Black  literary  experience  and  culture  in America  has been  subjected  to  perennial  institutional  hyphenation and  negation  by the dominant  white  literary  establishment.  White racist ideology  and hegemonic  assumptions  have  consistently  interpellated  black  literature  as “low”, “pale”, peripheral and so a mere appendage to  mainstream  American  literature. This seal of negation is essentially contingent on the historical conspiracies of racism and racist consciousness. The assumption has been that because black literature is a veritable product of black literary creativity, it does not harbour the universality, aesthetic sophistication and literary accomplishments consistent with “core”, “high”, “cosmopolitan” American literature. However, the unprecedented flurry of Black literary creativity known as the Harlem Renaissance constitutes a corpus of literature that merits a place in the charmed circle of metropolitan American letters. This paper navigates the Harlem Renaissance and establishes it as a watershed in the flowering of Black literary afflatus and creativity in America. Wintz maintains as follows:

…the  experience  of blacks in this country is substantially different  from that of  whites,  and  this  difference  is  reflected  in  literature.  Race  and race-consciousness  were  constant  themes in  the literature of the  Harlem Renaissance;  this  was  not  true of the white literature  during  the period… The  Harlem Renaissance was  the product of  a history  and  a way  of life  about  which  most  white  writers  knew very  little.  This, of course, was a natural outcome of life in racially segregated America (4,5).