Download HARLEM RENAISSANCE

HARLEM RENAISSANCE
1916-1929
Great Migration
• Millions of black farmers and sharecroppers
moved to the urban North.
• Blacks were searching
for opportunity and freedom
from oppression and racial
hostility.
• Thousands settled in
Harlem. This became the
cultural center of
African-American life.
The Harlem Renaissance
• A flowering of AfricanAmerican arts
• Expressions of what it
meant to be black in a
white-dominated
world
• Came to an end with
the Great Depression
Authors of the Harlem Renaissance
• Zora Neale Hurston
• Langston Hughes
• Countee Cullen
• Represented what came to
be called “the New Negro” A sophisticated, welleducated African-American
with strong racial pride and
self-awareness.
JAZZ – The Sound of the 1920s
• Called the “People’s”
music
• Not accepted by the
black “cultural elite”
• Created the birth of the
“night club”
The Cotton Club was one of the most
famous during the Harlem Renaissance
DUKE ELLINGTON
April 29, 1899 - May 24, 1974
• Duke Ellington – Excerpts From Black, Brown And Beige Part 2
- Lighter Attitude – Listening & stats at Last.fm
• An American jazz
composer, pianist, and
bandleader
• Worked at the Cotton
Club during the Harlem
Renaissance
Countee Cullen
May 30, 1903 –January 9, 1946
• One of the leading
American poets of
his time and one of
the lights of the
Harlem
Renaissance.
Countee Cullen
• THE BLACK CHRIST
AND OTHER POEMS
(1929) was criticized
for the use of Christian
religious imagery
• Cullen compared the
lynching of a black
man to Christ's
crucifixion.
I Have a Rendezvous With Life
I have a rendezvous with Life,
In days I hope will come,
Ere youth has sped, and strength of mind,
Ere voices sweet grow dumb.
Sure some would cry it's better far
To crown their days with sleep
Than face the road, the wind and rain,
To heed the calling deep.
Though wet nor blow nor space I fear,
Yet fear I deeply, too,
Lest Death should meet and claim me ere
I keep Life's rendezvous.
• Countee Cullen (1903-1946)
Langston Hughes
February 1, 1902- May 22, 1967
“Hold fast to your
dreams, for without
them life is a broken
winged bird that
cannot fly.”
“The Negro Speaks of Rivers,”
one of Langston Hughes’ first
poems.
• shows the life and pride
of an African-American
during the years of
discrimination.
• YouTube - The Negro
Speaks of Rivers
Zora Neale Hurston
January 7, 1891January 28, 1960
"I have the nerve to walk
my own way, however
hard, in my search for
reality, rather than climb
upon the rattling wagon
of wishful illusions."
• Grew up in Eatonville, Florida- the nation’s
first incorporated black township
• Moved to New York and became famous
for her part in the Harlem Renaissance
• Wrote Their Eyes Are Watching God in
1937
Zora Neale Hurson
• Anthropologist
• Folklorist
• Criticized for her portrayal of blacks as
“common folks working bean fields.”
• Zora Neale Hurston