preview

Harlem Renaissance Research Paper

Decent Essays

The Harlem Renaissance, lasting from roughly the 1910’s to the 1930’s, was an African American cultural movement that took place in the neighborhoods of Harlem, New York. From the period between the end of World War I and the beginning of the Great Depression, African American culture had manifested through music, arts, literature, and more. Then also known as “the Jazz Age” coined by writer, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the “New Negro Movement,” named after one of philosopher Alain Locke’s works, titled the New Negro, this cultural movement marked an important time in American history in which the white population first took notice of the literature of African Americans. [Newton-Matza] Although some believe that the Harlem Renaissance had no significant …show more content…

E. B. Du Bois, editor of The Crisis magazine and one of the most leading activists for the preservation of African American culture. The renaissance movement ultimately helped shape American culture, while also adding to it its own qualities to the American tradition. The Harlem Renaissance demonstrated the pride in African Americans and in addition, compelled many African Americans to celebrate and spread their culture through literature and arts, providing new ways in which people could both see and understand what it meant to be black in America. Aberjhani, an American-born African American known as a historian, writer, and well known for his articles on literature and politics, noted in one of his books, Journey through the Power of the Rainbow, that, “The best of humanity's recorded history is a creative balance between horrors endured and victories achieved, and so it was during the Harlem Renaissance.” [Davis] This conveys that the movement not only led to new styles of literature, but also new philosophical ideas regarding issues African Americans had to have faced in the early twentieth century, further highlighting how this important change in the mindsets of African Americans has survived throughout decades and even further to the present

Get Access