Some of the most enduring documents of the Harlem Renaissance are Carl Van Vechten’s photographs of its luminaries, such as writers Zora Neal Hurston and Langston Hughes, among others. While a friend and patron of many artists of the movement, Van Vechten gained notoriety for his 1926 novel set in Harlem about the lives of two Black protagonists, Mary Love and Byron Kasson. Illustrated by graphic artist Edward McKnight Kauffer, the book included a racial slur in the title and was characterized by W. E. B. Du Bois as “cheap melodrama” and “an affront to the hospitality of black folk and to the intelligence of white.”
Gallery label from 2024