# data[].attributes.body
Zora Neale Hurston was an American author, anthropologist, and filmmaker. She portrayed racial struggles in the early-1900s American South and published research on hoodoo. The most popular of her four novels is Their Eyes Were Watching God, published in 1937. She quoted, "No matter what tragedies befell me and my family and my history and my world, I am not a tragedy. I am not tragically Indigenous. I am not tragically Black. I am not tragically Asian." From this I learned that authors such as Hurston, can have the biggest effect on society.

# data[].attributes.body
James Mercer Langston Hughes was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist from Joplin, Missouri. He was one of the earliest innovators of the literary art form called jazz poetry. Through his poetry, novels, plays, essays, and children's books, he conveyed the equality, condemned racism and injustice, and celebrated African American culture, humor, and spirituality.

# data[].attributes.body
Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington was an American jazz pianist, composer, and leader of his eponymous jazz orchestra from 1923 through the rest of his life. Ellington used his creative musical talents against racist beliefs that African Americans were inferior or unintelligent. His diverse and wide-ranging catalog of music demanded the kind of serious attention and respect that had previously only been reserved for elite, white composers of classical music.

# data[].attributes.body
James Augustus Van Der Zee was an American photographer best known for his portraits of black New Yorkers. His goal was to portray the beauty of each sitter in his portraits. Often employing painted backdrops, plush parlor furniture, and a variety of props, carefully posing each of his sitters. His photographs reflected the aspirational lifestyle of the emergent black middle class and the various religious and sporting organizations that permeated the Harlem neighborhood and played a crucial role in developing black culture.

# data[].attributes.body
Richmond Barthe was an African-American sculptor who impacted the Harlem Renaissance. Barthé is best known for his portrayal of black subjects. The focus of his artistic work was portraying the diversity and spirituality of man. Barthé once said: "All my life I have been interested in trying to capture the spiritual quality I see and feel in people, and I feel that the human figure as God made it, is the best means of expressing this spirit in man." This man had the courage to show as many people as possible the importance of African-American history through the development of sculptors.

# data[].attributes.body
Aaron Douglas was an American painter, illustrator and visual arts educator. He was known during the Harlem Renaissance for his paintings and illustrations that addressed social issues of race and segregation in the United States by using African-centric imagery. His goal as an artist was to celebrate the African American experience and bring to attention the racism and segregation they dealt with.

# data[].attributes.body
Louis Armstrong was commonly known for his amazing skills of at jazz trumpeting. He had changed the jazz during the Harlem Renaissance. The particular raspy tone of singing also intrigued much of his audience and had an influence on  later artists. His type of singing loosened the more formal style of his peers. His popularity he had gained brought many blacks and white together to watch his performances. His message states about the joy music can bring to life even in the darkest of times. He even quoted "music is life itself".

# data[].attributes.body
Bessie Smith was the most popular African American female blues singer. The unique syncopated rhythms and improvisation in Blues music attracted new listeners during the Harlem Renaissance. Showing an audience that this sound would not be the same as every performance. Poverty and oppression, love and betrayal: independence, sexual freedom, and stoic acceptance of defeat at the hands of cruel, all covered the classic blue subjects and what she stood for.

# data[].attributes.body
Atlanta-born Georgia Douglas Johnson was one of the best known African American woman poet of her time. She also advanced in some subjects such as a playwright, editor, music teacher, school principal, and pioneer in the Black theater movement. She was a determined and hard working woman who wrote more than 200 poems, 40 plays, 30 songs, and edited 100 books. Her poetry consisted of addressing the important issues of race she had gone through first hand. She also had an impact with the general themes of love, motherhood, and being a woman in a male-dominated world.

# data[].attributes.body
I chose Jean Toomer because his work stood out to me and the impact he had on others. He was an American poet and novelist. His book "Cane" of 1923 showed the glimpse of African American life in early 20th century. The modernist text of this piece expresses the anxiety and dissatisfaction Toomer had felt and the African American community as the the definition of race had changed within the future.