The Negro Renaissance occurred during the 1920s, with Harlem known as its "culture capital," according to James Weldon Johnson. Since the community of Harlem in New York City became recognized as the center of the Negro Renaissance Movement, many refer to it also as the Harlem Renaissance Movement, sometimes also referred to as the New Negro Movement. During this time period, writers, poets, artists, musicians, and dancers gathered to share their talents and to tell the stories of the Negro experience. Such well-known figures as Johnson, Claude McKay, Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, and Wallace Thurman flourished during the Harlem Renaissance. Hurston is associated with the Harlem Renaissance because she was in New York City during that time period. The Great Depression caused many of the writers and artists to leave Harlem to find other sources of income.
In New York, Hurston made friends easily, and it wasn't long before she was part of literary circles that included Margaret Walker, Claude McKay, Arna Bontemps, Aaron Douglas, Jean Toomer, and Langston Hughes. Her involvement with these writers and artists, as well as editors and publishers in the Harlem Renaissance movement, quickly earned her a reputation as an entertaining storyteller, sometimes to the despair of these new Negro artistic and literary elite, who often found her earthy style displeasing. Hurston didn't care; she kept on being herself. It wasn't long before Fannie Hurst, a successful and popular novelist of that era, offered Hurston a job, and another benevolent friend helped her to get a scholarship to Barnard.
