Harlem Renaissance its influence for social and political change and the cultural change from the Negro Race to the Afro-American Culture. Harlem Renaissance, its center was Harlem. This area had heavy migration of Negro’s from the south during World War I. The industrial era provided Harlemites with good jobs, people had money to spend. But like every where else in the world, Harlem had its color line.
The Harlem Renaissance The dates for the Harlem Renaissance were 1919-1940. The phrase “A Cultural Flowering” means the specific culture of an area that has developed, grown, and advance over time and including the factors that led to it. The term Harlem Renaissance has remained popular because most scholars and students agree that the 1920s was a decade of extraordinary creativity in the arts for black Americans. The common source of the creativity of black America was the “irresistible impulse of blacks to create boldly expressive art of a high quality as primary source to their special conditions...” The special conditions consist of an affirmation for dignity and humanity in the face of racism and poverty. The Negritude Movement
The importance of Harlem as the origin of the renaissance in the visual arts in the 1920s and 30s is highly questionable. Due to the fact that Chicago premiered the first African American art exhibition and Harlem artists were not recognized until afterwards. Although the “New Negro Movement” was graced by the presence in Harlem of Aaron Douglas, James VanDerZee, and Malvin Gray Johnson, its place in African American history is not compatible with the notion of a large artistic popular front. Harlem artists were sometimes deemed inferior or irrelevant because of their artistic training and extracurricular activities. (Powell 51/52) Many of the famous African American visual artists of the Harlem Renaissance documented their life and culture in their artwork.
Harlem Renaissance The impact that the artists/writers had during the Harlem Renaissance had in the United States history and culture was a memory that the world may never forget. Initially, no one has an exact time period on when it this movement had begun but dates show between the 1920s and 1930s. Research shows that artist during this time period were mainly writing about enslaved time period, or the world around them. For example, the artist that I chose go by the name of Anita Scott and the poem that she had written is discussing the lives of everyday black babies during that time period. Great waves of African Americans migrated to northern cities to take advantage of the many factory jobs that opened up in response to World War I (1914-1918).
To understand the causes and effects of this decline, it is important to first understand the relationship between suburbanization, race, economic factors and government intervention. According to Chudacoff’s Major Problems: Chapter 7, the growth of Black urban communities during the start of the 20th century brought about a much needed labor force to the growing industrial cities there. Among the shift from rural to urban industry, the greatest shift of people was found in the Black community. The reason for this shift and ultimately the creation of the Black ghetto in Chicago during this time according to Grossman was without a doubt due to the race line. White industry owners before this time would find it necessary to hire white workers over black workers in any position, which limited and crippled Blacks in the labor market.
The Harlem Renaissance was a transitional moment in time when poetry transformed a nation of African-Americans to unprecedented heights. Great names such as Langston Hughes, James Weldon Johnson, Countee Cullen, and others have blazed the path for the future generations to follow. “One of the greatest poets during the Harlem Renaissance was Langston Hughes. Hughes was born February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri, and was raised by his grandmother, (Poetry.org).” While taking the train to Mexico to visit his father, he wrote the famous poem The Negro Speaks of Rivers. He is probably the most influential and remembered poet of the Harlem Renaissance.
Through the 60’s, it’s evident that passive resistance wasn’t persistent enough to achieve true equality for the struggling black population. The 1960’s marked a new frontier for blacks. This is due in part to a couple major domestic factors. The foremost reason would be rise of a Black-Urban middle class. Since suburban housing was scarcely available to blacks, they were left with one logical option, which was to settle within the city limits.
The black people in America were deprived of their right to understand their skills in crafts.4 The White America race has always stifled the attempts of numerous black artists. This has resulted to the question of whether the Black idea that gained support from the whites is the only one that is still there. According to historical evidence, there were and still are numerous systems of Black art that have endured racial bigotry. However, they may not have had the spotlight or acknowledgement that they ought to have had. Therefore, it is the responsibility of the black people in America to preserve what they still have and to make famous what they has been ignored in the past and have not had opportunities to express.5 The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain The theme here is based on Hughes’ story of Negro poet who admires being a white poet.
African Americans were segregated from the whites and also Women had no rights because Men were seen as the alpha male. The obstacles of the two would probably fit into the race and gender of how America was back in the twentieth century. African Americans were always hard to be put in society in the 1900’s because of slavery. Even though slavery had ended in the 1950’s, they were still not accepted into society. The northern parts of the United States accepted African Americans, and many try to escape to the north to try to get employed and leave the racial segregation in the south.
Abigeal Aboaba History 4/26/12 Period 6 The Harlem Renaissance In the years after World War I, large groups of African-Americans began to make their way up North in order to take over factory jobs that men who had gone to war had left behind. This period where there was a big influx of African-Americans who migrated from the rural South to the urban North is referred to as the Great Migration. Integrated in these groups were people that possessed talents in poetry, politics, music, and literature. Many of these opportunities were only available to the blacks due to the sizeable growth of the economy during the 1920s; otherwise known as the Roaring Twenties for this very reason. In response to the large number of African-Americans in the north, a movement known as The Harlem Renaissance began, which introduced a culture with new innovations in art, music, and literature that were up until then, unprecedented.