Stovall recounts the important Parisian sojurns of Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, and other Harlem Renaissance literary figures and painters. The French jazz craze attracted many musicians and entertainers, among them Baker, Bricktop (Ada Louise Smith), and Bechet. Stovall describes how the freedom and respect afforded them in France inspired veterans and other African-Americans to emigrate. He opens by contrasting painter Henry Ossawa Tanner, who had thrived in France for decades, isolated from fellow African-Americans, with the black soldiers who found Paris a revelation when they came over during WW I. of Calif., Santa Cruz) tells his story primarily through mini-biographies of such figures and their confederates. Josephine Baker, Sidney Bechet, Richard Wright, James Baldwin: Stovall (History/Univ. An engaging chronicle of African-American life in Paris since the dawn of the Jazz Age.
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