Before the Harlem Renaissance

Last Friday night I went down to the Lincoln Theatre for a wonderful performance about U Street and its influence on the Harlem Renaissance. Appropriately it was called "Before the Harlem Renaissance there was U Street." I have wanted to go to the Lincoln Theatre since it reopened – and this presented a wonderful opportunity.

At the will call window, my ticket was lost but my reservation was not. So I was given a seating pass and proceeded inside. I arrived early and the theatre was not open yet, so the crowd waited in the lobby area. I was struck immediately with a feeling of the fifties or maybe early sixties back in Sanford, Florida where I was born and raised. Here I was in the middle of Washington feeling particularly out of place – one of a few white faces in a sea of African American ones. Mind you, I did not feel uncomfortable, but rather mindful of a time and place from my youth – only with a feeling reversal.

I found my seat a few minutes later and next to me was a wonderful gentleman, Edward from Baltimore. He asked how I came to be at the Lincoln. I told him of my fascination with the Harlem Renaissance, of Zora Neale Hurston and Eatonville a few miles from my hometown, about how I was moved by the poetry of Langson Hughes and how reading W.E.B DuBois influenced my thinking as a young adult. We talked about our childhoods – mine growing up in the segregated south and his as a black man growing up in Crisfield, Maryland. Our stories were so different – our growth and experiences as a result of these childhood experiences, however, were surprisingly similar.

The performance was wonderful – music and dance from a bygone era – and a legacy that lives on.