welcome to the dawn of the jazz age

1914-1919

Welcome to The Remembrance Project, a digital, print and musical centennial tribute to James Reese Europe and the Harlem Hellfighters Regimental Band of World War I. A labor of love for several years, this is a collaboration between writers, musicians, artists, and scholars. There was no better time to launch than during these critical centennial years. 2017 marks the centennial of when the 369th regimental band was first imagined, and 2018 will be the 100th anniversary of when the band was in France “fighting the good fight” and ushering in the Jazz Age.   

“This is exactly the type of work that I feel is vital to African American letters—the literary imagining of unspoken history about black lives that mattered but have not been visualized." —Reginald Flood, Professor of African American Literature, NEA Creative Writing Fellow, and author of COFFLE