ABSTRACT
The name the Big Apple was originally popularized by jazz musicians of the 1920s and 1930s who considered New York City the best place to create, to succeed, and, said the poet Langston Hughes, to have fun. New York was the dream city of excitement and opportunity. The major contribution of the restless, ambitious mayor, said historian Thomas Kessner, was to harness "personal rule in the service of transcendent public purpose" and forever change New York in the process. The 1935 and 1943 Harlem Riots marked a new era in the history of American rioting that set the pattern for the urban violence of the 1960s. Quickly, Harlem became the Negro Mecca or, as Langston Hughes put it, "a great magnet for the Negro intellectual, pulling him from everywhere." The Harlem Renaissance marked a rare moment of acceptance and admiration for people accustomed to rejection and disdain.
