Harlem Renaissance

569 Words2 Pages

During the Great Migration, an influx of African Americans fled to Northern cities from the South wishing to flee oppression and the harshness of life as sharecroppers. They brought about a new, black social and cultural identity- a period that later became known as the Harlem Renaissance. Originally the Harlem Renaissance was referred to as the “New Negro Movement” (Reader’s Companion.) It made a huge impact on urban life. The Harlem Renaissance played a major role in African American art, music, poetic writing styles, culture and society. It all started after World War I and during the Great Depression in New York’s Harlem neighborhood where a lot of people lived. The first building given to black tenants was on West 134th Street. The area was called “The Capital of Black America” and “The Black Mecca” of the world (Harlem Renaissance.) From 1900 to 1920 the black population of New York City increased by ninety-one thousand. Harlem is also where freed African Americans searched for a new place to explore their new identities as free men and women.
Various people triggered the movement such as: artists Jacob Lawrence and Charles Alston; musicians Duke Ellington and Bessie Smith; writers Langston Hughes, W.E.B Du Bois, Jean Toomer, Rudolf Fisher, Countee Cullen and Zora Neale Hurston. Some older writers served as mentors like Claude Mckay, Alian Locke, James Weldon and Charles S. Johnson (Harlem Renaissance.) Two of the thousand persons who played a major role in the Harlem Renaissance were W. E. B Du Bois and Marcus Garvey. W. E. B Du Bois was a Black historian; sociologist, Harvard scholar and he wrote books such as, “The Souls of Black Folk” and “Returning Soldiers.” In New York Du Bois and a group of prominent African Ameri...

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... gangs and mobs are still around they are being tackled each and everyday.

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