Edwardian Promenade

No two men of equal stature could have come from different places than Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois One was born during slavery and worked menial jobs to obtain his education while the other was raised amongst a relatively well-to-do family with roots in one of New England’s most beautiful towns. [...]

Washington D.C. was both the capitol of the United States, but also the black elite. It was in this city, which was built with the labor of thousands of African-Americans, to which the beacon lights of the nation drew like moths to a flame. The “colored elite” of the capitol centered around Howard University and [...]

During the Gilded Age, American publishers met the needs of social climbers aspiring to emulate their betters by producing endless etiquette manuals, so did small presses meet the aspirations of newly wealthy blacks surging into the enclaves formerly preserved for the black elite. These etiquette books addressed the unique situation in which black Americans were [...]

Literature
Paul Laurence Dunbar
James Weldon Johnson
Frances E. W. Harper
Pauline Hopkins
Alice Dunbar Nelson
Art
Edmonia Lewis
Meta Vaux Warrick
Henry O. Tanner
E. M. Bannister
May Howard Jackson
Music
Harry T. Burleigh
E. Azalia Hackley
Thomas G. Bethune
Scott Joplin
James Reese Europe
Will Marion Cook
J. Rosamond Johnson
Marie Selika
Flora Batson

From the moment African-Americans could set pen to paper, there was the black-owned newspaper. The role of the black press reached its heights in the postbellum era, as millions of the formerly enslaved black Americans hungered for a voice amidst the clamor and fuss of Reconstruction. This voice grew increasingly important as America shifted towards [...]

A major development of the nineteenth century was the emergence of world’s fairs, all of which served to entertain visitors and impress them with the technological and cultural advances of Western nations and their colonies which increased exponentially–and dazzlingly–after the 1851 Great Exhibition hosted by England under the auspices of the Prince Consort. By the [...]

Opera singers were the world’s first pop stars, and the nineteenth century saw the apex of diva and divo worship, with hundreds of thousands left spellbound by the heavenly voices of Jenny Lind, Nelli Melba, Enrico Caruso, and Jean de Rezke, to name a few stars. Since this was before radio, and definitely before television [...]