They gathered downtown at the Civic Club in lower Manhattan—bright, ambitious, and determined to chart a new course for Black art and identity. Among them were Jean Toomer, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and Alain Locke, all emerging as literary lions poised to reshape American letters. The invitation came from sociologist Charles S. Johnson, the Urban League’s national director of research and investigations and editor of its influential magazine, *Opportunity*. That evening in March 1924 would come to be known as the spark that lit the Harlem Renaissance. On the heels of World War I, this group of thinkers felt that they could use the arts and literature as tools to fight American racism by depicting more complete, more progressive portraits of Black life than the stereotypical Sambos, Mammies, and Uncle Toms.…