The Harlem Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance, also known as the New Negro Movement (“The Renaissance: Black Arts of the Twenties”), was a cultural movement of African Americans that took place during the late 1920s and early 1930s. During the movement there were advances of African American literature, music, art, theatre, and politics. Because of the Great Migration, hundreds of thousands of blacks moved from the agricultural southern United States to the more industrialized northern United States where New York was a particular “hot spot” for them (“Harlem Renaissance”). Harlem, New York was the center of the renaissance and was even considered to be the “Mecca of the New Negro” (Wintz 27). Aaron Douglas, a painter of the renaissance, claimed that “New York was вЂ?where the action was’ as far as Negro artists were concerned.” (“The Renaissance: Black Arts of the Twenties”). The publication of “Nigger Heaven” by Carl Van Vechten in 1926 was a major contributor to the attention the Harlem Renaissance received from whites. The book made them fascinated with Harlem and its “exotic” nightlife, African Americans, and their music, art, and culture (Wintz 28).

Several blacks contributed to the Harlem Renaissance. They expressed themselves through music, art, literature, and even theatre. One prominent author of the movement was Zora Neale Hurston. She wrote humorous stories and folktales about the lives of blacks living in the south. Her most famous book is titled “Mules and Men” and she collaborated with another renaissance writer, Langston Hughes, on a play titled “Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life in Three Acts”. Aaron Douglas was a famous painter of

the renaissance and painted “stylistic images” of African American and African history (“The Renaissance: Black Arts of the Twenties”). Duke Ellington, born Edward Kennedy Ellington, was an African American composer, conductor, and pianist. He was one of the most widely recognized and respected figures in music during the movement and in the history of jazz. Josephine Baker was a talented singer and dancer of the renaissance.