyrics by Noble Sissle. The revue launches the careers of Josephine Baker and Florence Mills

Langston Hughes publishes his first poem The Negro Speaks of Rivers in The Crisis magazine

Harry Pace forms Black Swan Phonograph Corp. in Harlem. The company produces the best-selling 'race records' of the 1920s by Mamie and Bessie Smith

Exhibition of work by African-American artists (including Henry Tanner and Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller) is held at the 135th Street branch of the New York Public Library

1922
UNIA marches with the NAACP and YMCA in support of Congressman Dyer's federal anti-lynching bill

Claude McKay's Harlem Shadows is published by Harcourt, Brace

James Weldon Johnson's The Book of American Negro Poetry is published by Harcourt, Brace

King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band takes up residence at the Lincoln Gardens dance hall in Chicago and begins to play New Orleans jazz in the North. Louis Armstrong joins the band in Chicago

Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller's sculpture Ethiopia Awakening is exhibited in the Making of America exhibition in New York

The Harmon Foundation is established to promote black participation in the fine arts

The Tanner Art League holds a large exhibition of African-American artists at Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C.

The Boston Public Library holds a special exhibition of visual arts and literature by African-Americans

1923
The National Urban League, founded in 1910, publishes the first issue of Opportunhy, A Journal of Negro Life magazine, a literary forum for artists and authors of the Harlem Renaissance, edited by Charles S. Johnson

Jean Toomer's Cane is published by Boni and Liveright

Bessie Smith makes her first recordings of Downhearted Blues and Gulf Coast Blues

King Olivers Creole Jazz Band makes 37 recordings with Louis Armstrong

Duke Ellington arrives in New York City

Eugene O'Neill's All God's Chillun Got Wings is performed by the Ethiopian Art Players at Fazi Theatre, Washington D.C.

1924
The Emperor Jones opens in London with Paul Robeson in the title role

Opportunity magazine hosts a dinner at the Civic Club in New York with Alain Locke acting as master of ceremonies. This event is often considered the formal launching of the 'New Negro' movement

Louis Armstrong comes to New York to join the Fletcher Henderson Orchestraat the Roseland Ballroom

Aaron Douglas arrives in Harlem and studies with Winold Reiss

Paul Robeson stars in Eugene O'Neill's A# God's Chililin Got Wings

James VanDerZee embarks on a series of photographic assignments featuring Marcus Garvey and the activities of UNIA

Miguel Covarrubias' illustrations of black entertainers are featured in Vanity Fair magazine

Oscar Micheaux completes the films Birthright and Body and Soul, the latter starring Paul Robeson

1925
Marcus Garvey is convicted of mail fraud and jailed in the Atlanta Penitentiary

Marian Anderson wins the New York Philharmonic singing competition

Survey Graphic publishes a special issue called Harlem: Mecca of the New Negro, edited by Alain Locke and, illustrated by Winold Reiss

The New Negro, Alain Locke's expanded book version of the Survey Graphic Harlem issue, is published by Albert and Charles Boni. It is illustrated by Winold Reiss, Aaron Douglas and Miguel Covarrubias

Small's Paradise nightclub opens in Harlem

1926
The Weary Blues, Langston Hughes 'first book of verse is published by Alfred A. Knopf with illustrations by Miguel Covarrubias

Langston Hughes, Wallace Thurman, Zora Neale Hurston, Aaron Douglas and Richard Bruce Nugent launch the short-lived literary and artistic magazine Fire!!. It is illustrated by Aaron Douglas and Richard Bruce Nugent

The Harmon Foundation holds the first of its annual art exhibitions of painting and sculpture by African-American artists. The first show is held at the 135th Street branch of The New York Public Library and is later shown in Chicago

Aaron Douglas is commissioned by Theatre Arts Monthly to illustrate scenes from Eugene O'Neill's play The Emperor Jones

The Carnegie Corporation buys Arthur Schomburg's collection of African-Americana; it becomes the basis for the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

The Savoy Ballroom opens in Harlem with Fletcher Henderson and his orchestra

1927
Porgy by Dorothy and Du Bose Heyward opens at the Theatre Guild on Broadway

Duke Ellington brings his band to the Cotton Club

Miguel Covarrubias's book Negro Drawings is published

Sculptor Jacob Epstein arrives in New York for a three-month stay. During his stay he meets Paul Robeson who sits for a portrait bust

1928
Claude McKay's first novel, Home to Harlem, is published by Harper Brothers. The jacket is illustrated by Aaron Douglas

Wallace Thurman founds Harlem, a literary magazine to succeed Fire!!. It includes illustrations by Aaron Douglas and Richard Bruce Nugent

Archibald J. Motley Jr exhibits at the New Galleries in New York

Aaron Douglas receives a fellowship to study at the Barnes Foundation, Pennsylvania

1929
Wallace Thurman's first novel, The Blacker the Berry, is published by Harper and Brothers, with jacket cover illustrated by Aaron Douglas. Thurman's play Harlem opens on Broadway

The Negro Experimental Theater is founded

Bessie Smith stars in the film St. Louis Blues, directed by Dudley Murphy

Black and Tan, a musical short featuring Duke Ellington and his orchestra, is released

Photographer Doris Ulmann travels to South Carolina to photograph black workers and are later exhibited at the Delphic Galleries in New York

The Harmon Foundation sponsors the exhibition, Paintings and Sculptures by American Negro Artists, held at the National Gallery in Washington D.C.

The stock market crash on 24 October brings the 'Jazz Age' to an end and marks the beginning of the Great Depression

1930

Aaron Douglas is commissioned by Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, to create a series of murals in the campus library

James V. Herring creates the Howard University Gallery of Art, the first gallery in the United States directed and controlled by African-Americans and one of the first to highlight African-Ameriran art

Painter Jacob Lawrence and his family settle in Harlem

1931
Augusta Savage opens the Savage School of Arts and Crafts in Harlem, the first of several of her Harlem-based arts schools

James Weldon Johnson's history of Harlem, Black Manhattan, is published

1932
Jazz musician Louis Armstrong is featured prominently in the musical short A Rhapsody in Black and Blue

1933
Aaron Douglas creates murals for the Harlem YMCA

Doris Ulmann publishes Roll, Jordan, Roll, a book about black folk-life in the southern United States, in collaboration with writer Julia Peterkin

Dudley Murphy releases the film The Emperor Jones starring Paul Robeson

The Public Works of Arts Projects and the Works Progress Administration's Federal Arts Projects begin, providing jobs and financial assistance for many American artists

1934
Aaron Douglas is commissioned to create four murals, entitled Aspects of Negro Life, for the 135th Street branch of the New York Public Library

British socialite Nancy Cunard asembles and edits the Negro Anthology

The Harmon Foundation establishes a travelling exhibition programme incollaboration with the College Art Association

Josephine Baker's first sound film, Zou Zou (directed by Marc Allegret), is released in France

Oscar Micheaux releases the film Harlem After Midnight

Zora Neale Hurston's first novel, Jonah's Gourd Vine, is published

1935
Harlem is the centre of a major riot, triggered by protests against discriminatory employment policies of white-owned department stores inHarlem

Miguel Covarrubias illustrates Zora Neale Hurston's ethnographic study Mules and Men

The Museum of Modem Art mounts the exhibition Aftican Negro Art

Carl Van Vechten holds his first exhibition of photographs in The Leica Exhibition at Bergdorf Goodman in New York

Paul Robeson and Hattie McDaniel appear in James Whales'film musical Show Boat

1936
Oscar Micheaux releases his film Temptation

Aaron Douglas creates murals for the Hall of Negro Life at the Texas Centennial Exposition in Dallas

1937
Loïs Mailou Jones travels to Paris for a year of study at the Académie Julian

Paul Robeson star's in the film King Solomon's Mines

1938
Zora Neale Hurston publishes Tell My Horse, an anthropological study of Jamaican and Haitian culture

Richmond Barthé completes his Dance reliefs for the Harlem River Houses in New York

Jacob Lawrence holds his first solo exhibition at the Harlem YMCA and completes his Toussaint L'Ouverture series

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