Harlem Renaissance is a period that stands out above all others in black history; it refers to a cultural movement of the 1920’s and the early 1930’s. It is a period of race consciousness and solidarity among African American and Caribbean American artists, writers, and musicians centered in the Harlem section of New York City. Though it was centered in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City many French speaking Black writers from Caribbean and African colonies who lived in Paris were also influenced by Harlem Renaissance. Black art and literature flourished during this period, fueled by new opportunities for publication. It is defined as the flowering of Afro American creativity beginning around World War 1. Black artists and writers flocked into Harlem making it the race capital of the world striving to change popular perceptions of their people. The movement began to unravel with the onset of the Great Depression in the 1930s and even the major figures of the Harlem Renaissance fell out of vogue until they were rediscovered and their works were reprinted and exhibited during the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s (Witalec 1). At the end of the American civil war blacks slowly began to move out of the Deep South which was termed The Great Migration. The Great Migration was influenced by racism in the south, shortage of labor in the north caused by World War 1, southern crop failures due to draught and flooding which leads to poor economic condition and expansion of commercial and industrial activity in New York. Besides, the main reasons which had motivated black migration to the North was to better the condition of the Negro and attain social equality with the white people. Between 1870 and 1890 more than 40,000 persons per decade left the region In 1880 the population of Manhattan had reached one million and Harlem had become the residential section of the city. At the turn of the century, the construction of new underground lines connecting Harlem with the downtown business centre was announced With the turn of the 1920s many of Harlem’s white inhabitants were unable to halt the tidal wave of blacks and had decided to move elsewhere. Over the next decade Harlem’s African-American population grew to 164,566 in 1930 and became the world’s largest black melting pot. Despite the precarious economic position of a large percentage of Harlem’s population their concentration within a small urban setting produced new political awareness. This awareness immensely promoted racial uplift organization and the advancement of colored .The pre World War 1 migration had been called the “Migration of the Talented Tenth” according to Du Bois. It is a term that designated a leadership class of African American in the early twentieth century. Its main aim is to establish black colleges to train Negro teachers and elites.Ten percent of college educated students would contribute intellectually to the growth and development of Harlem Renaissance. Black schools were established and the Negroes were taught the ideas of industry, thrift and morality. The N.A.A.C.P was established in 1909 under the administration of Black sociologist W.E.B Du Bois. Out of this movement a number of literary artist arouse who managed to move out into the mainstream American culture and have a wide influence in all circles of American societyBy the time World War1 began, blacks had seen their political rights and political influence almost totally evaporating in the North as well as in the South . The Harlem Renaissance is widely considered one of the most significant events in the development of the African American literature and culture in the twentieth century. Although the movement clearly manifested itself most clearly in the writings of Black authors of the time, it is especially significant because it touched almost all the aspects of African American life redefining Black music, theatre as well as arts. The landmark stages for jazz music and the epicenter of the development of Black entertainment however was Harlem. Jazz and other African American music forms were incorporated in to the movies which indicate the acceptance of this type of music in popular culture. Langston Hughes’s poem “The Weary Blues” describes an evening of listening to a blues musician in Harlem With its diction, repetition of lines and its inclusion of blues lyrics, the poem evokes the mournful tone and tempo of blues music and give readers an appreciation of the state of mind of the blues musician in the poem. He is droning and swaying as he performs but it is the audience and readers who become conflated in the sentence which that describes their interaction. Hughes in describing the movement of the singer denotes that the blues offer a communal experience that they express the feeling of not only the artist, but the whole community. So, the blues music had acted as an expression of black sorrow and black struggle in the face of oppressive and discriminatory forces of the larger society. The Harlem Renaissance was not a male phenomenon because a substantial number of women play a significant role in the growth and development of Harlem Renaissance. In the early years of the twentieth century, black women struggle to find image of themselves in a culture that glorified whiteness. They had attempted to counter pose a reality that affirmed their worth by celebrating African heritage and folklore. Gwendolyn Bonnet is a literary figure and artist of Harlem Renaissance; she wrote poetry and provided illustrations for African American journals of the 1920s. In 1923 Bonnet published her poem “Heritage” in the African American journal Opportunity and at the same year she provided illustrations for the N.A.A.C.P journal Crisis.Another female writers are Alice Dunbar Nelson,Jessie Redmon Fauset(1882-1961) Zora Neale Hurtson (1891-1960. The Harlem Renaissance is an important event that transformed the life of African American culture. It is a mass movement in which its growth and development have been contributed by various significant factors ranging from political, social and economic. It is a period which has increased contact between African- American and white Americans by incorporating all aspects of African and American culture. It can be described as a movement where writers, artist, musicians and political activist demolish negative African –American stereotypes. Through a proliferation of cultural and artistic activities, the Harlem Renaissance provided a new window of African-American experience in the United States. It fostered African –American artistic talent, while bringing it to the attention of white Americans. This recognition of African-American artists coupled with the establishment of organizations such as UNIA and NAACP laid the ground work for the Civil Rights Movement. Afro American literature of the 1920s, with its themes of racial pride, prejudice, folk ancestry, the African past and the urban predicament as well as traditional poetic lyricism was supported by whites encouraged by black intellectuals which were published for the most part by the established publishing houses of the dominant literary culture. Although the Harlem Renaissance ended with the Great Depression, its optimistic spirit and themes of humanism still resonate with us today.
Posted on: Thu, 11 Jul 2013 11:33:02 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015