Brief Summary of the Harlem Renaissance. Essay Example For Students

Brief Summary of the Harlem Renaissance. Essay Harlem Renaissance Variously known as the New Negro movement, the New Negro Renaissance, and the Negro Renaissance, the movement emerged toward the end of World War I in 1918, blossomed in the mid- to late asses, and then faded in the mid-asses. The Harlem Renaissance marked the first time that mainstream publishers and critics took African American literature seriously and that African American literature and arts attracted significant attention from the nation at large. Although it was primarily a literary movement, it was closely related to developments in African American music, heater, art, and politics. BEGINNINGS The Harlem Renaissance emerged amid social and intellectual upheaval in the African American community in the early 20th century. Several factors laid the groundwork for the movement. A small black middle class had developed by the turn of the century, fostered by increased education and employment opportunities following the American Civil War (1861-1865). During a phenomenon known as the Great Migration, hundreds of thousands of black Americans moved from an economically depressed rural South to industrial cities of the North to take advantage f the employment opportunities created by World War l. As more and more educated and socially conscious blacks settled in New Works neighborhood of Harlem, it developed into the political and cultural center of black America. Equally important, during the asses a new political agenda advocating racial equality arose in the African American community, particularly in its growing middle class. Championing the agenda were black historian and sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which was founded in 1909 to advance the rights of blacks. This agenda was also reflected in the efforts of Jamaican-born black nationalist Marcus Graver, whose Back to Africa movement inspired racial pride among working-class blacks in the United States in the asses. African American literature and arts had begun a steady development Just before the turn of the century. In the performing arts, black musical theater featured such accomplished artists as songwriter Bob Cole and composer J. Roseland Johnson, brother of writer James Weldon Johnson. Jazz and blues music moved with black populations from the South and Midwest into the bars and cabarets of Harlem. In literature, the poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar and the fiction of Charles W. Senescent in the late asses were among the earliest works of African Americans to receive national recognition. By the end of World War I the fiction of James Weldon Johnson and the poetry of Claude McKay anticipated the literature that would follow in the asses by describing the reality of black life in America and the struggle for racial In the early asses three works signaled the new creative energy in African American literature. Mackeys volume of poetry, Harlem Shadows (1922), became one of the first arks by a black writer to be published by a mainstream, national publisher (Harcourt, Brace and Company). Cane (1923), by Jean Toomey, was an experimental novel that combined poetry and prose in documenting the life of American blacks in the rural South and urban North. Finally, There Is Confusion (1924), the first novel by writer and editor Jessie Faucet, depicted middle-class life among black Americans from a womans perspective. With these early works as the foundation, three events between 1924 and 1926 launched the Harlem Renaissance. First, on March 21, 1924, Charles S. Johnson of the National Urban League hosted a dinner to recognize the new literary talent in the black community and to introduce the young writers to New Works white literary establishment. (The National Urban League was founded in 1910 to help black Americans address the economic and social problems they encountered as they resettled in the urban North. ) As a result of this dinner, the Survey Graphic, a magazine of social analysis and criticism that was interested in cultural pluralism, produced a Harlem issue in March 1925. Renaissance Artists And Their Famous Contributions Essay PaperUltimately, the more successful black musicians and entertainers who appealed to a mainstream audience moved their performances downtown. A number of factors contributed to the decline of the Harlem Renaissance by the mid-asses. The Great Depression of the asses increased the economic pressure on all sectors of life. Organizations such as the NAACP and the Urban League, which had actively promoted the Renaissance in the asses, shifted their interests to economic and social issues in the asses. Many influential black writers and literary promoters, including Hughes, James Weldon Johnson, Charles S. Johnson, and Du Bois, left New York City in the early asses. Finally, the Harlem Riot of 1935set off in part by the growing economic hardship of the Depression and mounting tension between the black community and the white shop-owners in Harlem who profited from that community-shattered the notion of Harlem as the Mecca of the New Negro. In spite of these problems the Renaissance did not disappear overnight. Almost one-third of the books published during the Renaissance appeared after 1929. In the last analysis, the Harlem Renaissance ended when most of those associated with it left Harlem or stopped writing. Among the new young artists who appeared in the asses and asses, social realism replaced modernism and primitivism as the dominant mode of expression. The Harlem Renaissance changed forever the dynamics of African American arts and literature in the United States. The writers that followed in the asses and asses found that publishers and the public were more open to African American literature than they had been at the beginning of the century. Furthermore, the existence of he body of African American literature from the Renaissance inspired writers such as Ralph Ellison and Richard Wright to pursue literary careers in the late asses and the asses, even if they defined themselves against the ideology and literary practices of the Renaissance. The outpouring of African American literature of the asses and asses by such writers as Alice Walker and Toni Morrison also had its roots in the writing of the Harlem Renaissance. The influence of the Harlem Renaissance was not confined to the United States. Writers McKay, Hughes, and Culled, actor and musician Paul Robes, dancer Josephine Baker, and others traveled to Europe and attained a popularity abroad that rivaled or surpassed what they achieved in the United States. The founders of the NÂ ©gratitude movement in the French Caribbean traced their ideas directly to the influence of Hughes and McKay. South African writer Peter Abrahams cited his youthful discovery of The New Negro as the event that turned him toward a career as a writer. For thousands of blacks around the world, the Harlem Renaissance was proof that the white race did not hold a monopoly on literature and culture.