Harlem Renaissance

Beginning of Harlem Renaissance

focused on a new black cultural identity during the 1920s and 1930s. African American people from the rural south migrated to bigger cities in the north, such as Detroit, Chicago, and New York (The Great Migration). Once they migrated, they were exposed to new communities where they were able to support one another, and had the freedom to express themselves.
During this, they had dramatic rising levels of literacy, the creation of national organization for civil rights of African Americans, and the development of race pride.

Jacob Lawrence

Writers and Poets

There was a huge rise of African American writers and artists.
Writers wrote about their portrayal of life an the struggles they usually went through like racial inequality.
The Harlem Renaissance was not geared towards political problems. Their intentions were more aesthetic.
Writers included Jean Toomer, Langston Hughes, Rudolf Fisher, Jessie Redmon Fauset, Nella Larsen, Arna Bontemps, Countee Cullen, Zora Neale Hurston, and Wallace Thurman.

Langston Hughes

Wrote novels, plays, short stories, children’s books, anthologies, translations. However, he was mostly known for his poems.
Hughes enrolled in Harlem where he enrolled in Columbia, but later on he dropped out in 1922
He spent most of his time in Harlem, New York working in odd jobs and writing.
His writing focused on black culture and how it should be celebrated.
Author of “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain”, “Let America Be America Again”, and “One Way Ticket”

Novels from this Movement

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