preview

Did African Americans Contribute To The Harlem Renaissance

Decent Essays

The Harlem Renaissance started because many African Americans moved North during war times and sought out new opportunities. As Jim Haskins writes, many white people headed off to World War I, which freed up many jobs in the North. This gave African American peoples the option to migrate North to seek new opportunities. This later became known as the Great Migration (24-25). This caused many of them to flee to the North (Haskins 27). With the sudden increase of African American people in the North, many white people began to fear and hate them, which led to illegal lynchings and many beatings of African Americans across the country (Haskins 27). At the very beginning, before the Harlem Renaissance began, many African Americans were still …show more content…

The Harlem Renaissance was a time where black intellectuals wrote about segregation and performed plays, music, and created art (Gary D. Wintz 2). Frederick Douglass was born a slave but overcame his setbacks and became a published author. He wrote autobiographies based on his life as a slave (Haskins 81). Even after the nation was through World War I, the segregation of African Americans and white people remained (Wintz 2). As Haskins writes, once the black regime returned home, they were greeted by a grateful audience. There was a parade held for them, but this did not much change how white people felt about the African Americans in their culture. As Wintz explains, African Americans held a gathering for other intellectuals. They only expected a few to show, but African American intellectuals as well as white intellectuals all showed(2-5). As Wintz explains, many historians believe this was the start of the Harlem Renaissance. It was where African Americans began to perform major plays of the time and write many successful books and articles(5-8). The Harlem Renaissance was a great time in African American history, but they still needed a time and place to …show more content…

“The Harlem Renaissance brought a new age of culture, music, art, dance, and literature for African Americans between WWI and the Great Depression” (Wintz 7). “In the postwar period, these developments in music and literature accelerated” (Wintz 10). “The two great music forms, the blues and jazz, emerged out of the African American experience around the turn of the century” (Wintz 9). “Both the blues and jazz are African American folk music” ( Haskins 41). The blues were born in slavery, it showed the hard times of slavery (Haskins 41). Over time, the blues became more happy, “like laughing to keep from crying” (Haskins 41). Many African Americans played jazz, but “[j]azz was claimed to be created by one person, but that is doubtful” (Wintz 9). Jazz also influenced their dance. Many people learned how to dance to jazz, this included white people (Haskins 51). Music off the Harlem Renaissance also began to influence their plays (Haskins 51). “Jazz music was first introduced to Broadway in the play Shuffle Along with a new type of dance to go with jazz music” (Wintz 7). The play Shuffle Along also broke the color barrier on Broadway (Wintz 7). “In Harlem, one club opened up after another, each featuring jazz orchestras or blues singers” (Wintz 10). “Many African Americans gained their fame at the Cotton Club. It was a nightclub in which white people could attend and

Get Access