The Harlem Renaissance represents an era when African Americans became urban and modern; when African American artists contributed to American visual arts, drama, music, and literature, and fought against stereotypical representations of black bodies and voices. One of the most pervasive stereotypical tropes –even nowadays –ofAfrican Americans being technically inept, technologically illiterate, and thereby outside of modernity was, however, barely addressed by Harlem Renaissance authors –George Schuyler’s Black No More(1932) and Black Empire(1937–1938) seem to be exceptions, albeit satirical ones. However, In Bitter Root, a 2019 speculative comics, this trope receives a novel, positive treatment as the tale of the Sangerye family of Harlem Renaissance-based monster hunters is focalized around the notion that modern technology in the hands of African Americans may bring peace to a nation ravaged by racism. The comics is set in a modern wasteland filled with white Americans turning into rabidly racist monsters, while African Americans wield steampunk weapons loaded with conjured potions to heal the nation. It depicts racism as a poison holding the American civilization back, and modern, black technology combined with ancient African powers of healing –symbolically, the acceptance of African Americans, unconditionally, into America’s modern nation –as the antidote. By bringing together the Tulsa massacre, Bessie Coleman, modern technology, and conjuring, Bitter Root also dramatizes the dynamic forces at play during the Harlem Renaissance and its painful, albeit explosively creative, transformation of African Americans into accepted members of the increasingly modern, yet still uncivilized nation.