African American Culture During The Harlem Renaissance

During the early 1920’s, African American artists, writers, musicians, and performers took part in a cultural movement known as the Harlem Renaissance. This migration took place after World War 1 and brought African Americans of all ages to the city of Harlem located in New York (Holt). There were many inspiring young artists; one of them in particular was Augusta Savage.

The early 1900s was a time marked with tragedy in America. Started and ended with the Great Depression in between, it was not America 's finest moment. Prohibition was in place, the Klu Klux Klan was still marching, and the Lost Generation was leaving for Paris. But despite the troubling times, people still found beauty and meaning in the world around them. They still created art and celebrated life. The Harlem Renaissance was an artistic and literary movement that developed a new black cultural identity through artistic expression. It fused African traditions with slave history and American culture, and revealed to the world what life was like as a black person in America.

The Harlem Renaissance, was a big movement that happened in the northern part of New York city, were African American finally were able to share their art with the world, changing the culture of America. They expressed their art though painting, literature, dancing, and music, the music name specifically is Jazz. Harlem was once a white suburbia, that later down the road became greater in population of African Americans. During the First World War, the war opened a lot of good paying jobs opportunities to the citizen of the U.S. When the War broke out many African Americans finally had reason to move up north and get away from their poor environment in the south, hoping for a better place to race their families, a place to fulfil their dreams, and for a better life, this was called the second Great Migration. A lot of African American chose to move to mostly to Chicago, Detroit, and New York because these places were the top places other African American were already living, and lot of African American wanted to stay within their familiar culture.

During the 1920s through the 1930s, blacks weren’t fulfilled with the way they were living. Before the Harlem Renaissance began, African Americans faced poor conditions in which they were treated. They had no rights and were given nothing during their time in the south. Blacks living in the south were treated as slaves. They were treated like dirt that the people of higher power could walk over. Many African Americans were promised things that they never received. For example, land, they wanted land in which they could use. They were guaranteed this land, but never got what they asked for. These people faced much grief and wanted to change this. They wanted to start a new life of freedom and respect. Thanks to the Harlem Renaissance, African Americans were able to accomplish this. The Harlem Renaissance supported African Americans through art, music and literature.

The Harlem Renaissance took place soon after the “Great Migration.”At this time, African Americans had endured centuries of slavery and the struggle for abolition. The Great Migration was a time period, that began in 1910, that African American people moved out of the Southern parts of the United States to other parts where they were more excepted. This movement was made by over six million African American people. These people moved to a variety of different places around the states, but the largest movement was to the Harlem neighborhood of the borough of Manhattan in New York City, New York.

These great numbers of blacks along with economic aggressive black businessmen is how Harlem's newly developed real estate was seized from the white middle-class and was converted into the biggest and most elegant black community in the Western world (Huggins p.14). With this acquisition, Harlem had become a great concentration of blacks from all over the country within the most urbane of American cities (New York) just feeling its youthful strength and posturing in self-conscious sophistication. The growth and flourishing of Harlem came at just the right time for black Americans to rekindle dreams of innocence and a new start in America . An essay written by one of Harlem's most prominent leaders Alaine Locke stated that "without pretense to their political significance, Harlem had the same role to play for the New Negro as Dublin has had for the New Ireland or Prague for the New Czechoslovakia."(Knopf p.115). This idea spread like wildfire causing Harlem to be viewed by many as the "black metropolis or mecca".

Subsequent to World War I, America saw the dawn of the industrial age, and a labor boom that would ignite a great and steady migration of Black American(s) (BA) and Caribbean nationals to the North. Such an influx of Blacks and other immigrants began to change the landscapes of these cities from rural to urban centers, with concentrated populations that caused housing shortages, economic disparity, and social and political pressures for BA. The failed attempt to abolish slavery by law, and of the Reconstruction Era, BA were stuck within a new kind of purgatory. Their expectations of having equal rights recognized, while segregation was still actively pursued by the white majority, came as a crushing and bitter reality for southern migrants. As such, frustrations were felt by both White Americans (WA) and BA; WA began to resent the waves of migrants coming to take jobs, and overrun their cities, just as BA resented the lies they were fed that influenced their migration, as well as the conditions that were forced upon them. In a time heavy with ever growing frustrations around political, economic and social barriers, it would be a group of BA intellects and artists that would begin of movement towards acknowledging black culture and pride, known as the Harlem Renaissance.

Over the course of time, many different movements have occurred. The most influential types have ranged from revolutionary movements to feminism. These movements have changed the course of society and kept a different outlook on new ideas. A very important idea that needed to be stressed was the freedom of African Americans. For so long they were slaves and treated extremely poorly. Eventually, they became free people. However, they were still not viewed as equal. It took many years to move even one step in the right direction. A specific movement did help the African America appear independent and equal. One of the most influential movements and still occurring to this day is the Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance is the cultural movement of the 1920’s. The movement essentially kindled a new black cultural identity through art, literature and intellect.

The period after the Civil War was a time of Reconstruction. During this time the Southern states had passed laws placed a racial caste system that placed African Americans into a second class citizen. They were pretty much segregated in all aspects of life, from schools to the drinking fountains. The set of laws in the South was known as Jim Crow. Before World War 1 almost ninety percent of the African Americans lived in the South and seventy five percent of them in the rural South. As the war began blacks started to migrate more and more to the North because of the demand of labor, the destruction of the cotton crops in the South, and because of the rise in white terrorist, such as the Ku Klux Klan. This group had become very popular in the 1920’s and its members reached to about four million people. It only took ninety days for the African Americans to leave Mississippi. In the mid 1910’s around three hundred thousand Southern blacks moved to the north, this was known as the Great Migration. In New York the Great Migration created a cultural group which has described that era as the Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance

In order to get a better understanding on how the Harlem Renaissance began, one must start with the Great Migration from the South to the North. Considered the largest migration in U.S. history, record numbers of African Americans started arriving in large numbers in urban areas from many parts of the rural South. This period was also known as the period of economic growth. Due to poor conditions in the South, the North represented hope and progress. As America was in conflict from World War I, the goal of the nation was to support the fight for democracy. And as the war progressed, there was a growing need to fill jobs due to labor shortages in the North. The North being the primary industrial, caused many jobs to become available, and large

The Harlem Renaissance was the first period in the history of the United States in which a group of black poets, authors, and essayist seized the opportunity to express themselves. The Great Migration was the movement of six million African Americans from the rural South to the cities of the North during 1916 to 1970. Driven from their homes by unsatisfactory economic opportunities and harsh segregationist laws, many African Americans headed north in search for a better future. Due to the aftermath of World War One , it brought many African Americans into the thriving New York City. Moreover, during the early 1920s the African Americans developed their own culture by the creation of art, music, literature, including the battle in fighting for their civil rights and the effect of the Great Depression.

The Harlem Renaissance represents the rebirth and flowering of African-American culture. Although the Harlem Renaissance was concentrated in the Harlem district of New York City, its legacy reverberated throughout the United States and even abroad, to regions with large numbers of former slaves or blacks needing to construct ethnic identities amid a dominant white culture. The primary means of cultural expression during the Harlem Renaissance were literature and poetry, although visual art, drama, and music also played a role in the development of the new, urban African-American identity. Urbanization and population migration prompted large numbers of blacks to move away from the Jim Crow south, where slavery had only transformed into institutionalized racism and political disenfranchisement. The urban enclave of Harlem enabled blacks from different parts of the south to coalescence, share experiences, and most importantly, share ideas, visions, and dreams. Therefore, the Harlem Renaissance had a huge impact in framing African-American politics, social life, and public institutions.

Harlem renaissance: in the year of 1920, African Americans came up with many ways to manage discrimination with the Harlem renaissance and also jazz music to which was the best way to handle the hatred they faced. It was expressive, creative and artsy revolution that altered the U.Ss culture forevermore.

During the 1920’s a new movement began to arise. This movement known as the Harlem Renaissance expressed the new African American culture. The new African American culture was expressed through the writing of books, poetry, essays, the playing of music, and through sculptures and paintings. Three poems and their poets express the new African American culture with ease. (Jordan 848-891) The poems also express the position of themselves and other African Americans during this time. “You and Your Whole Race”, “Yet Do I Marvel”, and “The Lynching” are the three poems whose themes are the same. The poets of these poems are, as in order, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and Claude Mckay.

During the 1920s and into the 1930s, a time period known as the Harlem Renaissance was when African American culture exploded. Known mostly for the emergence of great literature by black authors, the Harlem Renaissance, was also known as the New black Movement. It was a result of several factors. Before the Renaissance, thousands of blacks migrated from the South to the Northern industrial cities for employment opportunities that became available during World