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Black academics, writers, musicians, and artists traveled from all across the country and world to participate in the Harlem Renaissance an intellectual revival movement that occurred in the 1920s in the northern Manhattan neighborhood. Individuals seeking to visit the area to interact and work with the great thinkers of Harlem, however, had to tackle the “hotel problem,” as Harlem historian and resident Eric K. Washington puts it. As the Harlem Renaissance was blossoming in New York City, so were Jim Crow and segregation laws that did not allow Black and white Americans to sleep in the same hotel. The Hotel Olga solved the “hotel problem” and became the unofficial home to the movement.