Harlem Renaissance

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Tarrell The Harlem Renaissance Intro. The Harlem Renaissance, also called the New Negro Movement, was an artistic, literary, intellectual, and social movement that began after World War I. Today, it is clearly known as a movement that kindled, glorified and showed the world a new black cultural identity and the intellectual capabilities of blacks. At the height of the movement, in the 1920s and 1930s, African Americans expressed themselves through literature, art, music, drama, movies and protests (Bean, Annemarie. 1999). The Harlem Renaissance centered on Harlem, New York, but quickly influenced African-American artists and other artists of the African diaspora, including Afro-Caribbean and blacks living in Paris at the time. Critic and…show more content…
Charles S. Johnson's Opportunity magazine became the leading voice of black culture, and W.E.B. DuBois's journal, The Crisis, with Jessie Redmon Fauset as its literary editor, launched the literary careers of such writers as Arna Bontemps, Langston Hughes, and Countee Cullen (Wintz, Cary D. 1988). Civil Rights Movement The success of African Americans during the Harlem Renaissance helped lay the foundation for the post-World War II phase of the Civil Rights Movement. Moreover, many black artists who rose to creative maturity afterward were inspired by this literary movement. Activists such as Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X followed some of the principles of people like Marcus Garvey and Hubert Harrison. Harlem Renaissance artists were often active participants in the civil rights movement. Between 1920 and 1930, almost 750,000 African Americans left the South, and many of them migrated to urban areas in the North to take advantage of the prosperity—and the more racially tolerant environment. The Harlem section of Manhattan, which covers just 3 sq. mi, drew nearly 175,000 African Americans, turning the neighborhood into the largest concentration of black people in the world.…show more content…
It rested on a support system of black patrons, black-owned businesses and publications. It was successful in establishing black identity as an integral part of American history. It influenced future generations of black writers, but it was largely ignored by the literary establishment after it waned in the 1930s. With the advent of the civil rights movement, it again acquired wider recognition. The symbolism and actual effects of the event served as a big inspiration for blacks in future struggles for their rights, like the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s (Hutchinson, George. 1995). It reinforced the stand of the black community and demonstrated to the world and the black community itself, what capabilities they had in store, waiting to be unleashed. This led to a united cultural identity which served as a conscious awakening for a united race among the black
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