How Did African Americans Influence The Harlem Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance was a time period where African American influencers of the arts found cultural identity in a white domain in the city of Harlem New York. The Harlem Renaissance is the rebirth of African American culture in the United States. The rebirth of the African American Culture was not limited to Harlem, because it also took root in other places, such as Washington DC, Chicago, and Illinois. The positive culture of the Harlem Renaissance pointed out some of the injustices African Americans were experiencing throughout the United States, and it was portrayed in their literary arts. Original leaders in the Harlem Renaissance included James Weldon Johnson. James Weldon Johnson was one of the first publishers of contemporary black poetry of the 20th century. The name of the book he published titled “The book of American Negro Poetry” was a reflection of the writings of African American poets in the 1920s. James Weldon Johnson helped revitalize African American culture through his literary works and poetry; the Harlem Renaissance continues to influence the African American culture through the literary arts, poetry, and the influence of the originators of the Harlem Renaissance.

African Americans which had been widely concentrated in the South had experienced discrimination, mistreatment and segregation under the Jim Crow Laws. The detrimental effects these laws had cause African Americans to seek a better life in the North in West(Document 6). This movement of African Americans to North and West is referred to as the Great Migration. This migration is a racial demographic change that displays the blacks no longer will allow themselves to be subject to the oppression and injustice of the South, as well as it provides them with an opportunity for a better life. As a result of the Great Migration, a time of musical, intellectual, and artistic creation called the Harlem Renaissance occurred during the 1920’s in Harlem, New York.

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.

The Harlem Renaissance started because many African Americans moved North during war times and sought out new opportunities. As Jim Haskins writes, many white people headed off to World War I, which freed up many jobs in the North. This gave African American peoples the option to migrate North to seek new opportunities. This later became known as the Great Migration (24-25). This caused many of them to flee to the North (Haskins 27).

During this time, everyday living was extremely difficult and harsh for African Americans. They were socially limited because a lot of southerners wanted to keep them from actively participating in society. The Ku Klux Klan, a white terrorist organization, wanted to reinstate white supremacy within the Southern states. African Americans lived their lives in fear of the Ku Klux Klan and many other white southerners. African Americans had political limitations since most white southerners did not believe that African Americans had the same basic rights as them. Black Codes were laws that prevented the practice of civil and political rights for African Americans. Black Codes were later renamed “Jim Crow” laws. Literacy tests were used to prevent

The early 1900s was known to be a rough era for the African American society; however, it was a turning point for their society as well. This turning point was known as the Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance is known as an influential movement that was primarily caused by the Great Migration that took place between 1910-1920. The Great Migration was a time period that consisted of large numbers of African Americans moving to to the northern parts of the United states--more specifically, New York. This great flood of African Americans to northern states was a consequence of African Americans seeking a better quality of life in an environment where they felt more accepted and where they felt they had more opportunities to better their

The Harlem Renaissance, which is also known as the “New Negro Movement”, was a movement that was considered to have spanned throughout history from 1918and lasted until the mid-1930s. The main reason for the migration from the north to the south resulted from the Jim Crow Laws. Most Negroes felt they would be better off in the north than in the south. However the Ku Klux Klan was renounced by the republican whites but Democratic whites maintained power in the South by denying blacks the right to exercise their civil and political rights with lynch mobs and other forms of corporal punishment.

During the 1900s, most African Americans in the United States lived in the southern states. However, many began to move into northern and midwestern states. The reasons they were moving varied from family to family. In some cases, they were searching for better jobs with higher wages such as: meat packing plants, automobile factories, steel mills, or working for the railroads. Others were searching for better education opportunities or hoping to escape the racism and violence that African Americans were experiencing in the South. This movement, known as the Great Migration, was one of the largest, fastest movements of people moving from one part of a nation to another.

During World War I, million of African Americans moved to the north to look for jobs. In the south there was not much opportunity at all for African Americans. This would be later called the Great Migration. This would cause great racial tension in the north. In Harlem, eager to share their social thoughts with the rest of the world, African Americans would then explore their new surroundings and experiment with music, writing and art that revolutionize the Harlem Renaissance. Aaron Douglas would be the forefront

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.

The Harlem Renaissance opened doors to the African American people who traveled from the south. This huge movement was known was the Great Migration, where over six million African Americans were driven from their homes by insufficient economic opportunities and punitive segregationist laws, many blacks headed north, where they took advantage of the need for industrial workers that first arose during the First World War. A teacher and critic by the name of Alan Locke coined the name “Harlem Renaissance” because of its essence. Locke states “Negro life is seizing its first chances for group expression and self-determination” (Staff). With this name Harlem became the center of a divine coming of age in which Locke’s “New Negro” altered “social [discouragement] into

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.

The “Great Migration” was from 1910-1930 and almost 750,000 African Americans moved into Northern cities; 175,000 moved to Harlem, which made it the largest black community in the country. This era was known for racial consciousness, racial integration, dramatic arts and painting. In addition, it was known for the explosion of music especially jazz and the blues. This outburst of confidence, expression, creativity and talent sparked the African American drive and created a “rebirth” of African American culture. A few of the famous influences were Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Duke Ellington Johnson and Louis Armstrong.

The Great Migration was a significant movement in history for the United States. The Great Migration was brought about for several reasons, many of them being factors that pushed African Americans out of the South, and pulled them up to the North. The harmless act of moving North was more than complicated and generated a lot of conflict in multiple aspects for both African Americans and White Americans. Despite the trouble and worry, a substantial number of African Americans migrated North to some of the most industrial areas looking for a better life and more opportunities.

In the late nineteenth century, following Reconstruction, thousands of black southerners migrated to other regions of the country, seeking a better life. A majority of these migrants moved to rural areas and continued to work in agriculture. These early population shifts were decidedly different from the Great Migration of the 1920s, which involved much larger numbers