What is the significance of the renaissance on african american culture

The immigrants from the West Indies appeared different from the rank and file of migrants from the rural south in that there was almost no illiteracy among them. James Weldon Johnson, a writer of the Harlem Renaissance, wrote "they were sober-minded, had a genius for business enterprise, and that one-third of the city's Negro professionals, physicians, dentists, and lawyers were foreign born. These two populations of African Americans moving into Harlem during the 's influenced education in the kind of leadership that emerged.

Unaccustomed to the intensity of racial hostility and harassment in America, the West Indian cultural values that emphasized education, hard work, and saving led many into professional employment and made others political radicals. During the Harlem Renaissance, in spite of the paucity of library services throughout the nation, highly trained articulate scholars had emerged and were writing books, contributing articles to learned journals, and were starting scholarly journals.

Carter G. Woodson, educator, had as early as established the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History and began publishing the Journal of Negro History, which continues today. Charles H. Thompson, began editing the Journal of Negro Education, published at Howard University in , and its yearbook in succeeding years became one of the most significant sources of information about various aspects of African American life.

The Harlem Renaissance, through its journals, books, essays, critiques, movies, art, music became a powerful teaching tool during the Harlem Renaissance. Philip Randolph, and Opportunity, edited by Charles Johnson for the National Urban League, all served as educational resources representing diverse interests for the improvement of life for African Americans.

Against this backdrop, the public library system took on major significance in the spread of this literary and artistic movement in New York. It continued to be a support institution providing publicity and exposure to artists and writers alike. Private institutions and patrons also played important roles in education during the Harlem Renaissance.

He began his education in a primary school in San Juan, where he studied reading, penmanship, sacred history, church history, arithmetic, Spanish grammar, history, agriculture and commerce. Arturo's fifth-grade teacher is said to have told him that "Black people have no history, no heroes, no great moments. Arturo Schomburg would look everywhere for books by and about African people. He also collected letters, manuscripts, prints, playbills and paintings. He was especially proud of his collection of Benjamin Banneker's Almanacs.

In fact, his library contained many rare and unusual items from all over the world. He frequently loaned objects from his personal library to the th Street Branch of The New York Public Library, which was a center of intellectual and cultural activity in Harlem.

In his collection of 10, items was purchased by the Library with the assistance of the Carnegie Corporation. Despite the efforts of Thurman and his young colleagues, Fire!! In fact, this was its most distinguishing characteristic. There would be no common literary style or political ideology associated with the Harlem Renaissance. It was far more an identity than an ideology or a literary or artistic school. What united participants was their sense of taking part in a common endeavor and their commitment to giving artistic expression to the African American experience.

If there was a statement that defined the philosophy of the new literary movement it was Langston Hughes's essay, "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain," published in The Nation , June 16, We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, it doesn't matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly too. The tom-tom cries and the tom-tom laughs.

If colored people are pleased we are glad. If they are not their displeasure doesn't matter either. We will build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we will stand on top of the mountain, free within ourselves.

Like Fire!! There was, not surprisingly, resistance to this independence, especially among those concerned with the political costs that the realistic expressions of black life could engender—feeding white prejudice by exposing the less savory elements of the black community.

Du Bois responded to Hughes a few weeks later in a Chicago speech that was later published in The Crisis as "The Criteria of Negro Art" October : "Thus all Art is propaganda and ever must be, despite the wailing of the purists.

I stand in utter shamelessness and say that whatever art I have for writing has been used always for propaganda for gaining the right of black folk to love and enjoy. I do not care a damn for any art that is not used for propaganda. But I do care when propaganda is confined to one side while the other is stripped and silent. The determination of black writers to follow their own artistic vision led to the artistic diversity that was the principal characteristic of the Harlem Renaissance.

This diversity is clearly evident in the poetry of the period where subject matter, style, and tone ranged from the traditional to the more inventive. Langston Hughes, for example, captured the life and language of the working class, and the rhythm and style of the blues in a number of his poems, none more so than "The Weary Blues. McKay used sonnets for much of his protest verse, while Cullen's poems relied both on classical literary allusions and symbols and standard poetic forms.

This diversity and experimentation also characterized music. This was evidenced in the blues of Bessie Smith and the range of jazz from the early rhythms of Jelly Roll Morton to the instrumentation of Louis Armstrong or the sophisticated orchestration of Duke Ellington. In painting, the soft colors and pastels that Aaron Douglas used to create a veiled view for the African-inspired images in his paintings and murals contrast sharply with Jacob Lawrence's use of bright colors and sharply defined images.

Within this diversity, several themes emerged which set the character of the Harlem Renaissance. No black writer, musician, or artist expressed all of these themes, but each did address one or more in his or her work. The first of these themes was the effort to recapture the African American past—its rural southern roots, urban experience, and African heritage. Interest in the African past corresponded with the rise of Pan-Africanism in African American politics, which was at the center of Marcus Garvey's ideology and also a concern of W.

Du Bois in the s. It also reflected the general fascination with ancient African history that followed the discovery of King Tut's tomb in A number of musicians, from the classical composer William Grant Still to jazz great Louis Armstrong, introduced African inspired rhythms and themes in their compositions.

The exploration of black southern heritage was reflected in novels by Jean Toomer and Zora Neale Hurston, as well as in Jacob Lawrence's art. Zora Neale Hurston used her experience as a folklorist as the basis for her extensive study of rural southern black life in her novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. Jacob Lawrence turned to African American history for much of his work including two of his multi-canvas series' of paintings, the Harriett Tubman series and the one on the Black Migration.

Harlem Renaissance writers and artists also explored life in Harlem and other urban centers. Some black writers, including McKay and Hughes, as well as Rudolph Fisher and Wallace Thurman, were accused of overemphasizing crime, sexuality, and other less-savory aspects of ghetto life in order to feed the voyeuristic desires of white readers and publishers, in imitation of white novelist Carl Van Vechten's controversial Harlem novel, Nigger Heaven.

A third major theme addressed by the literature of the Harlem Renaissance was race. Virtually every novel and play, and most of the poetry, explored race in America, especially the impact of race and racism on African Americans.

In their simplest form these works protested racial injustice. Langston Hughes also wrote protest pieces, as did almost every black writer at one time or another. Among the visual artists, Lawrence's historical series emphasized the racial struggle that dominated African American history, while Romare Bearden's early illustrative work often focused on racial politics.

The struggle against lynching in the mids stimulated anti-lynching poetry, as well as Walter White's carefully researched study of the subject, Rope and Faggot.

In the early s, the Scottsboro incident stimulated considerable protest writing, as well as a anthology, Negro , which addressed race in an international context. Most of the literary efforts of the Harlem Renaissance avoided overt protest or propaganda, focusing instead on the psychological and social impact of race. Among the best of these studies were Nella Larsen's two novels, Quicksand in and, a year later, Passing.

Both explored characters of mixed racial heritage who struggled to define their racial identity in a world of prejudice and racism. Langston Hughes addressed similar themes in his poem "Cross," and in his play, Mulatto , as did Jessie Fauset in her novel, Plum Bun.

That same year Wallace Thurman made color discrimination within the urban black community the focus of his novel, The Blacker the Berry. Finally, the Harlem Renaissance incorporated all aspects of African American culture in its creative work. This ranged from the use of black music as an inspiration for poetry or black folklore as an inspiration for novels and short stories. Best known for this was Langston Hughes who used the rhythms and styles of jazz and the blues in much of his early poetry.

James Weldon Johnson, who published two collections of black spirituals in and , and Sterling Brown, who used the blues and southern work songs in many of the poems in his book of poetry, Southern Road , continued the practice that Hughes had initiated. Other writers exploited black religion as a literary source. Johnson made the black preacher and his sermons the basis for the poems in God's Trombones , while Hurston and Larsen used black religion and black preachers in their novels.

Hurston's first novel, Jonah's Gourd Vine , described the exploits of a southern black preacher, while in the last portion of Quicksand , Larsen's heroine was ensnared by religion and a southern black preacher.

Through all of these themes, Harlem Renaissance writers, musicians, and artists were determined to express the African American experience in all of its variety and complexity as realistically as possible. This commitment to realism ranged from the ghetto realism that created such controversy when writers exposed negative aspects of African American life, to beautifully crafted and detailed portraits of black life in small towns such as in Hughes's novel, Not Without Laughter , or the witty and biting depiction of Harlem's black literati in Wallace Thurman's Infants of the Spring.

The Harlem Renaissance appealed to and relied on a mixed audience—the African American middle class and white consumers of the arts. African American magazines such as The Crisis the NAACP monthly journal and Opportunity the monthly publication of the Urban League employed Harlem Renaissance writers on their editorial staff, published their poetry and short stories, and promoted African American literature through articles, reviews, and annual literary prizes.

They also printed illustrations by black artists and used black artists in the layout design of their periodicals.

Also, blacks attempted to produce their own literary and artistic venues. In addition to the short-lived Fire!! As important as these literary outlets were, they were not sufficient to support a literary movement. Consequently, the Harlem Renaissance relied heavily on white-owned enterprises for its creative works. Publishing houses, magazines, recording companies, theaters, and art galleries were primarily white-owned, and financial support through grants, prizes, and awards generally involved white money.

In fact, one of the major accomplishments of the Renaissance was to push open the door to mainstream periodicals, publishing houses, and funding sources. African American music also played to mixed audiences. Harlem's cabarets attracted both Harlem residents and white New Yorkers seeking out Harlem nightlife.

The famous Cotton Club carried this to a bizarre extreme by providing black entertainment for exclusively white audiences. Ultimately, the more successful black musicians and entertainers moved their performances downtown.

The relationship of the Harlem Renaissance to white venues and white audiences created controversy. While most African American critics strongly supported the movement, others like Benjamin Brawley and even W. Du Bois were sharply critical and accused Renaissance writers of reinforcing negative African American stereotypes. Langston Hughes's assertion that black artists intended to express themselves freely, no matter what the black public or white public thought, accurately reflected the attitude of most writers and artists.

The end of the Harlem Renaissance is as difficult to define as its beginnings. It varies somewhat from one artistic field to another. In musical theater, the popularity of black musical reviews died out by the early s, although there were occasional efforts, mostly unsuccessful, to revive the genre.

However, black performers and musicians continued to work, although not so often in all black shows. Black music continued into the World War II era, although the popularity of blues singers waned somewhat, and jazz changed as the big band style became popular.

Literature also changed, and a new generation of black writers like Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison emerged with little interest in or connection with the Harlem Renaissance. In art, a number of artists who had emerged in the s continued to work, but again, with no connection to a broader African American movement. Also, a number of Harlem Renaissance literary figures went silent, left Harlem, or died.

Some, including Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, continued to write and publish into the s and beyond, although there was no longer any sense that they were connected to a literary movement. And Harlem lost some of its magic following the race riot. In any case, few, if any, people were talking about a Harlem Renaissance by The Harlem Renaissance flourished in the late s and early s, but its antecedents and legacy spread many years before and after It had no clearly defined beginning or end, but emerged out of the social and intellectual upheaval in the African American community that followed World War I, blossomed in the mid- to lates, and then faded away in the mids.

While at its core it was primarily a literary movement, the Harlem Renaissance touched all of the African American creative arts. While its participants were determined to truthfully represent the African American experience and believed in racial pride and equality, they shared no common political philosophy, social belief, artistic style, or aesthetic principle.

This was a movement of individuals free of any overriding manifesto. While central to African American artistic and intellectual life, by no means did it enjoy the full support of the black or white intelligentsia; it generated as much hostility and criticism as it did support and praise.

From the moment of its birth, its legitimacy was debated. Nevertheless, by at least one measure, its success was clear: the Harlem Renaissance was the first time that a considerable number of mainstream publishers and critics took African American literature seriously, and it was the first time that African American literature and the arts attracted significant attention from the nation at large. Cary D. Wintz Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, , — June 16, , Humanities Texas has assembled a list of online educational resources related to the Harlem Renaissance and its history, literature, and culture.

These websites include primary source documents, lesson plans, photographs, and other interactive elements that will enhance classroom instruction and student comprehension.

Skip to the main content. Wintz February What was the Harlem Renaissance and when did it begin? Time First, to know when the Harlem Renaissance began, we must determine its origins.

In , it was all about the show, and, as he wrote in his autobiography, it was "a honey of a show:" Swift, bright, funny, rollicking, and gay, with a dozen danceable, singable tunes. Place Situating the Harlem Renaissance in space is almost as complex as defining its origins and time span. Emerging out of the subway at th and Lennox Avenue, Gillis was transfixed: Clean air, blue sky, bright sunlight.

He recalled his arrival: "I went up the steps and out into the bright September sunlight. Renaissance So, what was the Harlem Renaissance? If there was a statement that defined the philosophy of the new literary movement it was Langston Hughes's essay, "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain," published in The Nation , June 16, We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. Slow fade to black The end of the Harlem Renaissance is as difficult to define as its beginnings.

What was the Harlem Renaissance and why was it important? Online Educational Resources: The Harlem Renaissance Humanities Texas has assembled a list of online educational resources related to the Harlem Renaissance and its history, literature, and culture. Portrait of Charles S. Johnson was founder of Opportunity , the National Urban League's monthly magazine, and organizer of the Civic Club Dinner that marked the emergence of the Harlem Renaissance as a literary movement.

Photo by Gordon Parks. In and , natural disasters in the south put Black workers and sharecroppers out of work. Additionally, during and after World War I , immigration to the United States fell, and northern recruiters headed south to entice Black workers to their companies. By , some , African Americans from the South had moved north, and Harlem was one of the most popular destinations for these families. This considerable population shift resulted in a Black Pride movement with leaders like Du Bois working to ensure that Black Americans got the credit they deserved for cultural areas of life.

Sociologist Charles Spurgeon Johnson, who was integral in shaping the Harlem literary scene, used the debut party for There Is Confusion to organize resources to create Opportunity , the National Urban League magazine he founded and edited, a success that bolstered writers like Langston Hughes. Hughes was at that party along with other promising Black writers and editors, as well as powerful white New York publishing figures.

Poetry, too, flourished during the Harlem Renaissance. Cullen received a Guggenheim fellowship for his poetry in and married Nina Yolande, the daughter of W. Their wedding was a major social event in Harlem. The music that percolated in and then boomed out of Harlem in the s was jazz, often played at speakeasies offering illegal liquor.

Jazz became a great draw for not only Harlem residents, but outside white audiences also. With the groundbreaking new music came a vibrant nightlife. The Savoy opened in , an integrated ballroom with two bandstands that featured continuous jazz and dancing well past midnight, sometimes in the form of battling bands helmed by Fletcher Henderson, Jimmie Lunceford and King Oliver.

While it was fashionable to frequent Harlem nightlife, entrepreneurs realized that some white people wanted to experience black culture without having to socialize with African Americans and created clubs to cater to them. The most successful of these was the Cotton Club, which featured frequent performances by Ellington and Calloway.

Some in the community derided the existence of such clubs, while others believed they were a sign that Black culture was moving toward greater acceptance. The cultural boom in Harlem gave Black actors opportunities for stage work that had previously been withheld. Traditionally, if Black actors appeared onstage, it was in a minstrel show musical and rarely in a serious drama with non-stereotypical roles. At the center of this stage revolution was the versatile Paul Robeson , an actor, singer, writer, activist and more.

Robeson first moved to Harlem in while studying law at Columbia University and continually maintained a social presence in the area, where he was considered an inspirational but approachable figure. Robeson believed that arts and culture were the best paths forward for Black Americans to overcome racism and make advances in a white-dominated culture. Black musical revues were staples in Harlem, and by the mids had moved south to Broadway, expanding into the white world.

White patron Van Vechten helped bring more serious lack stage work to Broadway, though largely the work of white authors. Playwright Willis Richardson offered more serious opportunities for Black actors with a several one-act plays written in the s, as well as articles in Opportunity magazine outlining his goals. The visual arts were never welcoming to Black artists, with art schools, galleries and museums shutting them out. She followed that up with small, clay portraits of everyday African Americans, and would later be pivotal to enlisting black artists into the Federal Art Project, a division of the Work Progress Administration WPA.

Black nationalist and leader of the Pan-Africanism movement Marcus Garvey was born in Jamaica but moved to Harlem in and began publishing the influential newspaper Negro World in