Amaza Lee Meredith imagines herself modern : architecture and the Black American middle class This book presents the story of Amaza Lee Meredith (1895 1984) a little known black woman architect artist and educator born into the Jim Crow South. Her life and work bridge national boundaries to disrupt our understandings of the Great Migration expand the reach of the well documented Harlem Renaissance and reveal the importance of architecture as a force in New Negro identity and Black middle class self and group formation