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Osiris Hinton

Africana Studies

Rico X

25 February 2010

Harlem Renaissance

Initially called the” New Negro” movement, a period in American history during the

1920s that emerged after the Great Depression and World War I. The movement does not have a

specific beginning or a specific ending; it started during the mid to late 1920s and faded away

during the mid 1930s. Despite the fact it lasted about a decade the ideology of the movement

started before 1920s and lasted past 1930s. The African American communities and the United

States connection of race to the past and future were imperative, but few people recognized or

paid attention. New York and its counterpart, Harlem, by 1925 surpassed other cities and

emerged as the black metropolis; it was no longer a predominately white community as it had

been in the nineteenth century. Washington, D.C, Philadelphia, PA, and Atlanta, GA, were some

of the major important cities to black political, social, cultural and artistic life, before New York.

Though this was the case, the connection to the rest of the United States, Caribbean, Europe and

Africa were still important to the renaissance because their talents were drawn from these

countries and continents. African Americans, writers, artist, musicians, singers, and intellectuals,

stared a cultural and artistic movement that focused on the color line and all of its complexities,

The Harlem Renaissance.

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The core of the movement was literature; short stories, essays, poems, and novels. The

other aspects such as, political, artistic, musical, and theatrics were extremely important, but

none could produce the audience that the literature did. Between 1922 and 1935, a thirteen year

period, a total of fifty literary titles were produced by eighteen authors. Not to mention the

literary works published in newspapers and magazines. An example of an author that was not

included in the eighteen is Bernice Love Wiggins. She privately published a collection of her

poems in her book, Tuneful Tales; she also published some of her verses in an African American

Texas newspaper, Chicago Defender. Among the eighteen authors, Langston Hughes and

Countee Cullen were young black men who set new standard to the creativity of their literature,

and both kept their promise when they said that they were going to be contributing figures to the

Renaissance. Nella Larsen and Zora Neale Hurston gave the perspective of black women during

this time. They both had the same writing style, but talked about two different aspects of the

black community. Larsen’s literature focused on how the black community interacted with a

white community and communities with a mix of ethnic groups. Hurston’s literature focused on

life within the rural southern black communities. Aliens of Harlem, Claude McKay, Jamaican-

born, and Richard Wright a United States southern baby, provided outside perspectives.

The visual arts did not have as much as an impact on the Renaissance; it always lagged

behind literature and music behind art. The first lines of painting did not occur until the mid

1920s and most significant paintings took place between the 1930s and 1940s. Many artist were

constructing paintings for black journals, like The Crisis or Opportunity, they work on

advertisement for books by black writers. Winold Reiss, German born who niche was drawing

African Americans and including African themes in his paintings, inspired Aaron Douglas a

black artist. Douglas was a contributor to some literary works, FIRE!! and James Weldon’s
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Johnson’s God’s Trombones. In some cases Douglas is named the most influential artist in the

Renaissance; he also was in Harlem during the 1920s and is closely associated with the

influential writers. In the1930s since the black art community started to expand, formal and

informal arts programs started to form, including the Federal Arts Project of the Works Project

Administration.

Two forms of music were created during this time of cultural rebirth, jazz and blues.

Southern towns and cities such as New Orleans, Memphis, and St. Louis are to blame for the

spawn of these new forms of music. A musician, William Christopher Handy, also known as

W.C. Handy, was labeled the “father of the Blues” he published many songs his famous being

“Memphis Blues” in 1912. He is not technically the creator of blues because “Baby Seal Blues,”

by Artie Matthews was the first to have his works published. Shuffle Along was vital to the

Renaissance because it was a musical that used blues singers in conjunction with jazz bands. It

was also a fundamental part of the Renaissance because it was the first all black musical on

Broadway. A famous jazz musician, Edward Kennedy Ellington, also known as Duke Ellington,

was instrumental to the construction of jazz; he made jazz universal, touring around the United

States and Europe. Musicians made significantly more than writers because they attracted a

larger and more diverse audience. Singers and top musicians were celebrities and black music

and performers were more readily accepted by white audiences.

An instrumental blues singer, Bessie Smith, was labeled as “Empress of the Blues,” her

first recording, “Down Hearted Blues”/”Gulf Coast Blues,” sold 780,000 copies in six months.

She did not receive any royalties after she left and only received a total of 28,575 dollars. She

was signed to Columbia until 1931 and was their best selling artist. She move on and she only

travelled with black shows and only played in black theaters, sometimes she made a special
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appearance with white only shows. Bessie was a hefty woman, about two hundred pounds, and

she was a rough, she once faced a group of Ku Klux Klansmen and ran them away. Even though

she was a part of the Renaissance she did not appear in New York often, only when she had to.

William Edward Burghardt DuBois, famously known as W.E.B. DuBois was an

intellectual activist, known to be the greatest during his time. His educational background

consists of graduating Fisk University in 1888, Harvard in 1890, University of Berlin in 1894,

and Harvard again in 1896. He was a professor and researcher at Wilberforce University,

University of Pennsylvania, and Atlanta University, now know as Clark-Atlanta University. He

composed a literary document that is known to be one of the most essential books to black

Americans, The Souls of Black Folk, in 1908. He was one of the few people who noticed the

issue of color line and he did so a decade before the Harlem Renaissance. He is also one of the

founders of an organization that is helping people of color to this date the NAACP, originally

named the Niagara movement. He also composed one of the first scientific sociological studies

complying in the United States, The Philadelphia Negro, composed when he spent his year in

Philadelphia. Even though he was well liked and respected, he did have people who did not

agree with his ideologies, Marcus Garvey being one of them.

Marcus Garvey also name one of the most extraordinary black leaders of the twentieth

century. Born in St. Ann’s Bay, Jamaica, Garvey the youngest of eleven children gained his love

for books from his father, and his respect for religion from his mother. He left Jamaica in 1910,

after he was fired from his job. Garvey a self motivated man educated himself, he read to

expand his knowledge. He traveled the world and saw how blacks were being oppressed all

around the globe, while traveling he also read the works of Booker T. Washington. He started

the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), to promote his back to Africa
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movement, also known as Garveyism. He also published in 1923, The Philosophy and Opinions

of Marcus Garvey, a verse of his beliefs.

The “New Negro” movement did create a new mindset for some individuals. The New

Negro focused on political and cultural like; racial pride, equal rights, pan African separatism or

nationalistic. The NAACP played an important role because they encouraged and awarded

individuals that were involved and excelled during the Renaissance. Characters like DuBois,

Hughes, Johnson, McKay, and Josephine Baker are only a few who excelled during this period

of rebirth; the Renaissance had many contributing characters that led to its success.
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Works Cited

Kellner, Bruce. The Harlem Renaissance. Westport: Greenwood, 1984.

Print.

Kramer, Victor A. The Harlem Renaissance Re-examined. New York: AMS, 1987.

Print.

Wintz, Cary D. Harlem Speaks. Naperville: Sourcebooks, 2007.

Print