So, with the re-naming of the blog I also decided to use a different header.  The image I used was of a rather famous painting, Aspects of Negro Life, by Aaron Douglas.  You can see the original mural in the reading room of the Schomburg Center.

However, I didn’t like how the header took up half the page on each article.  I tried reducing the size and changing the format, but no dice.  I’m still learning my way around the design of WordPress, and I’m really just winging it anyway since I have zero formal training in web design. So don’t expect things to be too visually snappy around here anytime soon.  For now, I’m going to go without a header image, and if a better idea comes to me I’ll change it again.

In the meantime, I didn’t want to remove the image without at least paying homage to Aaron Douglas, a great artist who I’ve mentioned and discussed many times on my Harlem tours.  Douglas was a leader in the Harlem Renaissance, and in addition to the large-scale murals that he is best known for, he also designed a number of book jackets by Harlem writers in the 1920s and 30s.  He was depicted, along with other artists and intellectuals, in Infants of the Spring (1932), a satirical novel by Wallace Thurman. And he was a resident of Harlem’s famous Strivers’ Row houses.