By the time of Walker's death, the Depression had had a devastating impact on the Harlem Renaissance, as white pleasure-seekers no longer had money to spend in Harlem, and most African Americans, who did not have much to begin with, were affected even more severely.

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Walker herself was not immune to great financial difficulties. With hair-care products an unnecessary and unaffordable expense for most African Americans, her company suffered. She was forced to mortgage Villa Lewaro and sell most of its contents to maintain a modicum of her lavish lifestyle. Her parties became less opulent, if not less popular with black glbtq people.

Walker's passing marked the passing of an era. Perhaps playing on words, Langston Hughes remarked that her death "was really the end of the gay times of the New Negro era in Harlem."

Glbtq African Americans frequently experience racism in predominantly white glbtq communities and homophobia in heterosexual black society, but the multiple oppressions faced by black glbtq people are now being recognized.

The Harlem Renaissance, an African-American literary movement of the 1920s and 1930s, included several important gay and lesbian writers.

American photographer Berenice Abbott made memorable images of lesbians, bisexuals, and gay men in Paris in the 1920s and in New York from the 1930s through 1965.

Countee Cullen, an important member of the Harlem Renaissance, has coded references to homosexuality in much of his poetry.

Langston Hughes, whose literary legacy is enormous and varied, was closeted, but homosexuality was an important influence on his literary imagination, and many of his poems may be read as gay texts.

The gay novelist, critic, and photographer Carl Van Vechten was especially interested in African-American culture and was an influential patron to many writers of the Harlem Renaissance.