Post-Renaissance Harlem: Ann Petry's The Street
By the 1940s, the once bustling metropolis of African American creative energy that had been Harlem had been harshly impacted by a series of events that followed its cultural heyday. A second wave of the Great Migration brought migrants from other areas of the United States and the Caribbean, which led to overcrowding and racial tension among Harlemites; and the economic depression rendered Harlem largely a ghettoized area that rife with crime and racial injustice. The Harlem Race Riot of 1943 increased the growing tension in Harlem. The event signaled a growing assertiveness among blacks in Harlem to challenge white authority and to interrogate the systems of white power structures. Described as "graceful and articulate" Ann Petry was born in October 1911 and raised in Old Saybrook, Connecticut ( 1 ). She attended Pharmacy school there, perhaps following the example of her father, who owned a drugstore. In the 1930s she traveled to Harlem where she was an apprentice w...