Jazz is a symbol of African-American culture in music, it was invented in the early 20th century in the South of the United States. For example, there is the Cotton Club which is a former concert hall and a jazz club in the Harlem neighborhood, it stands out at other clubs because the greatest musicians performed at the Cotton Club like Duke Ellington, Louis Amstrong and others. another peculiarity of this club is that it was only open to whites and access to blacks was denied. Black Protestant churches also became the home of music.

Aaron Douglas is an African-American, born on May 26, 1899 in Topeka and died on October 12, 1979 in Nashville, he is a muralist, illustrator and visual arts teacher. Aaron is the greatest icon of the Harlem Renaissance cultural movement. It has been dubbed the "Father of African American art". He studied at the University of Nebraska and received the Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1922 and continued his studies at the University of Kansas and received his Bachelor of Arts in 1923.
He then worked as an art teacher at Lincoln Colllege Preparatory Academy. He then moved to Harlem in 1925 and it was from there that his career as an artist began. He made murals talking about the problems of racial segregation, showing images of Africa and the United States. He married Alta Mee Sawyer in 1926. In 1944, he decided to finish his career as an artist and found the department of arts at Fisk University.

The Building more Stately Mansions is the best known work of Aaron Douglas, it was made in 1944 and used style and the Synthetic Cubism and modern. This painting symbolizes the work of black men and women in the construction of large architectural monuments.

University of Fisk where Aaron Douglas taught.

Archibald Motley is an African-American painter and teacher born on October 7, 1891 in New Orleans and died on January 16, 1981 in Chicago, he is also an icon of the Harlem Renaissance movement, he was born into a middle-class family, his father runs a grocery store and his mother is a schoolteacher. The kind of art he masters is American realism, and he emphasizes blacks to make them "classy and elegant", whereas before blacks in painting were undervalued. Unlike other black artists, he refuses to meddle with "Negro art" and to touch other possible art forms such as white artists and to show everyone that it is possible for an African-American to touch other art forms than "Negro art"."

During high school, he worked part-time in a hair salon. His father, a pullman doorman on the Michigan Central Railroad, met Dr. Frank W. Gunsaulus, president of the Armour Institute (now known as the Illinois Institute of Technology) on the train. Meeting Archibald Motley, Gunsaulus became very interested in him and wanted him to become an architect, offering him a four-year scholarship to the Armour Institute. When Motley insisted that he wanted to become an artist, Gunsaulus paid for his first year of schooling at the Art Institute of Chicago. Motley studied at the Institute for four years and believes that his main influences came from two professors there: Karl Buehr, a portrait and nude artist, and Henry M. Walcott, an expert in composition.
After graduation, he set up a studio with his parents. Working for a time on the railway with his father, he filled numerous sketchbooks with drawings while traveling across the country.
His work has always been divided between portraits and narrative paintings of the street, coffee life and the jungle.

In 1925, he married Edith Granzo, a white woman, unfortunately they suffered racism by people who did not accept this mixed marriage.
 In 1925, he beed known for two of his paintings: Mending Socks and Syncopation, and won two awards: the Frank G. Logan Prize and the Joseph Einsendrath Award and won $200. A French art critic spots him and makes him known in Europe.
He achieved success in 1929, at the end of his studies and won a scholarship which served him to extend his studies in Paris this time. He then returned to the United States in 1933 and taught at Howard University.

Self-portrait of Archibald Motley.