W. E. B. Du Bois was one of the black intellectuals involved in launching and encouraging the Harlem Renaissance. David L. Lewis's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Du Bois, W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868- 1919 (1994), provides readers with a highly detailed narrative of the great thinker and founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in the years preceding the Harlem Renaissance.

Black visual artists experienced an explosion in ideas and energy during the 1920s and 1930s similar to that experienced by writers. Rhapsodies in Black: Art of the Harlem Renaissance (1997) covers the accomplishments of African- American painters, sculptors, photographers, actors, and singers working during the period. The book, edited by Richard J. Powell and David A. Bailey, includes 150 color plates and 100 blackand- white drawings.

Starting in 1910, the NAACP published The Crisis, a...