Harlem Renaissance

Is the United States of America a place where all can be free to pursue

their self-identity?

What led to the Harlem Renaissance. . . ? The movement was brought on by growth in the

African American “community” after the abolition of slavery;

it was fueled by a desire of African American artists from various realms—literature, art and music—who formed a collective movement.

Racism lingers after the Civil War

Reconstruction after the Civil War didn’t sufficiently advance African American freedoms and liberties, and in the South, outward racism (Jim Crow Laws, lynching, etc.) continued strongly even after World War I.

What brought the movement on . . . ? Many participants in the Harlem Renaissance were part of the

Great Migration out of the South into the black neighborhoods of the North and Midwest regions of the United States, where African-American sought a better standard of living and relief from the institutionalized racism in the South.

Red = shrinking African American population Blue = booming African American population

What brought the movement on . . . ?

It was partially made possible by the acceleration of African American rights that came as a result of sacrifices made by African American men during WWI. White Americans, particularly in the North, had become interested in the African American way of life.

Alain Locke

He was the first African American Rhodes Scholar, and he encouraged black artists in America to look to Africa for inspiration and apply that influence to their work. He argued that a lack of African American culture was one of the reasons cited to justify the enslavement of black people.

…What to call it?We should call it

the New Negro

Movement.

Nah, we’ll call it the Harlem Renaissance

Alain Locke James Weldon Johnson

James Weldon Johnson, a writer and future NAACP leader actually coined the phrase “Harlem Renaissance,” and it stuck.

Why Harlem? a) Harlem was one of the primary

destinations for the Great Migration:-Various African American artists from all over the United States saw Harlem as a destination place and an atmosphere for creating new ideas.

THE DOWNSIDE—it was still very “white controlled”—race riots, segregated and overcrowded.

Why Harlem? b) Harlem was the cultural center for African Americans:-Headquarters for the National Organization for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the National Urban League (NUL) were in Harlem. Both organizations are advocates for African American people’s rights.

-There was increasing popularity for jazz and Harlem was the major nucleus of it all. Several night clubs such as the Cotton Club catered to white patrons who were intrigued by black culture.

Charles S. Johnson fostered the careers of many artists by organizing dinners that allowed writers to network with book publishers, magazine editors and others.

Jessie Redmon Fauset nurtured new talent in the NAACP magazine, The Crisis.

Artists

Leader: Langston Hughes After years of being oppressed by White America, Langston Hughes

argued that African American people should develop a cultural self-esteem. People ought to take pride in themselves and not move “toward whiteness” (Hughes).

• “[T]he mountain standing in the way of any true Negro art in America—this urge within the race towards whiteness, the desire to pour racial individuality into the mold of American Standardization, and to be a little Negro and as much American as possible”

-Langston Hughes

There are multiple stages of the Harlem Renaissance, but we’ll study the poetry as a literary time capsule to convey the pain of

an entire race.

• Countee Cullen— “Incident”• Langston Hughes—“The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” “A

Dream Deferred,” “Elevator Boy,” “I, Too , Mulatto”• Claude McKay—“If We Must Die”• Wallace Thurman—“The Blacker the Berry”• Zora Neale Hurston—Their Eyes Were Watching God

It would all end…• Ultimately, money problems from the Great

Depression brewed conflict among Harlem Renaissance writers, with Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston becoming the most famous advocates of the black folk. Both Hughes and Hurston rebuffed arguments that writing about the black middle class would improve race relations by showing white readers that many African Americans were like them.