Harlem: Negro Metropolis.

MCKAY, Claude.

$9,800.00

Item Number: 145357

New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, Inc, 1940.

Scarce first edition of this intimate history of the Black Mecca of the world, authored by one of the central figures in the Harlem renaissance. Octavo, original brown cloth with gilt titles, red topstain, frontispiece of Bird’s-eye View of Harlem, illustrated with eighteen additional plates of black and white photographs. Near fine in the scarce original dust jacket, which is in very good condition with loss to the crown and foot of the jacket spine, rubbing and small losses to the extremities of the dust jacket. An extremely rare duo.

Novelist and poet Claude McKay published this narrative history of Harlem in 1940, chronologizing the intricacies of politics and real estate that brought black Americans to the city, the art and culture explosion that was the Harlem Renaissance, and the people whose efforts increased quality of life for a community discriminated against in white spaces. This book is a celebration of black culture and history, inked by the pen of a key figure in Harlem's cultural movement.