Download The Harlem Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance
Harlem, NY – 1920’s
An upsurge in African American
cultural expression
Renaissance – a rebirth or
revival
• Usually refers to
European Renaissance
of 1300-1600
• An era of curiosity and
innovation in science,
architecture & fine arts
• A rebirth of the Golden
Age of ancient Greece
and Rome
So, what is the Harlem Renaissance?
• Began in 1916 and continued through the 1920’s.
• Also known as the Great Migration—millions of black
farmers and sharecroppers moved to the urban
North in search of opportunity and freedom.
• Thousands of migrants settled in Harlem, a New York
City neighborhood that quickly became the cultural
center of African-American life.
Harlem Renaissance
• After WWI – a huge
African American
migration to the North
• Harlem (in NYC)
welcomed writers,
artists, musicians,
performers, doctors,
students and
shopkeepers
A change in the air
 The very air of Harlem was charged with creativity as
black men and women drew on their own cultural
resources—their folk traditions as well as new urban
awareness—to produce unique forms of expression.
 African-Americans who nurtured each other’s artistic,
musical, and literary talents created an event known
as the Harlem Renaissance.
A Literary Movement
 Officially kicked off on March 21, 1924—at a dinner
where some of the nation’s most celebrated writers
and thinkers, black and white, gathered together.
 The sponsor of the dinner were W.E.B. Du Bois, James
Weldon Johnson, and Charles S. Johnson—they also
had a hand in the creation of the NAACP and the
National Urban League.
 These organizations published journals for the work
of young writers to be published.
Literature – the “Talented Tenth”
• Highly educated writers
promoted the African
American identity in
poetry, short stories
and drama.
• Harlem newspapers
Crisis and Opportunity
published new works.
Harlem Literary Magazines
• Writings celebrated
rhythms of blues and
jazz
• Captured street-wise
wit of “real” AfricanAmerican people
• Expressed frustration of
a “dream deferred””
Contributors
 Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, and Zora Neale
Hurston were among the young writers who received
recognition and sometimes cash awards for their
work in these journals.
 They considered themselves the founders of a new
era of literature.
 They represented what came to be known as the
“new Negro.”
Harlem Renaissance Authors
Row 1: (left to right)
Countee Cullen and
Alice Dunbar-Nelson
Row 2: Angelina Weld
Grimké and Langston
Hughes
Row 3: Alain Locke and
Claude McKay
Row 4: Wallace Thurman
and Carl Van Vechten
Jacob Lawrence – Tombstones and Builders
Parade – Jacob Lawrence
Harlem at
Night
Winold
Reiss,
1924
Blues and Jazz
The Blues
Origin – New Orleans
Influences:
• African American folk
music
• Work songs (shouts
and hollers from slave
fields)
• Gospel music
Jazz - An original American art form
Earliest Jazz styles:
• Ragtime and Dixieland
in 1890’sNew Orleans
Has roots in:
• African rhythms
• European harmonies
• American Gospel
sound
• Work songs
After 1917, Jazz spread north and west to New York,
Chicago, San Francisco and St. Louis and developed
into an improvisational type of music.
Jazz crossed race and cultural boundaries
and became an American music style.