Harlem was one of several American cities in which Black populations dramatically increased during the Great Migration—the mass movement of Black people from the rural South to the North during the 1890s through the 1970s. This critical mass of Black people and their culture led to the Harlem Renaissance, an explosion of artistic and intellectual production during the 1910s and 1920s that transformed how Black people saw themselves.

Luther evolves from an unemployed former shoeshine to a Black man who stands up to the elder Mrs. Carraway and tells Anne to arrange her own roses. His evolution is a microcosm of the transformation in the stance of Black people in relation to white people during this period. During the Reconstruction period, most Black people lived in the rural South, where racial terrorists like the Ku Klux Klan were dominant. Under Jim Crow laws, Black people lived with the constant threat of being killed or otherwise harmed for violating racial norms. These circumstances forced them to subordinate their lives to the whims of white people, who saw their race as superior. Black people’s mobility and control over their own bodies did not even belong to them, reflecting their subordination.