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
There were many notable events taking place in the years 1900-1940, some being Pablo Picasso painting one of the first cubist paintings is 1907 , the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 , the 18th Amendment being added to the Constitution (prohibiting the use of intoxicating liquors) and then being repealed in 1933 , the 19th Amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote in 1920 , Amelia Earhart becoming the first woman to fly across the Atlantic in 1928 , and the list continues. Undoubtedly one of the most influential of events during this time was the Harlem Renaissance. Even with its many leaders and innovators, it wouldn’t have been nearly as effective had it not been for Alain LeRoy Locke: black writer, philosopher, and teacher who influenced black artists to look to African sources for pride and inspiration. Without Locke’s contribution, the Renaissance would not have flourished as much as it did, and black pride would have taken longer to develop and accept.
The African American presence in the North influenced American culture through artists. Musicians like Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong popularized the new jazz genre. In
In the 1920s the expanding culture of African Americans was wildly represented by the Harlem Renaissance. It happened after the Great Migration, when they started to develop new styles of literature, art, and music (doc. 6,7). The 1920s were called the “Jazz Age” because musicians recombined blues, European- based music, and ragtime. The Harlem Renaissance changed the way African Americans were looked at by other people in the U.S. and how they lived. It did this by giving them the chance to overcome the things they had gone through in the past. The Harlem Renaissance also allowed them to express how they feeled and show their talents.
Following the war, black music, especially the blues and jazz, became very popular with both black and white audiences. Jazz originated
One of the many revolutionary eras in history was the Harlem renaissance. This was a sudden cultural revolution that was realized in the 1920s and it became popularly known as the “Harlem Renaissance” or “The New Negro movement”. This is a particular era that the African American people draw pride in. the era saw a cultural, social, music and art explosion of epic proportions This was aimed at shifting the stereotypical view of black people as uneducated, intellectually deprived farmers to one of a complex, organized and intellectually equal to the whites. The Harlem renaissance took place in 1920s thru 1930s. This era saw a phenomenon rise in famous black writers and marked the onset of blues, musical theatre, blues, dance and poetry. The new art caught on an appealed to the whites as well. Harlem became a cultural and literature center. The African Americans artists and writers were gaining recognition from the white. [2]
The Harlem Renaissance took place soon after the “Great Migration.”At this time, African Americans had endured centuries of slavery and the struggle for abolition. The Great Migration was a time period, that began in 1910, that African American people moved out of the Southern parts of the United States to other parts where they were more excepted. This movement was made by over six million African American people. These people moved to a variety of different places around the states, but the largest movement was to the Harlem neighborhood of the borough of Manhattan in New York City, New York.
The Harlem renaissance brought many African American writers, artists, musicians, photographers, poets, philosophers, political activists and scholars to Harlem. All these people inspired one another to greatness. As well as boosting African Americans pride and visibility. Because of the Harlem Renaissance, almost anybody with any money what so
Thousands of white Americans came to Harlem to experience the night life. The nightclubs in New York appealed to the whites as they were very famous. Jazz music was thriving in the area. It originated in the Unites States among African-American musicians. It was at this time that jazz was at its most famous point. Many people would host rent parties which were very popular at the time. Apartment owners would hold a party and would charge a fee to those who wanted to enter. They used this money in order to pay off their rent (Worth). The influence of jazz also brought musical reviews. Soon white novelists, dramatists and composers started to exploit the musical tendencies and themes of African Americans in their works. Composers used the literary works of African-American poets in their songs. Negros began to merge with Whites into the classical world of musical composition (Wikipedia). Soon, the works of artists were being displayed in nationwide magazines. Their culture began to spread with great velocity.
Music changed dramatically in the Harlem Renaissance. Music could be heard in every club, bar, and speakeasies, all thanks to African Americans who cultured this time period’s music. Jazz was created during the Harlem Renaissance. Jazz was so influential during this time; it was also called the “Jazz Age”. Even though whites and blacks
The Harlem Renaissance, which is also known as the “New Negro Movement”, was a movement that was considered to have spanned throughout history from 1918and lasted until the mid-1930s. The main reason for the migration from the north to the south resulted from the Jim Crow Laws. Most Negroes felt they would be better off in the north than in the south. However the Ku Klux Klan was renounced by the republican whites but Democratic whites maintained power in the South by denying blacks the right to exercise their civil and political rights with lynch mobs and other forms of corporal punishment.
The era in American history known as the Harlem Renaissance was a turning point in the lives of blacks in the United States. Harlem, a predominantly black urban community in New York, was the primary destination of the Great Migration. As such, it became the birthplace of a historic cultural movement. The movement of blacks from the southern states to the northern states after the Civil War kick-started the Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural movement among blacks in the 1900’s that positively affected not only black Americans but the world around them.
expanding, sharing it’s enthusiasm throughout the world. The evolution of jazz aroused the curiosity of the nation. As Blacks received their freedom, they were able to
What was the Harlem Renaissance? The Harlem Renaissance was a period of time in American history that emphasized African American culture in the form of music, art, and poetry. The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s was plagued by poverty and racial inequality. African Americans held the dream of upward mobility and racial equality, through mediums such as poetry and jazz: a new form of music originating from the African American community of Harlem. The community of Harlem was initially designated as a place where ambitious middle class workers could live. However, the community and housing of Harlem outgrew the transportation system. This caused the white real estate owners to sell their property to a lower income group of people which were mainly African Americans. By the time that the public transportation systems were extended to Harlem, many African American intellectuals, artists, and poets had already “set up shop” there. One of the places in which they did so was Harlem’s Cotton Club. This cabaret was famous for launching the careers of jazz musicians such as Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong. However, the club was owned by whites, and its primary audience was whites. Still, the importance of the club is untestable. It was "the" way for upper class White Americans to experience what the African American culture was like at the time. A select group of prestigious African Americans would go to the cotton
In Harlem between the 1920’s and 1930’s the African American culture flourished, especially in areas such as music, art, literature, dance, and even in film. This soon became known as the Harlem Renaissance. With the entire positive and the negative situations of this time period the African Americans still seemed to have it all. The Harlem Renaissance came about because of the changes that had taken place in the African American community after the abolition of slavery because of World War I and the social and cultural changes in early 20th century in the United States. After harsh conditions for African Americans after the Plessy vs. Ferguson Trial many of them decided to move to the North to New York. By
This judgment began unexpectedly to spread as African American music, especially the blues and jazz, became a worldwide sensation. Black music provided the pulse of the Harlem Renaissance and of the Jazz Age more generally. The rise of the “race records” industry, beginning with OKeh’s recording of Mamie Smith’s