The Harlem Renaissance

New York, New York

Ashley Duell & Molly Smith

What is it the Harlem Renaissance?

“Harlem Renaissance refers to an era of written and artistic creativity among African-Americans that occurred after World War I and lasted until the middle of the 1930s Depression.”

Referred to as the capital of Black America

Changed the identity and history of African-Americans and the American culture as a whole

What is it? - continued

The African-American culture was transformed. Other racial cultures could now better understand African-Americans through their style, productions, expression, and thoughts which were expressed by:

Literature

Music

Dance

Art

Social commentary in neighborhoods

Night clubs, community centers, cafes, galleries, publishing houses sprung up all over Harlem

Energy and excitement

The Beginning

Migration of African-Americans from 1919 to 1926 to northern cities in the United States was a major factor that lead to the

beginning of the Harlem Renaissance.

Literary discussions in Manhattan came to be known

as ‘The New Negro Movement.’

Langston Hughes

Hughes’ Life

Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance

Famous Quotes for

Hughes

Describing Harlem in the 1920s…"not so much a place

as a state of mind, the cultural metaphor for black America

itself.“

Hughes once said the city of Harlem was "a great magnet for the Negro intellectual."

Zora Neale Hurston

W.E.B. DuBois

W.E.B DuBois Life

Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts on February 23, 1868

Well educated man

Attended Fisk University (3 years) and Harvard University (5 years)

Taught at Wilberforce University and Atlanta University. While working there he wrote many of his books including: The Philadelphia Negro and The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade

Became a US Senator in 1951.

Moved to Ghana, and died there in 1963

DuBois’s Influence in the Harlem Renaissance

Became known as the “Father of Pan Africanism” because he a was spokesperson for African-American legal rights

At the Niagara Movement led by DuBois he addressed the right for African-Americans to vote and promoted their rights.

His books are considered the ground-breaking work that inspired the Renaissance.”

DuBois helped form the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) which effects from it can still be seen today

His actions showed American that “black people were not inferior to whites simply because of their race.”

E.E. Cummings

Born in 1894, Cambridge, Masshacutes and died on September 3rd, 1962.

Resources

  http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1P3-494779091.HTML

http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a_f/cummings/cummings_life.htm

http://www.gwu.edu/~e73afram/am-mw-jk.html

http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/386/zhurston.html

http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/harlem.html

http://www.notablebiographies.com/Co-Da/Cummings-E-E.html