...The Harlem Renaissance was a time for expressing the African-American culture and had a significant impact. Several famous people gained recognition during the 1920s and 1930s. Many things came about, things such as jazz and blues, poetry, dance, and musical theater becoming the next thing for African-Americans lives. Moreover, white people came to discover this newest art, dancing, music, and literature. The Great Migration of African-American people from the rural South to the North, and many into Harlem was the cause of this huge event. It became one of the largest African- American communities in the United States becoming the center for art and literature. Most Famous person involved in the Harlem Renaissance and an influential leader...
Words: 699 - Pages: 3
...Harlem Renaissance An African-American cultural movement of the 1920’s centered in Harlem, that celebrated black traditions, the black voice, and black ways of life. Jazz and music Jazz was a new style of music created by African American musicians, featuring syncopated rhythms and improvisational solos It was so interesting because the improv aspect meant that no two performances could ever be the same Duke Ellington turned commercial radio into a place for music by performing jazz music from the Cotton Club, broadcasted to thousands of Americans Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday coined blues and jazz vocal solos Chick Webb (King of Swing) saved money as a paperboy to buy his drum set, and started playing professionally in Harlem at 11 years old, then later became the best-regarded band leader Louis Armstrong played jazz music on Broadway, a Creole Jazz Band, and at the Cotton Club. He played in many films and toured internationally. He was the man that made the most Americans begin to accept jazz into their culture II. Poetry Langston Hughes One of the most well known names of the Harlem Renaissance His writing reflected that black culture should be celebrated because is it just as valuable as white culture "I tried to write poems like the songs they sang on Seventh Street...(these songs) had the pulse beat of the people who keep on going." said Langston One of Langston most famous work was his essay entitled "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain"...
Words: 460 - Pages: 2
...348). In his essay “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” Langston Hughes covers many important points but his hook is one to mention. This hook focuses a lot on the main issue of the essay itself. The issue is that the negro poets want to write like the white poets implying that colored artists want to be white. This then leads to the fact that the white audiences turned to the artists of color and saw them as stereotypical entertainment mainly because these black artists were afraid of being themselves. Langston Hughes’s poem, “The Weary Blues” engages with themes of the Harlem Renaissance and the content of the poem expresses various issues Hughes discussed in “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain.” The poem, “The Weary Blues” is a powerful poem because it highlights the cultural traditions of the African American descent during a time of the Harlem Renaissance. The audience is able to...
Words: 1284 - Pages: 6
...The Harlem Renaissance From 1920 until about 1930 an unprecedented outburst of activity among African-Americans occurred in all field of art. Beginning as a series of literary discussions in the lower Manhattan (Greenwich Village) and upper Manhattan (Harlem) sections of New York City, this African-American cultural movement became known as “The New Negro Movement’’ and later as the Harlem Renaissance. More than a literary movement and more than a social revolt against racism, the Harlem Renaissance exalted the unique culture of African- Americans and redefined African-Americans were encouraged to celebrate their heritage and to become “The New Negro,” a term coined in 1925 by sociologist and critic Alain LeRoy Locke. One of the factors contributing to the rise of the Harlem Renaissance was the great migration of African-Americans to northern cities (such as New York City, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.) between 1919 and 1926. In his influential book The New Negro (1925), Locke described the northward migration of blacks as "something like a spiritual emancipation." One of the factors contributing to the rise of the Harlem Renaissance was the great migration of African-Americans to northern cities (such as New York City, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.) between 1919 and 1926. In his influential book The New Negro (1925), Locke described the northward migration of blacks as "something like a spiritual emancipation." In the 1920's African-Americans seemed to have passed...
Words: 2049 - Pages: 9
...Harlem Renaissance The Harlem Renaissance period was when the world found out that there was indeed a distinctive and varied "negro/black American" culture and it was centered here in Harlem of New York City. It was a culture movement that began around 1920s. Before it was called the Harlem renaissance it was known as the "New Negro Movement", that was named after the anthology edited by Alain Locke in 1925. The Harlem Renaissance grew out of the changes that had taken place in the black community since the abolition of slavery, and which had been accelerated as a consequence of the First World War. It can also be seen as specifically African-American response to an expression of the great social and cultural change taking place in America in the early 20th century under the influence of industrialization and the emergence of a new mass culture. This movement impacted urban centers throughout the United States. Across the cultural spectrum (literature, drama, music, art, dance) and also in social thought (sociology, philosophy), artists and intellectuals found new ways to explore the historical experiences of black America and the contemporary experiences of black life in the urban North. Challenging white superiority and racism, African-American artists and intellectuals rejected merely imitating the styles of Europeans and white Americans and instead celebrated black dignity and creativity. Asserting their freedom to express themselves on their own terms as artists, they explored...
Words: 1744 - Pages: 7
...writers from the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Coming only two generations after slavery, this was an amazing resurgence of black creativity in all fields from writing, art, dance, and music to philosophy, history, and the social and natural sciences. The Harlem Renaissance died out with the Great Depression, but it has left behind a lasting legacy for all Americans including these powerful stories. One idea that emerged from the Harlem Renaissance was called "double consciousness." This theory developed by writer-activist W. E. B. DuBois articulated the psychological effects of living under racism. DuBois's theory focused on the ways that blacks who were confronted with stereotypes but also were aware of a reality of black life much different from the stereotypes lived with both of these conflicting modes of thought. Double consciousness is an idea that seeks to explain the effects of segregation and racism in the daily lives of blacks, and can be seen in the choices Harlem Renaissance artists made. Harlem renaissance authors wrote during a time of self-awareness, which also included an awareness of self as perceived by others, primarily through the eyes of racism. The language choices made by these authors reflect this duality, as the characters "code switch" (a linguistic term for the way people use both dialect and Standard English in different circumstances) between Black English and Standard English. You can see Hurston taking on stereotypes in her essay on page 1604 of...
Words: 263 - Pages: 2
...Running head: Essay #2 Essay #2 Darius McPherson Post University Essay #2 The Harlem Renaissance literature was a spark to African American which created many opportunity for black people to be inspirer to speak out. This allows poets to express them feeling against racism and that equality should be given to the black community. The literature of the Harlem Renaissance gave black people a chance to allow themselves to be heard. This gave hope to the black people an idea to use the (“cultural uniqueness through literature and art”). The Harlem Renaissance wanted the concentration to be on the literature which was used with creativity by the black people to portray black people life. The Renaissance made African American in a way that got them to a higher level to use music, and art to form the start of their own literature which created the new Negro movement. Everything was progressing for the black community as African American started using the visual of art which led them to the creation of jazz music and the approach of literature that shook the cultural into new ideas. With the Renaissance getting the recognition, Langston Hughes was a upcoming writer who would seem to become one of the best writer, poets of his time. Mr. Hughes was an inspire writer in which he wanted African Americans to feel good about themselves. Langston Hughes career as a writer, he talks about the “hardship, poverty, inequality”...
Words: 798 - Pages: 4
...The Harlem Renaissance, also known as the New Negro Movement started at the end of World War I, but only began to get recognized around 1924. The Harlem Renaissance was made up of chiefly writers and was considered a phenomenon. This movement started at a time when racism was still at large. African Americans had to deal with the KKK and other racial prejudices in society. The Harlem Renaissance was significant because it was the first time African Americans expressed their views on racism and their self-love for one another, using lyrical styles that was never seen before in African American writing. Two of the most prominent poets of the time were Arna Bontemps and Langston Hughes. The Harlem Renaissance happened fifty seven years after the Emancipation Proclamation. Previously, African Americans didn’t have much education or a chance to make their mark in the literary world. They didn’t have much of a chance because they were still looked upon as inferior. They were also thought not to have a distinct cultural heritage. The United States got involved in World War I in the year 1917. At that time, race riots were happening and lynchings were frequent. After World War I ended in 1918, African Americans started coming to the North hoping to escape the racist treatment in the South. Unfortunately, life in the North wasn’t that much greater. In the South, more and more race riots occurred and many black people were beaten and killed-- this was known as “Red Summer” (Anderson...
Words: 1333 - Pages: 6
...Elijah Sanders English 1020 Fall 2013 Biographical Research Essay Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri. He was the second child of Caroline Langston and James Hughes. After his parents' divorce his father left the country for Mexico and then Cuba to escape the racism of American society. After his divorce his mother traveled looking for work leaving Langston to be raised by his Grandmother in Lawrence, Kansas. Langston Hughes later lived with his mother again along with his new step-father in Cleveland, Ohio where he attended high school. In high school Hughes was elected to be the class poet. he felt that he was only chosen because he was African-American. "I was the victim of a stereotype. there were only two of us negro kids in the whole class and our English teacher was always stressing the importance of rhythm in poetry well, everyone knows, except us, that all negroes have rhythm, so they elected me as class poet." Hughes grew up and lived in an extremely racist time. he came from a long line of ant-slavery and also very politically active people on his mother's side. Hughes also had his own opinions on politics. like many black writers and artists of this time Hughes was drawn to the idea of communism rather than segregated America and lots of his work reflected that. his poetry was often published in the CPUSA newspaper. he was involved in many communist led organizations though was more of a sympathizer than an active participant. Hughes was accused by...
Words: 783 - Pages: 4
...The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned the 1920s. At the time, it was known as the "New Negro Movement", named after the 1925 anthology by Alain Locke. Though it was centered in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City, many French-speaking black writers from African and Caribbean colonies who lived in Paris were also influenced by the Harlem Renaissance.[1][2][3][4] The Harlem Renaissance is unofficially recognized to have spanned from about 1919 until the early or mid-1930s. Many of its ideas lived on much longer. The zenith of this "flowering of Negro literature", as James Weldon Johnson preferred to call the Harlem Renaissance, was placed between 1924 (the year that Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life hosted a party for black writers where many white publishers were in attendance) and 1929 (the year of the stock market crash and the beginning of the Great Depression). Contents [hide] 1 Background to Harlem 2 Development of African-American community in Harlem 2.1 An explosion of culture in Harlem 3 Music 4 Characteristics and themes 5 Influence of the Harlem Renaissance 5.1 A new black Identity 5.2 Criticism of the movement 6 Notable figures and their works 6.1 Novels 6.2 Short story collections 6.3 Drama 6.4 Poetry 6.5 Leading intellectuals 6.6 Visual artists 6.7 Popular entertainment 6.8 Musicians and composers 7 See also 8 References 9 External links 10 Bibliography Background to Harlem [edit] Until the...
Words: 3129 - Pages: 13
...Josh Shupert American Literature Mid-Term 1. The speaker in William Carlos Williams steals her plums. 2. In “The Egg” the father collects deformed chickens. 3. The procedure the two woman are talking about in “The Waste Land” as the pub is closing is getting the one woman new teeth before her husband comes home. 4. George’s mother is glad that George was killed before he could kill anyone else and have to have their blood on his hands. 5. Robert Frost compares his neighbor to a pine tree in “Mending Wall” 6. Mrs. Waythorn’s first husband is drawn back into her life because of their sick daughter. 7. In “The Gilded Six Bits” Slemmons owns an ice cream parlor. 8. The woman in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” are talking about the speaker. 9. In “The River Merchants Wife” the paired butterflies are already yellow with august. 10. Because I could not stop for death--/He kindly stopped for me Short Answer 1. In the “Gilded Six Bits” it is significant that the shopkeeper wanted to be like Joe for many reasons. One being that Joe was a colored man. In the time period the story takes place it is often considered a bad thing to be colored. The shopkeeper desires to be like Joe because colored people are laughing all the time and nothing worries them as far as the shopkeeper can see. This is ironic because normally it is the colored man that wants to be white but this time it was the white man wanting to be colored. 2. J 3. She...
Words: 789 - Pages: 4
...Harlem Renaissance Strayer University Humanities 112 Professor Renee Pistone November 30, 2014 Harlem renaissance poetry comprises of poems composed in the 1920s by poets such as Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, and Sterling Brown. All these poets had different items illustrated in their poems, though they all pointed the oppression of the minority race in America, and their fight to achieve freedom. The focus of this essay is to analyze poems by two different poets during the Harlem Renaissance period, describing the role played by each author in this period. The poems to be analyzed are If We Must Die by Claude McKay and Let America be America Again by Langston Hughes. These two poems pass different messages and show the different wishes of the two poets. McKay and Hughes each contributed to the Harlem Renaissance poetry in varying ways. Hughes was a well-known artist who wrote essays, short stories, poems, and children’s books. He used his poetry to celebrate the African American community and tried to capture the life of the African Americans in his work. His major focus is on dreams, and he gives suggestions of what happens when dreams are ignored and postponed. He, therefore, played a role in airing the dreams of the black Americans who lived in Harlem, and how these dreams were shattered (Bloom, 2004). His poetry is a way of showing that the black Americans had dreams, which if they did not come true would lead...
Words: 980 - Pages: 4
...Harlem Renaissance Poets Hum 112 June 4, 2013 Harlem Renaissance Poets The Harlem Renaissance was the time period that immediately followed the First World War. During the great migration a vast number of African Americans left the southern states to relocate to northern states such as Chicago, New York, and Washington DC. They were in search of new employment and artistic opportunities. This was the beginning of the Harlem Renaissance era where African American artist (musicians and poets) called themselves the “New Negro”. The two Poets I chose to discuss throughout this essay are Langston Hughes and Claude McKay. I will be discussing their roles during the Harlem Renaissance, The elements of double consciousness within their poetry, and the primary themes seen in poetry during this time period. Langston Hughes Langston Hughes was one of the most influential writers during the Harlem Renaissance. His unique style of writing incorporated Jazz and Blues music into poetry. Langston Hughes played a significant role during the Harlem Renaissance period, his work became the voice for the average African American struggling to deal with the stress / pressures of being racially discriminated against. His poems encouraged them to love their brown skin and accept who they are and not how they are seen by their white counterparts. Instead of African Americans sacrificing their identity (culture) to blend into the white society he encouraged Negroes to have a sense of pride in...
Words: 1561 - Pages: 7
...Student Name Professor Name Name of school The Harlem Renaissance: A review of how the works in the oral tradition reflect key social, political, economic and artistic aims of the Harlem Renaissance. “Originally called the New Negro Movement, the Harlem Renaissance was a literary and intellectual flowering that fostered a new black cultural identity.” (Rowen and Brunner). It was the African-American boom of cultural expression that peaked in the 1920s. Though it was centred in the Harlem neighbourhood of New York, many French-speaking black writers from African and Caribbean colonies that lived in Pairs were also influenced by the Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance was a celebration of African-American heritage expressed through an outpouring of art, literature, music and dance. It was also described as a “spiritual coming of age” in which the black community was able to seize upon its “first chances for group expression and self determination.” (Rowen and Brunner). With racism still rampant and economic opportunities scarce, creative expression was one of the few avenues available to African-Americans in the early twentieth century. The timing of the coming of age was perfect. The years between World War I and the Great Depression were boom times for the United States, and jobs were plentiful. The Harlem Renaissance was helped along by intellectuals and the expansion of urban cultures. Artistic expression and articulated appreciation of African-American culture...
Words: 1372 - Pages: 6
...African American themes made him a primary contributor to the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s.The Harlem Renaissance was the name given to the cultural, social, artistic explosion which took place in Harlem between the end of World War 1 and the middle of the 1930s. Langston Hughes was born February 1, 1902 in Joplin, Missouri. He passed away in New York City on May 22, 1967 at the age of 65. Langston Hughes was a notorious American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist. Langston Hughes was best known as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance. Most of Hughes best work was written during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. His poetry made a huge contribution to the African American culture and the entire world. As I begin to ponder about ‘’Theme for English B’’ (an assignment given by Hughes’ Professor for students to write a paper), I try to imagine how things were back then. The poem starts off referencing a 22 year old colored man who is making his way towards the Harlem Branch Y, where he begins to write an essay. This poem, “Theme for English B” allows Langston Hughes to tackle the biggest issues on his world during this period of time; a world where black people were subjected to a constant and huge amount of discrimination. He connects an individual’s struggles of a young black student to the struggles of an entire race. The Harlem Y was referred to as the ‘’living room of the Harlem Renaissance. It was established in 1901 and it has remained a cultural...
Words: 611 - Pages: 3
