Harlem Renaissance Vs. The Lost Generation: The New Negro Movement

There were many notable events taking place in the years 1900-1940, some being Pablo Picasso painting one of the first cubist paintings is 1907 , the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 , the 18th Amendment being added to the Constitution (prohibiting the use of intoxicating liquors) and then being repealed in 1933 , the 19th Amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote in 1920 , Amelia Earhart becoming the first woman to fly across the Atlantic in 1928 , and the list continues. Undoubtedly one of the most influential of events during this time was the Harlem Renaissance. Even with its many leaders and innovators, it wouldn’t have been nearly as effective had it not been for Alain LeRoy Locke: black writer, philosopher, and teacher who influenced black artists to look to African sources for pride and inspiration. Without Locke’s contribution, the Renaissance would not have flourished as much as it did, and black pride would have taken longer to develop and accept.

The Harlem people group was viewed as one of the music realms of the world in the mid-1900s. Relatively insufficient of the desire black craftsmen, artists, or scholars of the time were from Harlem; however, it appears that all had achieved or sought after their vocations there. James Weldon Johnson, Claude McKay, Alain Locke, and Charles S. Johnson were all magnificent motivations for rising craftsmen destined to be. They helped tutor individuals, for example, Langston Hughes into being a world-known name. These inventors existed vocally gifted and given as vivid good examples to the new stars. Near 1920 and 1930, tremendously approximately thousands African Americans left the South. These individuals sang and assured through their encounters amongst defeat and Civil War; this made their music and artistry meaningfully additional deep with even more feeling and enthusiasm. Natives crosswise over America appreciate hearing the stories of the difficulties in the newest era and how they overwhelmed these.

The time period that the fiction sets is the 1920s, when the society was experiencing significant transformations in every aspect of life. The Progressive Movement, which aimed at eliminating various means of political corruption and illegal business practices, had just abated. Harlem Renaissance, a new element of the 1920s, took place in City of New York and its effect swept across the country. Harlem Renaissance, a rebirth of African American culture and art, exerted substantial influence on black people, regardless of the social status and wealth they had. Nevertheless, such splendid cultural explosion could not conceal the limitations and inequality of the 1920s. Gender and race restrictions were not uncommon across the nation. Based on her own experience as a mulatto, Nella Larsen showcased the struggling and miserable life of mixed-blood people.

The Harlem Renaissance, originally called the New Negro Movement, was a movement that shook the 1920’s in the United States of America. The Harlem Renaissance spanned between the years of 1918 all the way to the mid 1930’s. This movement was a movement of the arts. It has been said that this time period was a rebirth to the African American arts. The Harlem Renaissance is an extremely important piece of history for America.

The Harlem Renaissance originally known as the New Negro Movement was an important part of African American culture and history, which helped African Americans express themselves and celebrate their heritage. Between the years of 1890-1920 close to two million African Americans traveled from the rural southern states to the northern cities. They traveled to these northern cities in hopes to find better opportunities for themselves as well as less discrimination. The Harlem Renaissance lasted from 1918-1935. The Harlem Renaissance was the name given to the cultural, social, and artistic explosion that took place in Harlem

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.

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".

The “Harlem Renaissance” which we also refer to as “The Jazz Age” and/or “New Negro Movement” was the time where underprivileged African Americans migrated to the north mostly to Chicago and New York in search for a better life. This was a time of a cultural, social, and creative movement that enhanced the African American Community mostly in New York and Chicago between the years of 1917 and 1935. The Harlem Renaissance was the defining moment when African American photographers, writers, musicians, poets, artists, actors, scholars, dancers, composers and etc. migrated from the south to escape the oppression of Caucasian supremacy and poor conditions. They traveled in order to be able to express their talents freely. The movement allowed oppressed African Americans to express their creativity, skills, intelligence and determination. The Harlem Renaissance is the movement that contributed a fundamental part of the culture we know today. During this time African Americans started to embrace things of their culture such as music, theatre, and art.

The Harlem Renaissance, or back then referred to as the “New Negro Movement,” was a movement that took place in Harlem, New York around the 1920s which consisted of art, music, and creative writing. The Harlem Renaissance was an important and memorable movement because it brought a voice, never before found freedom, and joy to African Americans who had been hushed and persecuted for too long. Shortly after the Civil War ended in 1865 some blacks expected that just because there was more education and jobs available for them that they would finally be treated “equal.” This was until Plessy versus Ferguson case where the Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation was okay. “Separate but equal” was the legal doctrine used

Many African Americans had been enslaved and remained living in the south. After the end of slavery, the emancipated African Americans, started to act for civic participation, political equality and economic and cultural independence. Right after the civil war had ended many African American Congressmen began to give speeches after the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871. 6 of the congressmen were black by 1875 as part of the Republican Party’s reconstruction legislation By the 1870s, the predominately white Democratic Party managed to regain power in the South. Between 1890 and 1908 the Democratic Party proceeded to pass legislation that were not favorable for

The Harlem Renaissance was a movement that spanned the 1920s. It was the name given to the cultural, social and artistic explosion that took place in Harlem, New York. During this time, it was known as the “New Negro Movement” named after the 1926 anthology by Alain Locke. The movement also included the new African American Cultural expression across the urban areas in the Northeast and Midwest United State affected by the Great Migration of which Harlem was the largest. The Harlem Renaissance was considered to be a rebirth of African American Literary Movement arose from generation that lived through the gains and losses of Reconstruction after the American civil war. Art and music also flourished during Harlem’s golden age. Plays and concerts

In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation freeing all, African-Americans from the bonds of slavery. However, it was still a long road for equality, especially in the South. In the early twentieth century, many African-Americans escaped the south and traveled to northern cities, now known as the Great Migration. Many African-Americans settled in a neighborhood in New York City known as Harlem.

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.

I always found the 1920’s a very interesting decade as it went from a lively moment to a depressing and struggling one within a split second. Therefore, I believe that I learned all of the concepts pretty well. For instance, I learned about the Harlem Renaissance, the cause and effect of The Dust Bowl, and the lasting political argument of the New Deal in the United States. First of all, the Harlem Renaissance was a time period where African Americans began to embrace their roots and create art/works to reflect their experience living in US society. However, during the Great Depression many Americans were left unemployed. In addition to drastic unemployment rates, the environmental disaster, also known as the Dust Bowl, contributed to many

     A few of the notable writers and poets were Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, and Zora Neale Hurston. Langston Hughes was the most popular and gifted of all poets during this movement. Many of his poems described the different everyday lives of working class African Americans by adapting the rhythms of their music to his poetry. Some of the poems moved to the tempo of jazz and the blues. Another major figure was poet Claude McKay, a Jamaican immigrant whose militant verses urged African Americans to resist prejudice and discrimination. His poems also expressed the pain of life in the black ghettos of the 1920's, and the strain of being black in a world dominated by whites.