The Harlem Renaissance :: American History

Harlem Renaissance was an African American cultural figurehead of the twenties and early 1930s that was centered in the Harlem neighborhood of unfermented York City. Also known as the New gloomyness effort, the New Negro Renaissance, and the Negro Renaissance, the movement emerged toward the end of World War I in 1918, blossomed in the mid- to late 1920s, and then faded in the mid-1930s. The Harlem Renaissance tag the first time that mainstream publishers and critics took African American literature seriously and that African American literature and arts attracted significant attention from the nation at large. Primarily music, theater, art, and politics.The Harlem Renaissance emerged amid social and intellectual upheaval in the African American community in the early 20th century. Several factors set(p) the groundwork for the movement. A black middle class had real by the turn of the century, fostered by increased education and trading opportunities following the American Ci vil War (1861-1865). During the Great Migration, hundreds of thousands of black Americans moved from an economically discourage rural South to industrial cities of the North to take advantage of the employment opportunities created by World War I. As more and more ameliorate and socially conscious blacks settled in New Yorks neighborhood of Harlem, it developed into the political and cultural center of black America. Equally important, during the 1910s a wise political agenda advocating racial equality arose in the African American community, particularly in its growing middle class. Championing the agenda were black historiographer and sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which was founded in 1909 to draw near the rights of blacks. This agenda was also reflected in the efforts of Jamaican-born black nationalist Marcus Garvey, whose Back to Africa movement inspired racial pride among blacks in the United States .African American literature and arts had begun a steady development just sooner the turn of the century. In the performing arts, black musical theater feature such accomplished artists as songwriter Bob Cole and composer J. Rosamond Johnson, chum of writer James Weldon Johnson. Jazz and blues music moved with black populations from the South and Midwest into the bars and cabarets of Harlem. In literature, the poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar and the assembly of Charles W. Chesnutt in the late 1890s were among the earliest works of African Americans to commence national recognition. By the end of World War I the manufacturing of James Weldon Johnson and the poetry of Claude McKay anticipated the literature that would follow in the 1920s by describing the reality of black life in America and the spit out for racial identity.