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Harlem Renaissance Influence

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Also known as The New Negro Movement, the Harlem Renaissance was an abstract and scholarly blooming that encouraged African American social character in the 1920s and 1930s. The movement was mainly caused by racial tensions in the southern United States after World War I. Many of the African-Americans who had served in World War I were angered by the prejudice that they confronted when they came back. Furthermore, the African Americans working in farms had very low pay. Even though they did backbreaking work for long hours, they did not receive their fair share, and were almost always paid less than the whites in the south. This caused the Great Migration, a movement where thousands of African-Americans vacated their homes in the south …show more content…

Some prominent figures of the time include Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, and Duke Ellington. Their work flourished not only in Harlem, but throughout the United States. Many publishing companies were very interested in the work they had created, and published many of the works on their newspaper. The works of these African-Americans influenced many future generations, but, after the Great Depression in 1929, the Harlem Renaissance began to slowly wane down. This caused it to be largely ignored by the literary establishment in the 1930s and 1940s. During the Civil Rights Movement, though, the Harlem Renaissance again gained more recognition, and many more writers got …show more content…

His parents divorced when he was a young child, and his father moved to Mexico. He was raised by his grandmother until he was thirteen, when he moved to Lincoln, Illinois, to live with his mother and her husband, before the family eventually settled in Cleveland, Ohio. It was in Lincoln, IL where Hughes began writing poetry. After graduating from high school, he spent a year in Mexico with his father. His father agreed to fund his higher education at Columbia University in return for studying engineering there. During this time, he held odd jobs such as assistant cook, launderer, and busboy. He studied for only one year at the college, though, as he wanted to study literature instead of engineering. He also was upset by the racial discrimination he encountered there. Soon after quitting, in 1923, Langston Hughes got a job on the S.S. Malone. For 6 months, he traveled to various places around the world, including Europe and Africa. After going on the ship, he decided to move from New York City to Washington D.C. In late November, while he is working as a busboy in Washington DC, he spots the famous poet Vachel Lindsay sitting at a table. Langston Hughes decides to give him some of his poetry. Lindsay liked the poems so much that he put him in touch with a publishing company. This results in his first book of poetry, The Weary Blues (Knopf, 1926) being published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1926. From the

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