The Harlem Renaissance was as Gay as it was Black,” said Harvard Historian, Louis Gates, Jr. As we have studied and know instinctually, African Americans have a history of struggles, oppression and have had to suffer the indignities of racism by the white world around them. YET, despite all that, they experienced a cultural “rebirth” (renaissance) in the 1920s through the arts of literature and music. How did those who were involved in the Harlem Renaissance (the African American “cultural rebirth”) rise above the racial oppression they experienced?