Langston Hughes And The Harlem Renaissance

In the 1920’s many African American were searching for a refuge to escape from racism,discrimination, and violence. Many went to place called Harlem, a neighborhood in New York, where they commenced a new style of art, writing, and music. This was known as the Harlem Renaissance, where African Americans had their chance to be known for their skill. Langston Hughes, Louis Armstrong, were some of the important people who help express the African culture through writing and and music. They became an important figure in the birth of the Harlem renaissance. Even today they are remembered for their African American cultural success.

Harlem Renaissance was undoubtedly a cultural and social-political movement for the African American race. The Renaissance was many things to people, but it is best described as a cultural movement in which the high level of black artistic cultural production, demanded and received recognition. Many African American writers, musicians, poets, and leaders were able to express their creativity in many ways in response to their social condition. Until the Harlem Renaissance, poetry and literature were dominated by the white people and were all about the white culture. One writer in particular, Langston Hughes, broke through those barriers that very few African-American artists had done before this

In our era today, as you proceed through life, there is discrimination against races. As much as we would like to witness things change for the better we won’t due to some people not taking the chance to rewire their hatred. But in the early 1900’s, some black middle-class families immigrated to Harlem, New York, which at the time was an upper-class white neighborhood. The White’s tried to kick the African Americans out, but ultimately failed. In 1910-1930 African Americans in Harlem have changed what the city was like back then, now it is known for its African American culture. They also created a period called the Harlem Renaissance that is considered a golden age in African American culture. This was a time when they had an artistic explosion,

magine America with no rules, government, or any type of structure . This is thanks to Thomas Jefferson and the founding fathers for creating , The Declaration Of Independence . Although the Jefferson and the founding fathers anticipated a better country after the creation of the Declaration Of Independence , America has not fully fulfilled these hopeful ideals. However America has come a long way since then , we still have work to do as a nation .

during this time he quickly became a part of the Harlem Renaissance. Four years later,

James Mercer Langston Hughes, (February 1, 1902 – May 22, 1967) was born in Joplin, Missouri, to James Nathaniel and Caroline Hughes in 1902. Hughes’ parents were of mixed-race, and Langston Hughes was of African American, European American and Native American descent. Hughes' father left his family and later divorced Carrie using it as a way to escape the unbearable racism in America. After his parents’ separation, his mother travelled in

Before the Harlem Renaissance, African Americans had endured centuries of slavery and the struggle for abolition. The “Great Migration” relocated hundreds of thousands of African Americans from the rural South to the urban North (The Harlem Renaissance). African Americans started leaving the south in large numbers. They moved north to cities such as New York City, Chicago, and Washington D.C. (Rau, Dana Meachen). They were trying to escape from slavery and the awful Jim Crow Laws, also many had little money. African Americans had experienced these laws for many years, many facilities were segregated. Blacks and whites had to attend different public places such as, bathrooms, schools, public transportation and they even had to use different drinking fountains. They were in search of a better life. This is when the Harlem Renaissance began.

According to “The Reader’s Companion to American History”, the Harlem Renaissance, launched across 1920s to the mid-1930s, was a literary, artistic and intellectual movement that ignited new black culture identities. In 1926, Alain Locke, a philosopher best known for his writing on and support of the Harlem Renaissance, summed up the essence of the Harlem Renaissance that it was an opportunity of black people to express their determinations for their group. Therefore, Harlem became the center of “ The Spirit of the Times” in which the racial pride of black people was disillusioned (par. 1). The Civic Club Dinner of March 21, 1924 marked the emergence of the Harlem Renaissance. In fact, this event didn’t happen in Harlem, yet occurred in the twelfth street of the fifth avenue where was in the south of Manhattan (Wintz.

My topic is Langston Hughes and his impact on the Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance was a movement where many forms of African American culture including film and art felt were reinvorgated by a new generation. Even though many individuals thrived and left a mark on this time period, none of them were more important than Langston Hughes. During this time period, he put out numerous works to the public for their literary entertainment. He was born James Mercer Langston Hughes in Joplin, Missouri to Carrie and James Hughes .

The poem “Harlem” by the famous Harlem Renaissance poet, Langston Hughes, possesses many different types of figurative language, as well as an emotional reflective tone. In the poem, Hughes questions what becomes of a dream that is put away or delayed, and now wants to know what becomes of the dream is taken over by outside forces? He contemplates that these forgotten dreams could dry, fester, stink, crust, or explode. It is not a very lengthy poem, but it is truly an emotional one with a powerful question longing to be answered. In “Harlem”, Hughes illustrates how “dreams deferred” both punctures and frustrates the American spirit.

The Harlem Renaissance period was a time during the 1920s and 1930s in which the African American cultural, social, and artistic build up that took place in Harlem, New York. During this time period African Americans began expressing their thoughts and feelings towards slavery, segregation, as well discrimination received from the Whites. This was a time where many authors, poets and musicians made a stand and spoke out for themselves and their people. Langston Hughes and Claude McKay are two poets during this time period that expressed their thoughts and feelings to this time period, each in very different ways. Hughes and McKay each wrote touching poems that described their point of view to this time period in which they use various methods of tone and theme, as well as similes to convey a vivid image of how it was during this time period for African Americans. Hughes could easily be expressed as the Martin Luther King Jr. of the Harlem Renaissance period, as to where McKay would be considered as Malcolm X of the time period.

The Harlem Renaissance was a social and cultural movement aimed to alter the conventional notion of “The Negro” and to expound on African American’s adversities through literature, music, and visual arts. After World War I, Harlem, New York became a central location for African Americans for greener pastures and racial equality. Large quantities of black writers, artists, and intellectuals emerged within the urban scene and played a pivotal role of defining the movement in their respective fields. As a result, Harlem became a creative mecca and established a birthplace of black pride in the United States. Langston Hughes, a prominent poet during the 1920s, helped pave a road for literary innovation. Langston possessed an ability to portray

’’Respect yourself enough to walk away from anything that no longer serves you, grows you,or makes you happy.’’ This was a quote said brilliantly said by an anonymous speaker and a philosophy I live by everyday. This year at the black history month event I had to perform a speech by Langston Hughes. To be honest I was not thrilled to participate but, it’s against my standards to not agree to something dealing with performance because they count on me. This time however I let that person down. It was already hard enough being at a new school but performing in front of the whole school was definitely out of my comfort zone. I messed up, I really did. It was the most humiliating thing I’ve ever done. For days I couldn’t look people in the eyes.

The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural movement and the enlightenment of black minds as a whole. This movement sparked the minds of many leaders such as Marcus Garvey, W.E.B Dubois, and Langston Hughes, these men would also come to be known as the earliest Civil Rights activists. While Garvey and Dubois expressed their views in speeches and rallies Hughes had a different approach and chose to articulate his thoughts and views through literature more specifically poetry. Through his poetry, Hughes became a world renown poet for such works as “Let America Be America Again”, “Harlem” and “I Too” taken from his first book “The Weary Blues.” These poems while written and inspired by the everyday struggles of being an African-American were arguably targeted at white Americans. Hughes wrote a majority of his work during the Harlem Renaissance and as a result focused on “injustice” and “change” in the hopes that society would recognize their mistake and reconcile, but in order for this to happen he would have to target the right audience.

The poem Harlem by Langston Hughes mirrors the post-World War II manner of different African Americans. The Great Depression when all was done; the war was done, however for African Americans the fantasy, whatever specific structure it took, was in the meantime being surrendered (Kemp, 2013). Despite whether one's fantasy is ordinary as hitting the numbers or as respectable as needing to see one's kids raised appropriately, Langston Hughes considered every single one of them basic; he takes the deferral of each fantasy to heart.