“Harlem” is influenced by the Harlem Renaissance, an artistic movement from the early 20th century. The Great Migration of African Americans from the segregated South to Northern cities like New York made Harlem a center of Black culture in the 1920s. The neighborhood drew musicians, visual artists, dancers, actors, and writers. Creators participating in the Harlem Renaissance were determined to create a uniquely Black art that would be acknowledged as equal to any other tradition. Poets like Claude McKay and Countee Cullen wrote in European forms like sonnets or used the style of the English Romantics of the early 19th century to communicate their experiences. Others created hybrid texts, played with dialect, and took inspiration from African American music.

Langston Hughes was a central figure in the movement. His first published poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” appeared in The Crisis, the official magazine of the NAACP, run by the influential editor W.E.B. Du Bois. Hughes went on to achieve artistic and financial success and supported the community through years of mentorship.

“Harlem” was written decades after the movement dissipated, but its musicality and engagement with the one of the key philosophical questions of Black American life are rooted in this movement.