The Harlem Renaissance During The 1920's: An Analysis

The Harlem Renaissance, or the New Negro Movement as it was known at the time, was an intellectual, artistic, and social outpouring that celebrated black culture with themes of what it meant to be black in America. This movement lasted from the 1920s through the 1930s and included artists and intellectuals such as Langston Hughes, W.E.B. DuBois, and Duke Ellington. The Harlem Renaissance went beyond art, literature, and music, there were also political, social, and economic aspects as African-Americans questioned how the United States viewed them and how they viewed themselves. The New Negro and the rise of Harlem came about at a time when African-Americans began to urbanize and form a unique urban culture. These African-Americans defined themselves on their own terms, were proud to be both of African descent and American citizens, and were not afraid to push back against racism.

The Impact of the Harlem Renaissance The Harlem Renaissance was an artistic and cultural movement during the 1920s and the 1930s. It was sparked by a migration of nearly one million African-Americans who moved to the prospering north to escape the heavy racism in the south and to partake in a better future with better tolerance. Magazines and newspapers owned by African-Americans flourished, poets and music artists rose to their feet. An inspiration swept the people up and gave them confidence.

The Great Migration of many African-American people from the South to the North, and many into Harlem was the cause of this circumstance. Harlem became the midpoint of settlement. There are principles that lead to the creation of the Harlem Renaissance. During the 1916 to 1970s the great migration occurred. The Great Migration was an era when over six million African Americans relocated from the South

This gave black people hope for a new better life in the Northern states where those laws weren’t enforced. This renaissance was a cultural party that helped expose black writers, musicians, poets, artists, etc. This changed the culture forever and the talent started to spillover within the black community. Art was pushed to its limits and was a form of a statement and representation.

African Americans lived in a world of racial injustices and cultural restrictions until the Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance was a time where there is an African American literary and art movement in the uptown Manhattan neighborhood. It is the turning point in African American culture, as well as their place in America. The African Americans were starting to become equal in American society. While the Renaissance built on earlier traditions of African American culture, it was greatly affected by the trends of the Europeans and white Americans.

The Harlem Renaissance was a period from around the end of WWI to about the mid-1930’s where a cultural, social, and artistic explosion took place in Harlem, New York and all across America. This time period saw the emergence of a cultural center for African Americans in the city of Harlem, New York, where black writers, artists, musicians, photographers, poets, and scholars all came together for a “rebirth” of African American culture. This “rebirth” kindled a new sense of black identity in all aspects of life, socially, culturally, and intellectually. The cultural explosion brought new themes to black culture including, the stressing of black identity, telling of the effects of racism, the American Dream, and a newfound sense of community

This migration had a very noticeable

The Harlem Renaissance was given its name because cultural, social, and artistic explosion took place in Harlem between 1918 and mid-1930’s. During this period Harlem was the go to place for black writers, artists, musicians, poets, and many others. A majority of people came from the South, because they were fleeing its caste system to find a place where they could freely express themselves and their talents. Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Walter White and James Weldon Johnson were amongst the many artists who became very well known. Du Bois, editor of THE CRISIS magazine, the journal of the NAACP, published the poems, stories, and visual works of many artists.

The Harlem Renaissance was a phase of a larger New Negro Movement that had arisen in the early 20th century and in some ways ushered in the civil rights movement of the late 1940s and the early 1950s. The social foundations of this movement included the Great Migration of the African Americans, from rural to urban spaces, and the dramatically advancement of literacy. The creation of national organizations dedicated to helping African American civil rights, and “uplifting” the race by developing race pride. The Renaissance was a literary, artistic, and meaningful movement that sparked a new black cultural identity that lasted until the 1920s to the mid 1930s.

Born on February 1, 1902 and raised in New York City very own Harlem, Hughes would prove to be one of the most significant writers and thinkers of the Harlem Renaissance. In 1926 Hughes published one of his many symbolic poems Weary Blues. The Weary Blues is a poem that was able to fuse together poetry, jazz and blues which describes one of the distinctive characteristics of the “New Negro” of the Harlem Renaissance. The Weary Blues portrays the overcrowded conditions and employment difficulties blacks faced in Harlem. Those who suffered from ambiguity because of lack of monetary resources and basic luxuries:

People today can relate to the post-racial era with African-American monuments, commemorations, and popular culture. These all represent important outgrowths of the black nationalism that flowered in the late-twentieth

African Americans in Pensacola were faced with a wave of white supremacy as the beginning of the 20th century approached. The article “Belmont Delivviers: Reflection in Segregation History” produces a great deal of information relating to the development of Pensacola during this era. While reading this article, you see the author attempt to show how segregation has benefited the town of Pensacola. African American shop owners began to grow in numbers due to the support developed by the black shoppers of these segregated districts. Unlike Calvin’s article, the information here relates to a time after the antebellum south of the 19th century and into the early 20th century.

This was a time where many African Americans migrated north to be a part of a more civic, industrialized society. The African American people migrated so far north that they made it to the streets of Harlem, New York, earning this new Negro movement its name. Aaron Douglas is one of many black artists from the Harlem Renaissance and was the “first modern Black artist to use traditional African roots” in his artwork (1). Douglas was also the first president of the Harlem Artist Guild. He worked to help other African American artists find employment, as it was difficult to do so considering that “with this rebirth of traditional African culture, the number of African American artists rapidly increased” (1).

Throughout 1920 and 1940, the Harlem Renaissance flourished. Also known as the “Roaring Twenties” and the “Jazz age,” the Harlem Renaissance's roots came from African American’s culture spreading throughout America, teaching everyone their fun filled life of singing, dancing, and writing. The Jazz industry exploded, introducing performers and writers like Louis Armstrong, Langston Hughes, and Aaron Douglas to the world (History.com Staff). Women were searching for the more rights and they finally received the gift of a lifetime, the right to vote. In addition, inventions like the airplane were improving exponentially.

The Harlem Renaissance took place during the 1920s through the 1930s, and is noted as the first point in American history when African-American achievements in art, music, and literature flourished and were widely accepted. In the early part of the 1900s, the American public was shifting its interests from the “minstrel show” format to that of vaudeville. This created a wave of changes in theater in egeneral, and one of the most interesting was the appearance of African American actors and purely African American “themes”. For example, the 1917 play “Three Plays for a Negro Theater” was a first of its kind and eliminated the stereotypical portrayal of “blackface” in favor of African American actors insteadMany view this as the birth of the