“It don’t mean a thing if it aint got that swing. Do wop, do wop, do wop, do wop, do wop, do wop, do wop, do wop”. Duke Ellington’s jazz classic captures half of the spirit of the Harlem Renaissance, a time period where African American writers, musicians, and artists gained world wide prominence. This was also a time where the grim reality of African Americans living in a discriminatory society came to surface as well. Langston Hughes, a prolific poet from the Harlem Renaissance, aptly writes “Life for me ain't been no crystal stair./ It's had tacks in it,/ And splinters,/ And boards torn up,/” in his poem “Mother to Son.” There were two sides to this significant cultural time period in America that artists from the Harlem Renaissance portrayed--the triumphs and the sorrows of African Americans.