The Harlem Renaissance Essay

Harlem Renaissance

Throughout the history of African Americans, there have been important historical figures as well as times. Revered and inspirational leaders and eras like, Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement, Nat Turner and the slave revolt, or Huey Newton and the Black Panther Party. One such period that will always remain a significant part of black art and culture is the Harlem Renaissance. It changed the meaning of art and poetry, as it was known then. Furthermore, the Harlem Renaissance forever left a mark on the evolution of the black culture.

The Harlem Renaissance found its birth in the early 1920's, in Harlem, New York. The period has been thought of as one of African Americans greatest times in...show more content...

Hurston later went on to publish "Their Eyes were Watching God," in 1937, still keeping with the themes of strong black characters.

Music was another art form found in the Harlem Renaissance. It became the background, inspiration, and the structure for the Harlem Renaissance literature. A style of music known as jazz represented the new, urban, unpredictable lifestyle. One of the greatest jazz singers of this time was Bessie Smith. She was a southerner and her recordings were rare for black performers during her time. Duke Ellington, whose legendary band played at the Cotton Club, personifies jazz. Charlie Parker and Billie Holiday would also record jazz music form the 1930's until the 1950's.

Langston Hughes was one of the few poets that would combine both blues and jazz to create an original art form. Claude McKay used the jazz atmosphere in his novel "Home to Harlem." In this novel, he presented Harlem as a beautiful, fantastic place. In the Harlem Renaissance somewhere using words to create images, while others were using canvas and various mediums to produce a visual art.

By 1926, another stage in the developmental history of African–American visual artists came about, with the establishment of the Harmon Foundation. The Harmon Foundation became a tool for

The Harlem Renaissance The Harlem Renaissance refers to a prolific period of unique works of African–American expression from about the end of World War I to the beginning of the Great Depression. Although it is most commonly associated with the literary works produced during those years, the Harlem Renaissance was much more than a literary movement; similarly, it was not simply a reaction against and criticism of racism. The Harlem Renaissance inspired, cultivated, and, most importantly, legitimated the very idea of an African–American cultural consciousness. Concerned with a wide range of issues and possessing different interpretations and solutions of these issues affecting the Black population, the writers, artists, performers and...show more content...

These migrations created the first urban Black communities in the North, which flourished in Chicago, New York, Detroit, and Cleveland.[ii] In New York, in particular, a "sizeable chunk of real estate in the heart of Manhattan" had been available, and, as it came to be occupied by Blacks, had become the site of "a series of literary discussions in the lower Manhattan (Greenwich Village) and upper Manhattan (Harlem) sections." These discussions were largely influenced by an increased availability of African–American literature, one of the most important being the publication of The New Negro, an anthology of works compiled by Alain Leroy Locke. Locke compared the northern migration of Blacks to "something like a spiritual emancipation," and the anthology exposed people to the works of Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Zora Neale Hurston, among many others. These discussions became known as the New Negro Movement, and as they fueled other social activity, specifically in a spirit of 'progressivism' that believed in "art and literature as agents of social change," the Harlem Renaissance.[2] Although the works were about race and/or concerned about race, it is important to note that there was not a single sociopolitical vision that dominated the works of the Renaissance. In addition to Locke, there were two other extremely influential

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