Black And Blues - Langston Hughes

The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural, social and artistic explosion. This event took place in Harlem, New York between World War I and the mid-1930’s. It was known as the “Negro Movement”. During this movement 1.6 million African Americans moved away from the racial discrimination looking for new opportunities. These African Americans went out and expressed their racial pride with different forms of art.

The Harlem Renaissance was an event that started during World War One and lasted until the 1930’s. The Harlem Renaissance reshaped art, music, literature and theatre in the African American community. One debated during the Harlem Renaissance was whether folk art or high art best represented racial pride. Folk art best represents racial pride because it does not imitate other people’s art it shows the lives of everyday people, and people could relate to it.

When thinking about the Harlem Renaissance, it is believed to be the golden period in the history to African Americans since it's manifested the music, literature, art and stage performance of the African American culture (Bloom, 2004). This period marked a notable moment due to White Americans acknowledging the enormous mental

"Race pride" and "race consciousness" cornerstones to the Harlem Renaissance, were closely linked to a new understanding of the African heritage of Black American(Marx 170). The Harlem Renaissance was a period between 1920 and 1940 of great cultural, economic and identity assertion among talented and expressive African Americans. Its high point occurred between 1920 and 1930 but it had started before then and continued after. The art, literature and music of the Harlem Renaissance expressed the rebirth of the African American spirit and it was born in the minds of its poets and in the hears of its common people. Such emotions were expressed in songs, essays, artwork, and dance. The Harlem Renaissance brought along racial pride for blacks.

The Harlem Renaissance was “variously known as the New Negro movement, the New Negro Renaissance, and the Negro Renaissance, the movement emerged toward the end of World War I in 1918, blossomed in the mid- to late 1920s, and then withered in the mid-1930s. The Harlem Renaissance marked the first time mainstream publishers, critics took African American literature seriously, and that African American literature and arts attracted significant attention from the nation as a whole (1).”

Even as the poverty was great and wide in Harlem it had no halt for the Harlem Renaissance or also known as, the “Jazz Age”(www.longwhart.org). The Harlem Renaissance was first known as, “The New Negro Movement” , even as this intellectual and also artistic movement, it is not widely credited, or rather more recognized in the United States. It was precedent that it started in the early 1920’s and later came to a halt in the 1930’s. The Harlem Renaissance all began by a series of literary argumentations among the lower Manhattan, located in Greenwich and upper Manhattan, Harlem(“The 1920’s” (95)). The assimilation of the vigorous artistic and intellectualistic forthcomings brought from this era had brung forward a considerable impingement on modern day African American cultural arts during this

History.com (2009) describes the Harlem Renaissance movement as “a literary, artistic, and intellectual movement that kindled a new black cultural identity.” The 1920s and 1930s emcompass a time in history where blacks found themselves ostracized from mainstream society. It was uncommon to see the expressions of black artistry in everyday life, especially on a literary level.

The Harlem Renaissance was a period in American history where more African Americans were pursuing higher education. Approximately one-tenth of black Americans had gained master degrees and Ph. Ds, known as the “Talented Tenth.” As more African Americans were pursuing higher education and were obtaining degrees, they were developing into intellectual African Americans that came to areas like New York City to demand change in equality rights for African Americans in the Unites States. This intellectual increment paved the way for African American cultural activity, which helped African Americans in building a cultural and social identification.

Langston Hughes is an extremely successful and well known black writer who emerged from the Harlem Renaissance (“Langston Hughes” 792). He is recognized for his poetry and like many other writers from the Harlem Renaissance, lived most of his life outside of Harlem (“Langston Hughes” 792). His personal experiences and opinions inspire his writing intricately. Unlike other writers of his time, Hughes expresses his discontent with black oppression and focuses on the hardships of his people. Hughes’ heartfelt concern for his people’s struggle evokes the reader’s emotion. His appreciation for black music and culture is evident in his work as well. Langston Hughes is a complex poet whose profound works provide insight into all aspects of black

“The Harlem Renaissance was a time where the Afro-American came of age; he became self-assertive and racially conscious… he proclaimed himself to be a man and deserving respect. Those Afro-Americans who were part of that time period saw themselves as principals in that moment of transformation from old to new” (Huggins 3). African Americans migrated to the North in great numbers to seek better lives than in the South as the northern economy was booming and industrial jobs were numerous. This movement brought new ideas and talents that shifted the culture forever. Black writers, such as Langston Hughes, used their work to claim a place for themselves and to demand self-respect in society. Poems that Langston Hughes wrote captured the essence of the complexity of a life that mixes joy and frustration of black American life through the incorporation of jazz and blues in order to examine the paradox of being black in mostly white America, the land of the not quite free.

From the 1920’s to the mid 1930’s a literary, intellectual, and artistic movement occurred that kindled the African Americans a new cultural identity. This movement became known as the Harlem Renaissance, which is also known as the “New Negro Movement”. With this movement, African Americans sought out to challenge the “Negro” stereotype that they had received from others while developing innovation and great cultural activity. The Harlem Renaissance became an artistic explosion in the creative arts. Thus, many African Americans turned to writing, art, music, and theatrics to express their selves.

Harlem Renaissance, a blossoming (c. 1918–37) of African American culture, particularly in the creative arts, and the most influential movement in African American literary history. Embracing literary, musical, theatrical, and visual arts, participants sought to reconceptualize “the Negro” apart from the white stereotypes that had influenced black peoples’ relationship to their heritage and to each other. They also sought to break free of Victorian moral values and bourgeois shame about aspects of their lives that might, as seen by whites, reinforce racist beliefs. Never dominated by a particular school of thought but rather characterized by intense debate, the movement laid the groundwork for all later African American literature and had

One of the Harlem Renaissance writer was Langston Hughes (1902-1967). He was an American poet who was at the same time a social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist. He was also one of the pioneers of the literature art form jazz poetry. Hughes’ began to write poems when he was still in his eighth grade. Particularly, he wrote “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” when he was passing by the Mississippi River, on board on a train down to Mexico with his father (Shmoop 4). Hughes was a key icon during the Harlem Renaissance because his works has helped the black arts and culture flourish in the 1920s. Hughes’ writing reflected his advocacy that “Black is

The well known poet Langston Hughes was an inspiring character during the Harlem Renaissance to provide a push for the black communities to fight for the rights they deserved. Hughes wrote his poetry to deliver important messages and provide support to the movements. When he was at a young age a teacher introduced him to poets Carl Sandburg and Walt Whitman, and they inspired him to start his own. Being a “darker brother,” as he called blacks, he experienced and wanted his rights, and that inspired him. Although literary critics felt that Langston Hughes portrayed an unattractive view of black life, the poems demonstrate reality. Hughes used the Blues and Jazz to add effect to his work as well as his extravagant word use and literary

Langston Hughes’s life contained key influences on his work. As a child, Hughes witnessed a divorce between his parents and the subsequent death of his grandmother, his primary caretaker at the time. Hughes’s childhood was also marked by the constant transition of moving from city to