The Harlem Renaissance : The New Negro Movement

It is strange that two of the most prominent artists of the Harlem Renaissance could ever disagree as much as or be as different as Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright. Despite the fact that they are the same color and lived during the same time period, they do not have much else in common. On the one hand is Hurston, a female writer who indulges in black art and culture and creates subtle messages throughout her most famous novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. On the other hand is Wright, who is a male writer who demonstrates that whites do not like black people, nor will they ever except for when they are in the condition “…America likes to see the Negro live: between laughter and tears.” Hurston was also a less political writer than

Zora Neal Hurston was criticized by other African American writers for her use of dialect and folk speech. Richard Wright was one of her harshest critics and likened Hurston’s technique “to that of a minstrel show designed to appease a white audience” (www.pbs.org).Given the time frame, the Harlem Renaissance, it is understandable that Zora Neale Hurston may be criticized. The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural movement which redefined how America, and the world, viewed African Americans, so her folk speech could be seen as perpetuating main stream society’s view of African Americans as ignorant and incapable of speaking in complete sentences. However, others, such as philosopher and critic Alain Locke, praised her. He considered Hurston’s “gift for poetic phrase and rare dialect, a welcome replacement for so much faulty local color fiction about Negroes” (www.pbs.org).

She uses idealistic examples and real world situations to get the best realistic interpretation on the matter of the harlem renaissance. This novel also is a great way to learn and understand the importance of women's roles and rights during the harlem renaissance era for the black/african american women. All in all, Hurston’s depiction of the harlem renaissance reflects and departs the major topics and does so

The Harlem Renaissance is considered a golden age for African American art. From literature to music to art, this period of the early 20th Century highlighted the struggles and experiences in New York’s Harlem neighborhood, a predominantly black area turned cultural center. In order to properly understand the meaning of work produced during this period, one must know the history behind Harlem.

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.

 Harlem Renaissance 2015, Wikipedia, accessed 23 August 2015, .  Harlem Renaissance n.d., History, accessed 23 August 2015, .  Harlem Renaissance n.d., Encyclopedia Britannica, accessed 23 August 2015, .  Great Migration 2015, Wikipedia, accessed 23 August 2015, .  Claude McKay 2015, Wikipedia, accessed 24 August 2015, .

The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural movement in the 1920s that led to the evolution of African-American culture, expression through art, music, and literary works, and the establishment of African roots in America. Zora Neale Hurston contributed to the Harlem Renaissance with her original and enticing stories. However, Hurston’s works are notorious (specifically How it Feels to Be Colored Me and Their Eyes Were Watching God) because they illustrate the author’s view of black women and demonstrate the differences between their views and from earlier literary works.

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 Harlem Renaissance was a spark in African-American culture in which they expressed their voice through music, art, and literature in the 1920’s and 1930’s. Zora Neale Hurston is a novelist, short story writer, folklorist, and anthropologist took part in the Harlem Renaissance. Writing stories in relationship to this movement for example Their Eyes Were Watching God in which Hurston reflects the ideas of the Harlem Renaissance and also departures from it in numerous ways. Throughout the story Their Eyes Were Watching God Hurston, reflects the Harlem Renaissance by inputting ideas of this movement.

Witnessing thirty-seven million people perish in The Great War, now known as World War I, rattled the survivors, who resultantly would go on to change the world. Around the world, particularly in America, a pessimistic lost generation of Caucasian male survivors, pivoted away from typical conservative, faith-based values, turning towards excessive consumerism, hedonism, and drinking (Boyes 2016). In contrast, optimistic African Americans were able to find a light, the possibility of equality in the North, in the darkness that was the rebirth of white supremacy in the South. This light fueled the New Negro Movement, better known as the Harlem Renaissance. You can live your life in one of two ways, either like the Lost Generation and see a

The Harlem Renaissance was significant because it gave African American people and other people of African descent, a new and improved status in the society. African Americans in the Harlem Renaissance made wonderful contributions of new kind of art, music, and literature in the world.

The most successful club out of all the ones in Harlem was known as the Cotton Club. Ellington and Calloway would perform there regularly. Others believed they were a sign that African American culture was moving towards greater acceptance. The culture boom in Harlem gave African Americans actors opportunities for stage work.

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

For W. E. B. Du Bois, the New Negro was intellectual elite. Richard Wright believed that the black writer should depict the lives of the proletariat and the middle class in the context of nationalism. As a member of the talented tenth, Zora Neale Hurston was an American anthropologist, a great folklorist, writer, and a well known initiator among Afro-American (female) writers for representing potential aspects of black cultural folk legacy by invoking the pastoral. She was not at all interested in introducing “sociological jeremiad” (Plant 68) in her writings. In order to overcome the painful experience of enslavement, she motivated Afro-Americans to value their folklore and foreground the pastoral life values through her writings. Their Eyes Were Watching God offers an incisive study into it.Hurston uses pastoral elements in Their Eyes Were Watching God, for retaining cultural values and its rich heritage as well as legacy. In fact, in Afro-American scenario ‘pastoral’ is a harmonic blend of nature and culture in addition to the urban and

Zora Neale Hurston was one of the greatest authors in the Harlem Renaissance era, and it saddened me to discover that she died before seizing the benefits of her literary work of arts. Ms. Hurston was often criticized for her substantial use of southern country dialect and folk dialogue; she was a master at creating realistic African-American works of fiction. Hurston’s style of narrative is divided into direct and indirect dialogue. In her writing, she would employ a third-person narrative voice that was vastly intelligent with scholarly techniques such as formal grammar, rich vocabulary, vivid imagery, and allegories to define her settings, locations, and portrayals. Contrariwise, in the same piece, she would display a narrative voice in first-person and third-person using slang language, informal grammar, and irregular speech patterns. Through Hurston’s fictitious creations it enables us to appreciate how significant linguistic choices are used to enrich the production of contemporary literature and how different dualistic styles of narrative can work together in depicting the narration within that story.