The Harlem Renaissance

1. By Kelsey Koch and Leah Miller The Harlem Renaissance

2. What is it? • A social movement in which artists and intellectuals explored the historical experiences in the rural South and modern experiences in the urban North of African Americans, celebrating black culture. • It impacted not only other urban centers in the U.S but the general sentiment towards African Americans and their contributions to society. • It lasted from roughly 1919 to the mid-1930’s.

3. Where is Harlem andWho lives There? • It is located in New York City. • It was built as an upper-class white neighborhood in the late nineteenth century, but immigration forced them to abandon the area. By the early 1900’s, it was a primarily black neighborhood.

4. What Caused it? • In the South after Reconstruction, whites took over and denied blacks their political and civil rights. Jim Crow legislation and other constitutional amendments disenfranchised blacks and left them without representation. Due to this oppression, the Great Migration of African Americans to Northern Cities occurred in the early 1900’s. The North offered relief from the institutionalized racism of the South. • After World War I, industrialization created many factories in the cities and drew blacks from the South and new immigrants to these jobs. The population increase in the cities created dense urban areas like Harlem.

5. Who was in it? • Gwendolyn B. Bennett (poet and writer) • Arna Bontemps (poet) • Countee Cullen (poet) • Alice Dunbar Nelson (poet, journalist, and political activist) • Jessie Redmon Fauset (editor, poet, essayist, and novelist) • Angelina W. Grimke (journalist, teacher, poet, and playwright) • Langston Hughes (poet, novelist, playwright, columnist, and short story writer) • Paul Laurence Dunbar (poet) • Zora Neale Hurston (folklorist and author) • James Weldon Johnson (politician, diplomat, critic, journalist, poet, anthologist, educator, lawyer, songwriter, early civil rights activist) • Nella Larsen (novelist) • Claude McKay (writer and poet) • Anne Spencer (poet) • Jean Toomer (poet and novelist) • Ida B. Wells-Barnett (journalist and newspaper editor) • W.E.B Du Bois (civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, sociologist, historian, author, and editor )

6. “The Negro Speaks Rivers” • I've known rivers: • I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the • flow of human blood in human veins. • My soul has grown deep like the rivers. • I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. • I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep. • I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. • I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln • went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy • bosom turn all golden in the sunset. • I've known rivers: • Ancient, dusky rivers. • My soul has grown deep like the rivers. • American jazz trumpeter and singer • Shortly before his death he stated, "I think I had a beautiful life. I didn't wish for anything that I couldn't get and I got pretty near everything I wanted because I worked for it." • The greatest trumpet playing of his early years can be heard on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records Langston Hughes • poet • novelist, • playwright • columnist • short story writer • First published in The Crisis in 1921 Louis Armstrong

7. The Decline • Mainly, the Great Depression brought an end to the Harlem Renaissance. Resources were stretched thin in tough economic times. • Many influential black artists and authors left New York in the early 1930’s. This includedLangston Hughes, James Weldon Johnson, and W.E.B DuBois. • The Harlem Riot of 1935 ended some of the fascination outside of Harlem for black culture. It started due to economic pressure and racial tension.

8. How does it Relate to IM? • IM was a part of the Great Migration to the North, as he left the South with limited opportunities to find new ones in Harlem. • The argument between DuBois, who advocated racial equality, and Washington, who advocated accommodation by blacks, involved IM. He attended Tuskegee but grappled with DuBois’ ideas. • The riot at the end of Invisible Man was very likely the Harlem Riot of 1935. • Mimicry of their White counterparts by adopting their clothing, sophisticated manners and etiquette.

9. Criticisms • The Harlem Renaissance never fully separated itself from white culture. It relied on white publishing houses to expose black art literature. While opening these doors was a triumph, it could not escape this society. • African American performers played to mixed audiences. Sometimes there was black entertainment for only white audiences. • Harlem Renaissance ended abruptly because of naïve assumptions about the centrality of culture, unrelated to economic and social realities. • Though African American culture went mainstream, there was a separation between the Black community from the American culture.

10. -Videos- • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6r4XR75ToA (Minnie the Moocher: the Harlem Renaissance) • www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtSP7TnZjns&feature=related (The Harlem Renaissance- Piano Beginning) • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrDB7C6-YTQ&feature=related (Harlem Renaissance, Drs.SSmith-McKoyGJohnson1) • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyqwvC5s4n8&feature=related (Poetry by Langston Hughes-The Weary Blues)