Harlem Renaissance
1920s – 1940s
Where is Harlem?
The island of Manhattan
New York City is on Manhattan island
Neighborhoods
Overview
 ren·ais·sance
 A rebirth or revival
 A revival of intellectual or
artistic achievement and vigor
 French, from Old French, from
renaistre, to be born again
 Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the
English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
A rebirth of cultural expression
 Harlem in the 1920s: For some, it conjures images of jazz
sessions at hot spots like the Cotton Club and speakeasies like
the Clam Bake and the Hot Feet.
 For others, it brings to mind the artistic genius of writers
like Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston and painters
like Aaron Douglas.
 In the 1920s, the New York City neighborhood of Harlem
was home to an unprecedented flowering of African
American talent that left an astonishing cultural legacy.
A Celebration of American Life
 Known as the Harlem
Renaissance, this remarkable
period marked the first time that
African American artists were
taken seriously by the culture at
large.
 “Negro life is seizing its first
chances for group expression and
self determination,” wrote
sociologist Alain Locke in 1926.
 Harlem became what Locke
termed “the center of a spiritual
coming of age,” as its artists
celebrated their culture and race.
Art
 The artists and writers of the
Renaissance did not share a style.
 Langston Hughes’s realistic poems of
downtrodden but determined people
bear little resemblance to Countee
Cullen’s elegant sonnets.
 Instead, these artists shared the urgent
need to document the experiences of
their people.
Langston Hughes
Between 1910 and 1930, the African American
population in the North rose by about 20 percent
overall. Cities such as Chicago, Detroit, New York, and
Cleveland had some of the biggest increases.
The Great Migration
 In the early 1900s, hundreds of thousands of African Americans
embarked on what has come to be called the Great Migration,
moving from the rural South to the industrial cities of the North.
 As more and more African Americans settled in Harlem, it became
a meeting ground for writers, musicians, and artists.
 The work they produced was unique. Before the Harlem
Renaissance, many African American writers had tried to emulate
whites.
 By contrast, the Harlem writers celebrated their racial identity.
The goal was to create, as Hughes put it, “an expression of our
individual dark-skinned selves.”
Why Leave the South?
Between 1920 and 1930, almost 750,000
African Americans left the South for political,
social, and economic reasons.
 Why go North?
 wider opportunities for prosperity
 more racially tolerant environments
 a sense of actual (as opposed to theoretical)
citizenship
 Mass exodus from the South called The Great
Migration.

The North: Home Sweet Home?
 New arrivals could land only low-paying jobs
as janitors, elevator operators, domestics,
and unskilled laborers.
 Despite the challenges, most of those who
went North never returned.
-- Of the almost 750,000 African Americans who moved
North, nearly 175,000 moved to Harlem.
 Harlem covers three square miles; therefore, Harlem
became the largest concentration of black people in the
world.
An Outpouring of Expression
 From the 1920s through the mid-1930s, sixteen African
American writers published more than fifty volumes of
poetry and fiction—an astounding amount of work.
 Other African Americans made their African images into his
paintings. Blues singer Bessie Smith performed to packed
houses. Musicians Louis Armstrong, and Duke Ellington laid
the foundations of jazz, a form of music that scholars argue is
the only truly American art form.
Writers
 The movement’s most influential advocate may have been
Langston Hughes, whose poems combined the rhythms of
jazz and blues with stories of Harlem life.
 Other writers, such as Countee Cullen and Claude McKay,
wrote in more classical forms. Novelist Zora Neale Hurston
combined African folklore with realistic narratives.
A Powerful Legacy
 The impact of the Harlem Renaissance has been a subject of
debate. Most scholars agree that it opened doors for the
acceptance of art and writing by African Americans.
 However, some say that the Renaissance artists were too
interested in seeking the approval of the white establishment
 Even Langston Hughes admitted that few African Americans
had read his work.
Jeunesse by Palmer Hayden
Lindy Hop in Harlem
Street Life, Harlem by William H. Johnson
Duke Ellington- 1946
Langston Hughes
Links
 http://www.history.com/topics/roaring
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twenties/videos/the-harlem-renaissance
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/aaohtml/exhibit/aopart7.
html
http://artsedge.kennedycenter.org/exploring/harlem/faces/writers_launch_text.ht
ml
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MzU8xM99Uo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RQ-Ha9JmpI