Songs of the Harlem River: Forgotten One Acts of the Harlem Renaissance is a collection of five one-act plays written between 1920 and 1930 by several African-American playwrights at the time including Marita Bonner, Ralf M. Coleman, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Willis Richardson, and Eulalie Spence.
Songs of the Harlem River also opened the Langston Hughes Festival in Queens, New York on February 13, 2016.
Classism and even classist undertones can be deduced from certain plays within the collection such as in "The Starter," where the two main characters spend their stage time discussing their class and social standing in the form of their jobs.
In "The Girl From Bama," romance drives Della to steal away with Dr. Lee when she is forced to marry Jazz Barrett, a banker.
Love is also clearly a topic throughout some others of the plays that aren't specifically characterized as "romantic," such as in "The Deacon's Awakening," where the character of Martha advocates for her daughter by strongly defending the proposed nineteenth amendment.