This article aims to analyze the use that various Afro-Colombian sectors made of the racial ideas developed by Afro-Colombian activists linked to the cultural movement known as the Harlem Renaissance. It suggests that between 1920 and 1948 black workers and students from the Pacific and Caribbean coasts of Colombia entered into contact with the racial ideas developed by various leaders of said movement. This contact was fundamental in the racial position assumed by several writers of African descent in Colombia, and it shaped a diasporic dialogue that enabled them to participate in the debates and struggles that other Afro-descendent sectors were carrying out in other parts of the Americas.