The Harlem Renaissance
What was the Harlem Renaissance?
African American cultural movement of the
1920’s and early 30’s
 Centered in Harlem
 Consisted of African American literature,
art, and music
 1st time in American history that black
artists could earn their livings and be
critically acclaimed in these fields
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The Beginnings
I. Factors Leading
to
the Harlem
Renaissance
A. Development
of a
Black
Middle Class
B. The
Great
Migration
C. Political Agenda
Promoting
Equal
Rights
A. The Black Middle Class
Developed by 1900
 Increased
Education of
African Americans
 Increased
Employment
Opportunities
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B. The Great Migration
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Movement of African
Americans from the
South to the North
1900-1930 One
Million African
Americans moved
North
1900-1920 Black
population of Harlem
Doubled
Why Move?
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Depression in the
Agricultural South
WWI Industrial Boom
in the North
Growing Oppression
and Racism in the
South
Better Quality of Life
Why Harlem?
Available housing
 New York was the cultural center of
America
 The black population in Harlem was large200,000 by 1930
 National headquarters for recently founded
protest and political groups-NAACP and the
Urban League
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C. Political Agenda Promoting
Equal Rights
Characteristics
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No common style or
political ideology
Common themes: Africa,
American South, Racial
Pride, Social & Political
Equality
Appealed to a mixed
audience
Founders of the Harlem Renaissance
Alain
Leroy Locke
W.E.B. DuBois
Alain Leroy Locke
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Born in Philadelphia
September 13, 1886
Ph.D. in philosophyHarvard
Professor Howard
University
Cultural Pluralism: each
culture group has its own
identity and it is entitled to
protect and promote it
W.E.B. DuBois
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William Edward
Burghardt DuBois
Ph.D Harvard
Helped form NAACP
Editor of The Crisis
Extremely influential in
the literary world of the
Harlem Renaissance
“The problem of the
twentieth century is the
problem of the color-line.”
-DuBois
W.E.B. Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folk
“Leaving, then, the world of the white man,
I have stepped within the Veil, raising it that
you may view faintly its deeper recesses,the meaning of its religion, the passion of its
human sorrow, and the struggle of its
greater souls.”
From: “The Forethought”
“Of Our Spiritual Strivings” W.E.B.DuBois
“Between me and the other world there is ever an unasked
question: unasked by some through feelings of delicacy;
by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it. All,
nevertheless, flutter round it. They approach me in a halfhesitant sort of way, eye me curiously or compassionately,
and then, instead of saying directly, How does it feel to be
a problem? They say, I know an excellent colored man in
my town; or, I fought at Mechanicsville; or, Do not these
Southern outrages make your blood boil? At these I smile,
or am interested, or reduce the boiling to a simmer, as the
occasion may require. To the real question, How does it
feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word.”
From: The Souls of Black Folk
The NAACP
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National Association for
the Advancement of
Colored People
Founded by 60 peopleblack & white-on
Abraham Lincoln’s
birthday, 1909
Purpose: improving the
conditions under which
black Americans lived
The Crisis
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Founded 1910 by Du Bois
Published by the NAACP
Became the most
influential and prestigious
black periodical in
American history
Circulation: 1910-1,750
per issue; 1919-94,908 per
issue, some topping
100,000
Literature and the Harlem Renaissance
Writers
of the
Harlem
Renaissance
Claude McKay
Countee Cullen
Langston Hughes
Zora Neale Hurston
Claude McKay
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September 15, 1890
Born in Jamaica
Immigrated in 1912
Socialist editor of The
Liberator
1st two poems published in
1917 under a pseudonym
Red Summer of 1919 led to
his best known poem “If We
Must Die”
1922-Harlem Shadows one of
the first works by a black
writer to be published by a
mainstream, national
publisher
Countee Cullen
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March 30, 1903
Adopted
Masters in English and
French from Harvard
Won more major literary
awards than any other
black writer in the 1920s
“Crossover” artist in that
he was known for his
ability to write “white”
verse-ballads, quatrains,
and sonnets
Langston Hughes
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Born 1902, Joplin,
Missouri
June 1921-“The Negro
Speaks of Rivers”
published in The Crisis
Sept. 1921-Moved to New
York to attend Columbia
University, and participate
in Harlem life
1922-1924 traveled abroad
By 1926 considered a
major force in the Harlem
Renaissance
Popular Works by Hughes
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Poems
“The Negro Speaks of
Rivers”
“Harlem” renamed
“Dream Deferred”
“I, Too”
“The Weary Blues”
“Dream Variations”
“Mother to Son”
Books and Essays
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The Weary Blues
Fine Clothes to the Jew
The Ways of White
Folks
Simple Speaks His
Mind
“The Negro Artist and
the Racial Mountain”
Zora Neale Hurston
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January 7, 1891
Eatonville, FL-1st incorporated
black community in America
Novelist, folklorist,
anthropologist
Columbia University
Authority on Black Culture
during the Harlem Renaissance
A Utopian
1934-Jonah’s Gourd Vine
1937-Their Eyes Were
Watching God
Died 1960 in poverty and
obscurity
Literary Events of the Harlem Renaissance
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March 21, 1924-Charles S. Johnson (National
Urban League) held a dinner to recognize black
writers and to introduce them to the white literary
establishment
1926-White novelist Carl Van Vechten publishes a
novel that portrayed life in Harlem, creating a
“Negro vogue”
1926-The magazine Fire!! was published by a
group of young black writers including Hughes
and Hurston
The End of the Harlem Renaissance
Ended in the 1930s
 The Great Depression
 Organizations such as NAACP & NUL
shifted focus to economic and social issues
 Many writers and promoters left NYC
including Du Bois and Hughes
 Riot in Harlem in 1935
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Lasting Effects
Changed the face of African American arts
in the United States
 Opened the door for future writers, as
publishers and the public were more open to
African American literature
 Acted as inspiration to future writers,
painters, and musicians
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