Tag Archives: Infants of the Spring

The Niggerati was the name used, with deliberate irony, by Wallace Thurman (below) for the group of young African American artists and intellectuals of the Harlem Renaissance. “Niggerati” is a portmanteau of “nigger” and “literati”. The rooming house where he lived at 267 West 136th Street, and where that group often met, was similarly christened Niggerati Manor. The group included Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, and several of the people behind Thurman’s journal FIRE!! Continue reading →