1919

  • February 17:  369th Regiment (Harlem Hellfighters) marched up Fifth Avenue to Harlem
  • February: First Pan African Congress organized by W.E.B. Du Bois, Paris
  • June to September: Race riots in Washington, D.C., Chicago, Charleston, Knoxville, Omaha, and elsewhere.
  •  September: Race Relations Commission founded
  • Marcus Garvey founded the Black Star Shipping Line.
  • Benjamin Brawley published The Negro in Literature and Art in the United States.



1920

  • August: Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) Convention held at Madison Square Garden
  • November: Charles Gilpin starred in Eugene O'Neill, The Emperor Jones,  
  • James Weldon Johnson, first black officer (secretary) of NAACP appointed.
  • Claude McKay published Spring in New Hampshire.
  • Du Bois's Darkwater is published.
  • O'Neill's The Emperor Jones, starring Charles Gilpin, opens at the Provincetown Playhouse.



1921

  • May 22: Shuffle Along by Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake, the first musical revue written and performed by African Americans (cast members include Josephine Baker and Florence Mills), opened at Broadway's David Belasco Theater.
  • September: Marcus Garvey founded African Orthodox Church Second Pan African Congress.
  • Colored Players Guild of New York founded.
  • Benjamin Brawley published Social History of the American Negro.



1922

  • First Anti-Lynching legislation approved by House of Representatives.
  • Publications of The Book of American Negro Poetry edited by James Weldon Johnson; Claude McKay, Harlem Shadows.



1923

  • Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life is founded by the National Urban League, with Charles S. Johnson as its editor.
  • May: National Ethiopian Art Players staged The Chip Woman's Fortune by Willis Richardson, first serious play by a black writer on Broadway.
  • June: Claude McKay spoke at the Fourth Congress of the Third International in Moscow.
  • The Cotton Club opened in the Fall.
  • Marcus Garvey arrested for mail fraud and sentenced to five years in prison.
  • Third Pan African Congress.
  • Publications of Jean Toomer, Cane; Marcus Garvey, Philosophy and Opinion of Marcus Garvey. 2 vols.




1924

  • March 21: Civic Club Dinner, sponsored by Opportunity, bringing black writers and white publishers together. This event is considered the formal launching of of the New Negro movement.
  • May 15: Paul Robeson starred in O'Neill's All God's Chillun Got Wings.
  • Countee Cullen won first prize in the Witter Bynner Poetry Competition.
  • Publications of Du Bois, The Gift of Black Folk; Jessie Fauset, There is Confusion; Marcus Garvey, Aims and Objects for a Solution of the Negro Problem Outlined; Walter White, The Fire in the Flint.



1925

  • March: Survey Graphic issue, "Harlem: Mecca of the New Negro," edited by Alain Locke and Charles Johnson, devoted entirely to black arts and letters.
  • October: American Negro Labor Congress held in Chicago.
  • Opportunity holds its first literary awards dinner; winners include Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and Zora Neale Hurston.
  • The first Crisis awards ceremony is held at the Renaissance Casino; Countee Cullen wins first prize.
  • Publications of Cullen, Color; Du Bose Heyward, Porgy; James Weldon Johnson and J. Rosamond Johnson, eds. The Book of American Negro Spirituals; Alain Locke, The New Negro; Sherwood Anderson, Dark Laughter (a novel showing Black life).