The Impacts Of Adelaide Hall And The New Negro Movement

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.

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.

The Harlem Renaissance was a time of happiness, music, and migration. Everyone was enjoying this time. This was a time when blacks from the south started migrating north for better opportunities. In the twentieth century, blacks started to move to the North as the train provided easy access to Chicago and other Northern Cities (Wormser). For African Americans in this time period there was not much to do in the south to make a reasonable living without being mistreated by whites and they felt that the North had much more to offer them. Jim Crow in the South was quite prevalent and African Americans knew that they weren’t wanted and those who could afford it decided to leave. In the city of Chicago there was a paper called the Chicago Defender that inspired blacks to come to Chicago. The North was and had always been a way out to African Americans since the time of slavery for a chance at freedom. Among those who migrated were the most creative people in the South. Jazz Musicians came from New Orleans to play in Chicago, Kansas City, and New York (Wormser).

The Harlem Renaissance was the name given to the cultural, social, and artistic explosion that took place in Harlem, New York between the conclusion of World War I and the middle of the 1930s. During this period, Harlem was a cultural center, drawing black writers, artists, musicians, photographers, poets, and scholars. Many had come from the South, fleeing its oppressive caste system in order to find a place where they could freely express their talents; this became known as The Great Migration. Among those artists whose works achieved recognition were Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Countee Cullen, Arna Bontemps, Zora Neale Hurston, and Jean Toomer. The Renaissance involved racial pride, fueled in part by the violence of the "New Negro" demanding civil and political rights. The Renaissance incorporated jazz and the blues, attracting whites to Harlem speakeasies, where interracial couples danced. However, the Renaissance had little impact on breaking down the rigid barriers of Jim Crow that separated the races; while it may have contributed to a certain slackening of racial attitudes among young whites, perhaps its greatest impact was to reinforce race pride among blacks. The importance of the social movement we refer to as the Harlem Renaissance cannot afford to be overlooked. Like the musicians of their day, Harlem Renaissance poets advocated for an equal society, and incorporated personal anecdotes and historical snippets into their compositions to make the

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 1920's were a period or rapid growth and change in America. After World War I American's were introduced to a lifestyle of lavishness they had never encountered before. It was a period of radical thought and ideas. It was in this time period that the idea of the Harlem Renaissance was born. The ideology behind the Harlem Renaissance was to create the image of the "New Negro". The image of African-American's changed from rural, uneducated "peasants" to urban, sophisticated, cosmopolites. Literature and poetry abounded. Jazz music and the clubs where it was performed at became social "hotspots". Harlem was the epitome of the "New Negro". However, things weren't as sunny as they appeared. Many felt that the Harlem Renaissance itself

African Americans like women created groups. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People or the NAACP was an organization whose main purpose was to encourage full racial equality. The Great Migration also improved the lives of many African Americans since they migrated north to escape racial prejudice that they faced in the Jim Crow based south. There was also a great explosion of African American arts. The Harlem Renaissance was a great artistic movement in music, writing and art. Many popular black writers emerged like Langston Hughes. This time period was an explosion of black pride, for example Mr. Hughes stated in his article “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” “Why should I want to be white? I am Negro-and beautiful”(Doc 4). African Americans also introduced jazz and the blues to American culture exposing their great contribution and value to society. Many white traditionalists did not like this change at all since African Americans were becoming more equal in

“The migration of over a million Black people from the Deep South to Northern industrial cities was vital to the unprecedented flourishing of Black artistic and intellectual life known collectively as the Harlem Renaissance.” (Alphonso Walter Grant and

The early 1920’s was a time of change and a new beginning for African Americans. The Great Migration to the North, between 1915 and 1930, was the starting point of a new chapter in African American lives. African Americans escaping discrimination and poverty, walked into what is known as the Harlem Renaissance. This era was a time of rebirth and positive influence for African Americans all over the world. African Americans migrated to many places in the North, however, many settled in New York City in a neighborhood called Harlem.

The era in American history known as the Harlem Renaissance was a turning point in the lives of blacks in the United States. Harlem, a predominantly black urban community in New York, was the primary destination of the Great Migration. As such, it became the birthplace of a historic cultural movement. The movement of blacks from the southern states to the northern states after the Civil War kick-started the Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural movement among blacks in the 1900’s that positively affected not only black Americans but the world around them.

In 1914 the world was forever changed when World War 1 had started. In August of 1914 most Americans, including African Americans in Europe saw no reason for the United States to become involved in the war. With a desire for better and an economic motivation from the oppression of the south blacks traveled north out of the south. This became known as the great migration where according to Chad Williams in the article African Americans and World War I around 500,000 black southerners moved north. The war had created demand for workers in northern factories, hence many blacks from the south took this opportunity for change. The migration took place from 1914-1920. Williams explains how the great migration effected and transformed the social, cultural, and political landscape of many cities such as Chicago, New York, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Detroit. During this time, the Harlem Renaissance was born. The Harlem Renaissance was an early twentieth century cultural and political movement in which writers and artist of color explored what it means to be an artist while being to be black, and what that means as an American. This gave the Harlem Renaissance a significant impact on the evolution of African American art, culture and life.

The Harlem Renaissance was part of the 1920’s. This was an important time for African American culture because jazz, art and literature become popular for the African American people. Ethnic neighborhoods contributed to the rise of jazz, art, and literature that promoted a new influence among the African community. Now, other ethnicities began to appreciate and adopt this new culture.

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 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.

     Between 1910 and 1920, in a movement known as the Great Migration, hundreds of thousands of African Americans uprooted from their homes in the South and moved North to the big cities in search of jobs. They left the South because of racial violence and economic discrimination. Their migration was an expression of their changing attitudes toward themselves, and has been described as "something like a spiritual emancipation." Many migrants moved to Harlem, a neighborhood on the upper west side of Manhattan. In the 1920's, Harlem became the worlds largest black community; also home to a highly diverse mix of cultures. This unprecedented outburst of creative activity exposed their unique culture and encouraged