Louis ArmstrongOne of the most famous jazz musicians of the 20th century, he first achieved fame as a trumpeter, but toward the end of his career he was best known as a vocalist and was one of the most influential jazz singers.

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Duke EllingtonMany regard Duke Ellington as one of the most important figures to emerge from the U.S. jazz scene in the twentieth century. He was one of the twentieth century's best-known African-American celebrities. He recorded for many American record companies, and appeared in several films.

Bessie SmithBessie Smith is largely regarded as the most popular and successful blues singer of the 1920s and 1930s, and by some as the most influential performer in blues history.

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Langston HughesHughes was an American poet, novelist, playwright, short story writer, and newspaper columnist. Hughes is best known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance.

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

I've known rivers: I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers. I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep. I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset. I've known rivers: Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain:

The younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, it doesn't matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly, too. The tom-tom cries, and the tom-tom laughs. If colored people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, their displeasure doesn't matter either. We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain free within ourselves.

Jacob LawrenceLawrence is easily among the best-known twentieth century African American painters. His most famous work was The Great Migration, seen below.

Famous Whites in the Jazz Age

George GershwinGeorge Gershwin was an American composer who wrote most of his vocal and theatrical works in collaboration with his elder brother lyricist Ira Gershwin. Many of his compositions have been used on television and in numerous films, and many became jazz standards.

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Georgia O’KeefeO'Keeffe has been a major figure in American art since the 1920s.

Aaron CoplandCopland was an American composer of concert and film music. Instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, he was widely known as "the dean of American composers". Copland's music achieved a difficult balance between modern and American folk styles, said to represent the vast American landscape.

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F. Scott FitzgeraldFitzgerald an Irish American Jazz Age novelist and short story writer. He is regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the twentieth century. He finished four novels, left a fifth unfinished, and wrote dozens of short stories in addition to his musical accomplishments.