00:00In Harlem, in 1972, acclaimed filmmaker William Greaves hosted a cocktail party for artists and intellectuals,
00:11the living luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance at the home of Duke Ellington.
00:19This was the final recorded gathering, representing one of the greatest creative movements in history.
00:32Well, the Renaissance period 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.
00:56The struggle of the Negro, the rise of the Negro.
01:04They wrote it up.
01:06U.B. Blake never shakes hands with a white man, which is a lie.
01:10I 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 artist.
01:25I'm calling him an artist, period.
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 took 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.
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