Scope and arrangement
The David Levering Lewis "Voices from the Renaissance" Collection consists of forty-three summary transcripts of interviews Lewis conducted with individuals who were either active during the Harlem Renaissance period or who knew people who were Harlem Renaissance figures. The interviews were done for Lewis's book, When Harlem Was in Vogue (1981). The transcriptions are impressionistic rather than verbatim, which Lewis prepared from the fifty-two audiotapes containing the interviews. Interviewees include Raoul Abdul; Wilhelmina Adams; Regina Andrews; Helen Armstead-Johnson; Poppy Cannon; Mercer Cook; Miriam DeWitt; Owen Dodson; Aaron Douglas; Pearl and Ivy Fisher; G. James Fleming; Emerson Harper; Jean Blackwell Hutson; C.L.R. James; Henry Lincoln Johnson; Mildred Johnson; Bruce Kellner; Alfred Knopf; Rayford Logan; Gerri Major; Henry and Mollie Moon; A'lelia Nelson Bruce Nugent; Mae Wright Peck; George N. Redd; Helga Rogers; Maurice Russell; George Schuyler; Charless Sebree; Amy Springarn; Mae Miller Sullivan; Marjorie Toomer; Charles H. Wesley; Dorothy West; Leigh Whipper; and Edith Wilson. Interviewees discuss their lives and individuals such as W.E.B. DuBois, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, J. A. Rogers, and Carl Van Vechten and his book, Nigger Heaven.