The Harlem Renaissance's Lasting Effect

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The Harlem Renaissance’s Lasting Effect
Langston Hughes, the famous Harlem Renaissance poet, once said “I have discovered in life that there are ways of getting almost anywhere you want to go, if you really want to go.” This quote and many others served as inspiration for the African American culture in its very early days. We first see the African American culture start to become prevalent after the great Migration. The large movement of African Americans to northern cities because of the promise of industrial jobs. Now, with the large population of African Americans in cities we next get the Harlem Renaissance. The African American community can thank the Harlem Renaissance for giving African Americans a sense of pride in their culture, and …show more content…

As of the 1920s Africans Americans had a very hard time in the land of America. From the first settlers of Jamestown, Virginia in 1619, until the emancipation proclamation of 1863 by President Abraham Lincoln, black people were enslaved. They were torn from their families and villages, stripped naked, chained up, and then put on boats. They next would be pulled off the boat and sold, like they were not human beings but cattle that have no will or ambition in life. The next thing they would face is the countless hours of long, hard, thankless, work they would endure for the rest of their lives. Not to mention how the men would be emasculated, and the women raped. However, the Emancipation Proclamation was not the end of the struggle, formers slaves would now experience racism. Something that their grandchildren and grandchildren’s grandchildren would have to endure for years to come. Now, due to African American’s lack of education many of them would have to go back to the farm to receive the little pay that they were now entitled to. As time stretched on, word of higher-paying industrial jobs drew African Americans to large cities and their African American burroughs such as Vine Street in Kansas City, South Side Chicago, and the most famous Harlem New York. This movement of …show more content…

The Harlem Renaissance was able to do this because of the pride it gave African Americans. Now that there are so many well known black poets, artists, and musicians. Black people started to see themselves as more than worthless, as I mentioned earlier, and they began to take pride in themselves and their work. They would write poems such as Langston Hughes’s The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain or Claude McKay’s Home to Harlem in which McKay tells the story of a soldier who leaves home and returns to Harlem (McConnel 15). Artist would create wonderful works such as Aaron Douglas’s Tribal Life, that brought attention to black history. Some would not only offer their art but also their words such as when Jacob Lawrence was quoted saying "I've always been interested in history, but they never taught Negro history in the public schools... I don't see how a history of the United States can be written honestly without including the Negro." (Artists). Musicians also had their hand in pushing African American culture; black musicians such as Louis Armstrong would often play in front of sold out white audiences. Drawing them to clubs in Harlem such as the Cotton Club where interracial couples could dance in peace. Without the wild popularity of these three groups the Harlem Renaissance undoubtedly would not have happened. Without the Harlem

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