00:00In Harlem, in 1972, acclaimed filmmaker William Greaves hosted a cocktail party for artists and intellectuals, the living luminaries of
00:12the Harlem Renaissance, at the home of Duke Ellington.
00:19This was the final recorded gathering, representing one of the greatest creative movements in history.
00:32For the Renaissance period, it was a period through which I lived.
00:35Harlem became known as the Mecca of the New Negro, and it was a sort of standing question.
00:42What will it be tonight? Will it be straight socialism or Negroology?
00:45For the first time, we were aware of so many creative people who were black.
00:52And all of them were aiming at the same thing.
00:55The struggle of the Negro, the rise of the Negro.
01:04They wrote it up.
01:06Ubi plate never shakes hands with a white man.
01:08Which is a lie. I never offer my hand first.
01:14There were different points of view, and I think that's a mark of a civilized community.
01:22Aaron Douglas is an Afro-American article.
01:26I'm calling him an artist.
01:27Artist.
01:27Period.
01:33There are those of us who are now old, who have struggled, had no civil rights, and worked, and some
01:40of us died doing it.
01:42This is a historical moment. Believe me, when I do it.
01:51The Harlem Renaissance isn't dead because it lives with everybody.
01:56Once upon a time in Harlem.
02:02To be here with all these intelligentsia, I'm afraid to open my mouth.
02:08Coming this fall.
