Harlem Renaissance

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Harlem Renaissance
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Harlem was not so much a place as a state of
mind, the cultural metaphor for black America
itself.
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What It Was

• Harlem Renaissance
• A flowering of African American art, literature,
  music and culture in the United States led
  primarily by the African American community based
  in Harlem, New York City.

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When It Occurred

• Beginning
• 1924 Opportunity magazine hosted a party for
  black writers with many white publishers
  attending
• Ending
• 1929, the year of the stock market crash and the
  resulting economic Great Depression.

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Who?

• Descendants from a generation whose parents or
  grandparents had witnessed slavery and
  Reconstruction
• Lived in a country governed by Jim Crow laws.

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Who?

• Many of these people were part of the Great
  Migration out of the South and other racially
  stratified communities

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Between 1910 and 1930, the African American
population in the North rose by about 20 percent
overall. Cities such as Chicago, Detroit, New
York, and Cleveland had some of the biggest
increases.
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Factors behind the Great Migration

• Avoid the racial segregation of Jim Crow laws in
  the South
• Boll weevil infestation in Southern cotton in the
  late 1910s forced people to search for other work
• Blacks could take the service jobs that new white
  factory workers had vacated
• The Immigration Act of 1924 stopped European
  immigrants, causing a shortage of factory
  workers
• The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 displaced
  thousands of African-American farm workers.

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Effects of the Harlem Renaissance

• Music
• Literature
• Art

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Music

• Jazz
• Brass and woodwind instruments with trumpets,
  trombones and saxophones playing lead parts
• Characterized by intricate leads and accidentals
• Complex chords, syncopated rhythms
• Improvised solos

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Music

• Big Band or Swing
• No microphones meant that musicians increased
  band size to increase sound
• Used composers and arrangers
• Little room for improvisation

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Notable Musicians
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Notable Writers
Langston Hughes
Countee Cullen
Zora Neale Hurston
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Notable Artists
Self Portrait with Bandana, William Johnson
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Portrait Bust of Paul RobesonSir Jacob Epstein
Midonz, Ronald Moody
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Les Fetiches, Lois Mailou Jones
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Dust to Dust, Jacob Lawrence
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Blues, Archibald Motley, Jr.
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Café, William H. Johnson
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Where is Harlem?
The island of Manhattan
Neighborhoods
Harlem is on Manhattan island
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Where was the Harlem Renaissance centered?

• Centered in the Harlem district of New York City,
  the New Negro Movement (as it was called at the
  time) had a major influence across the Unites
  States and even the world.

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The White Influence on the Harlem Renaissance

• The Harlem Renaissance appealed to a mixed
  audiencethe African American middle class and
  white consumers of the arts.
• Urbane whites suddenly took up New Yorks
  African-American community, bestowing their
  patronage on young artists, opening up publishing
  opportunities, and pumping cash into Harlems
  exotic nightlife in a complex relationship that
  scholars continue to probe.

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• The famous Cotton Club carried this trend to the
  bizarre extreme by providing black entertainment
  for exclusively white audiences.
• The relationship of the Harlem Renaissance to
  white venues and white audiences created
  controversy.
• While many African-American critics strongly
  supported the movement, others, like Benjamin
  Brawley and even W.E.B. DuBois were sharply
  critical and accused Renaissance writers and
  artists of reinforcing negative African-American
  stereotypes.

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Other Important Places Within Harlem Nightlife

• In addition to the Cotton Club, at Lennox and
  140th Street the Savoy Ballroom hosted most of
  Harlems major social events and parties, where
  blacks and whites mingles on the dance floor and
  where the Lindy Hop was invented.

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The Apollo Theater

• In the 1930s the opening of the Apollo Theater on
  125th Street signaled the expansion of Harlems
  entertainment district.
• The Apollo featured the finest acts and became
  the most prestigious African American performing
  stage in the country.
• The response of the Apollos knowledgeable
  audience could make or break a performers career.

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Influential Figures Events in the Renaissance

• Writers Poets
• - Countee Cullen
• - Langston Hughes
• - Jean Toomer
• - James Weldon Johnson
• - Zora Neale Hurston
• - Arna Bontemps
• - Wallace Thurman
• - Nella Larsen
• - Claude McKay
• - Gwendolyn Brooks
• - Jessie Redmon Fauset

• Musicians, Singers, Entertainers
• - Louis Armstrong
• - Bessie Smith
• - Dizzie Gillespie
• - Josephine Baker
• - Eubie Blake
• - Duke Ellington
• - Ma Rainey
• - Ella Fitzgerald
• - Billie Holiday
• - Ethel Waters
• - Fats Waller

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• Artists
• - Aaron Douglass
• - Jacob Lawrence
• - William H. Johnson
• - Archibald Motley, Jr.
• - Ronald C. Moody
• - Palmer Hayden
• - Lois Mailou Jones

• Political Activists
• - W.E.B. DuBois
• - Marcus Garvey
• - Alain Leroy Locke
• - Charles R. Drew
• - Regina Anderson
• - Arturo Alfonso Schomburg

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• Athletes/Athletic Teams
• - Satchel Paige
• - The Harlem Globetrotters
• - Negro National League

• Journals/Magazines
• - The Crisis
• - The Survey Graphic
• - Opportunity A Journal of Negro Life
• - FIRE!!

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How did it impact history?

• The Harlem Renaissance helped to redefine how
  Americans and the world understood African
  American culture. It integrated black and white
  cultures, and marked the beginning of a black
  urban society.
• The Harlem Renaissance set the stage for the
  Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s.