zora neale hurston
Hurston was born in Alabama but spent all of her childhood in Eatonville, Florida, which she writes about in her autobiography Dust Tracks on a Road . When she moved to Harlem, she became acquainted with many famous writers, including Langston Hughes, who she wrote the play Mule Bone with. She traveled back south to collect folk stories from the locals and also went to Haiti to study the voodoo culture. She was an anthropologist as well, and unfortunately wasn't fully recognized for her writings on Black Southern culture until after her death.
louis armstrong
Grew up very poor in New Orleans, Armstrong dropped out of school in 5th grade to support his family. After doing shows in New Orleans for a while, he went to Chicago to join King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band. Later, he moved to NYC and worked with many acclaimed artists (like Bessie Smith). He revolutionized jazz music and popularized "scat-singing". People everywhere came to watch him and his band perform in the Cotton Club in Harlem.
langston hughes
Born in Missouri, Hughes grew up most of his life with his maternal grandmother. After high school, he moved to Mexico to live with his father. Here he wrote one of his first poems "the Negro Speaks of Rivers" which got highly praised and was published in The Crisis. He moved to New York when he enrolled at Colombia, which is when he became involved in the Harlem Renaissance. His first book of poems is called TheWeary Blues and his first book of short stories is calledThe Ways of White Folks. He is famous for his use of jazz and rhythm to show the lives of black people living in the city at the time.
ella fitzgerald
Fitzgerald was born in 1917 in Virginia, and moved to New York with her mother. Her mother died in 1932 and by 1934, Ella was on the streets, still wanting to be an entertainer. She won a contest at Harlem's Apollo Theater, and started her career in entertaining, still singing on the streets at this point. She recorded many songs and landed a deal with Decca Records. Later in the 1940s and 50s she was in movies.