Rudolph Fisher was a scientist and an artist whose métier was Harlem

Rudolph Fisher was a scientist and an artist whose métier was Harlem

Harriet A. Washington at The American Scholar: “Let Paul Robeson singing Water Boy and Rudolph Fisher writing about the streets of Harlem … cause the smug Negro middle class to turn from their white, respectable, ordinary books and papers to catch a glimmer of their own beauty.” So wrote Langston Hughes in his landmark 1926 essay “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain.” Today, Paul Robeson—singer, actor, athlete, lawyer, antiracism icon—needs…