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The Harlem Renaissance, or the New Negro Movement, was named after the term used in the anthology The New Negro, edited by Alain Locke and published in 1925. Centered in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City, the movement impacted urban centers throughout the United States. Across the cultural spectrum (literature, drama, music, visual art, dance) and also in the realm of social thought (sociology, historiography, philosophy), artists and intellectuals found new ways to explore the historical experiences of black America and the contemporary experiences of black life in the urban North. Challenging white paternalism and racism, African-American artists and intellectuals rejected imitating the styles of Europeans and white Americans, and instead celebrated black dignity and creativity. Asserting their freedom to express themselves on their own terms, they explored their identities as black Americans, celebrating the black culture that had emerged out of slavery, as well as cultural ties to Africa.

The Harlem Renaissance had a profound impact not only on African-American culture but also on the cultures of the African diaspora. Afro-Caribbean artists and intellectuals from the British West Indies, who had migrated to New York in number, were part of the movement. Moreover, many French-speaking black writers from African and Caribbean colonies who lived in Paris were also influenced by the Harlem Renaissance.

Historians disagree as to when the Harlem Renaissance began and ended. It is unofficially recognized to have spanned from about 1919 until the early or mid 1930s. Many of its ideas lived on much longer. The zenith of this "flowering of Negro literature", as James Weldon Johnson preferred to call the Harlem Renaissance, is placed between 1924 (the year that Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life hosted a party for black writers where many white publishers were in attendance) and 1929 (the year of the stock market crash and beginning of the Great Depression).

In 1917 Hubert Harrison, "The Father of Harlem Radicalism," founded the Liberty League and The Voice, the first organization and the first newspaper of the "New Negro Movement". Harrison's organization and newspaper were political, but also emphasized the arts (his newspaper had "Poetry for the People" and book review sections). In 1927, in the Pittsburgh Courier, Harrison challenged the notion of the renaissance. He argued that the "Negro Literary Renaissance" notion overlooked "the stream of literary and artistic products which had flowed uninterruptedly from Negro writers from 1850 to the present", and said the so-called "renaissance" was largely a white invention.

Characteristics and themes

Characterizing the Harlem Renaissance was an overt racial pride that came to be represented in the idea of the New Negro, who through intellect and production of literature, art, and music could challenge the pervading racism and stereotypes to promote progressive or socialist politics, and racial and social integration. The creation of art and literature would serve to "uplift" the race.

There would be no uniting form singularly characterizing the art that emerged out of the Harlem Renaissance. Rather, it encompassed a wide variety of cultural elements and styles, including a Pan-Africanist perspective, "high-culture" and the "low-culture or low-life," from the traditional form of music to the blues and jazz, traditional and new experimental forms in literature such as modernism and the new form of jazz poetry. This duality meant that numerous African-American artists came into conflict with conservatives in the black intelligentsia, who took issue with certain depictions of black life.

Some common themes represented during the Harlem Renaissance were the influence of the experience of slavery and emerging African-American folk traditions on black identity, the effects of institutional racism, the dilemmas inherent in performing and writing for elite white audiences, and the question of how to convey the experience of modern black life in the urban North.

The Harlem Renaissance was one of primarily African-American involvement. It rested on a support system of black patrons, black-owned businesses and publications. However, it also depended on the patronage of white Americans, such as Carl Van Vechten and Charlotte Osgood Mason, who provided various forms of assistance, opening doors which otherwise would have remained closed to the publication of work outside the black American community. This support often took the form of patronage or publication.

There were other whites interested in so-called "primitive" cultures, as many whites viewed black American culture at that time, and wanted to see such "primitivism" in the work coming out of the Harlem Renaissance. As with most fads, some people may have been exploited in the rush for publicity.

Interest in African-American lives also generated experimental but lasting collaborative work, such as the all-black productions of George Gershwin's opera Porgy and Bess, and Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein's Four Saints in Three Acts. In both productions the choral conductor Eva Jessye was part of the creative team. Her choir was featured in Four Saints. The music world also found white band leaders defying racist attitudes to include the best and the brightest African-American stars of music and song in their productions.

Blacks used art to prove their humanity and demand for equality. For a number of whites, preconceived prejudices were challenged and overcome. The Harlem Renaissance led to more opportunities for blacks to be published by mainstream houses. Many authors began to publish novels, magazines and newspapers during this time. The new fiction attracted a great amount of attention from the nation at large. Some authors who became nationally known were Jean Toomer, Jessie Fauset, Claude McKay, Zora Neale Hurston, James Weldon Johnson, Alain Locke, Eric D. Walrond and Langston Hughes.

The Harlem Renaissance helped lay the foundation for the post-World War II phase of the Civil Rights Movement. Moreover, many black artists who rose to creative maturity afterward were inspired by this literary movement.

No common literary style, artistic style or political ideology defined the Harlem Renaissance. What united participants was their sense of taking part in a common endeavor and their commitment to giving artistic expression to the African-American experience. Some common themes existed, such as an interest in the roots of the 20th-century African-American experience in Africa and the American South, and a strong sense of racial pride and desire for social and political equality. But the most characteristic aspect of the Harlem Renaissance was the diversity of its expression.

The diverse literary expression of the Harlem Renaissance ranged from Langston Hughes's weaving of the rhythms of African-American music into his poems of ghetto life, as in the Weary Blues (1926), to Claude McKay's use of the sonnet form as the vehicle for his impassioned poems attacking racial violence, as

Diversity and experimentation also flourished in the performing arts and were reflected in the blues singing of Bessie Smith and in jazz music. Jazz ranged from the marriage of blues and ragtime by pianist Jelly Roll Morton to the instrumentation of bandleader Louis Armstrong and the orchestration of composer Duke Ellington. In the visual arts, Aaron Douglas adopted a deliberately "primitive" style and incorporated African images in his paintings and illustrations

The Renaissance was more than a literary or artistic movement, it possessed a certain sociological development—particularly through a new racial consciousness—through racial integration, as seen the Back to Africa movement led by Marcus Garvey. W.E.B DuBois's notion of "twoness", introduced in The Souls of Black Folk (1903), explored a divided awareness of one's identity that was a unique critique of the social ramifications of racial consciousness.

==Impact

Notable Figures and their Works

Novels

• Jessie Redmon Fauset — There is Confusion (1924), Plum Bun (1928), The Chinaberry Tree (1931), Comedy, American Style (1933)
• Rudolph Fisher — The Walls of Jericho (1928), The Conjure Man Dies (1932)
• Langston Hughes — Not Without Laughter (1930)
• Zora Neale Hurston — Jonah's Gourd Vine (1934), Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)
• Nella Larsen — Quicksand (1928), Passing (1929)
• Claude McKay — Home to Harlem (1927), Banjo (1929), Gingertown (1931), Banana Bottom (1933)
• George Schuyler — Black No More (1930), Slaves Today (1931)
• Wallace Thurman — The Blacker the Berry (1929), Infants of the Spring (1932), Interne (1932)
• Jean Toomer — Cane (1923)
• Carl Van Vechten — Nigger Heaven (1926)
• Eric Walrond — Tropic Death (1926)
• Walter White — The Fire in the Flint (1924), Flight (1926)

Drama

• Charles Gilpin, actor
• Paul Robeson, actor
• Langston Hughes, Mulatto, produced on Broadway. Hughes also helped to found the Harlem Suitcase Theater
• Angelina Weld Grimke, author of the drama, Rachel
• Zora Neale Hurston, author of the play Color Struck
• John Matheus, author of the play, 'Cruiter.
• Eulalie Spence, author of the play, Undertow.
• Joseph Seamon Cotter, Jr., author of the play, On the Fields of France.
• Richard Bruce Nugent, author of the play, Sahdji, an African Ballet.
• Georgia Douglas Johnson, author of the play, Plumes, A Tragedy.

Poetry

• Langston Hughes, poet, fiction-writer, essayist, dramatist, autobiographer, editor
• Jessie Redmon Fauset, editor, poet, essayist and novelist
• Countee Cullen, poet — The Black Christ and Other Poems (1929)
• Claude McKay, poet and novelist
• James Weldon Johnson, poet, God's Trombones
• Arna Bontemps, poet
• May Miller, poet and playwright
• Richard Bruce Nugent, poet
• Alice Dunbar-Nelson, poet and fiction writer
• Angelina Weld Grimke, poet and dramatist
• Anne Spencer, poet
• Effie Lee Newsome, poet
• Jean Toomer, poet and novelist
• Joseph Seamon Cotter, Jr., poet
• Sterling A. Brown, poet
• Gwendolyn Bennett, poet
• Waring Cuney, poet
• Lewis Alexander, poet
• Helene Johnson, poet
• Mae V. Cowdery, poet.

Leading Intellectuals

• W.E.B. DuBois
• Alain Locke
• James Weldon Johnson
• Charles Spurgeon Johnson
• Walter White
• Mary White Ovington
• A. Philip Randolph
• Chandler Owen
• William Stanley Braithwaite
• Marcus Garvey
• Joel A. Rogers
• Marion Vera Cuthbert
• Arthur Schomburg
• Carl Van Vechten

Visual artists

• Jacob Lawrence
• Charles Alston
• Augusta Savage
• Aaron Douglas
• Archibald Motley
• Lois Mailou Jones
• Palmer Hayden
• Romare Bearden
• Sargent Johnson
• William H. Johnson
• Beauford Delaney
• Norman Lewis
• Paul Heath

Popular entertainment

• Cotton Club
• Apollo Theater
• Black Swan Records
• Small's Paradise
• Connie's Inn
• Speakeasies
• Rent party
• Savoy Ballroom

Musicians/Composers

• Nora Douglas Holt Ray
• Billie Holiday
• Duke Ellington
• Count Basie
• Louis Armstrong
• Lil Armstrong
• Eubie Blake
• Bessie Smith
• Fats Waller
• James P. Johnson
• Noble Sissle
• Earl "Fatha" Hines
• Jelly Roll Morton
• Fletcher Henderson
• Josephine Baker
• Mamie Smith
• Ivie Anderson
• Lena Horne
• Roland Hayes
• Ella Fitzgerald
• Lucille Bogan
• Bill Robinson
• The Nicholas Brothers
• Marian Anderson
• Ethel Waters
• Bert Williams
• Pigmeat Markham
• Moms Mabley
• Mantan Moreland
• Ma Rainey
• The Will Mastin Trio
• Lonnie Johnson
• Nina Mae McKinney
• The Dandridge Sisters
• Victoria Spivey
• Cecil Scott
• Fess Williams
• McKinney's Cotton Pickers
• The Chocolate Dandies
• Cab Calloway
• The King Cole Trio
• Chick Webb
• Dizzy Gillespie
• Thelonious Monk

See also

• African American literature
• African American art
• African American culture
• Roaring Twenties
• "New Negro"
• "Niggerati"

References

1. "Eva Jessye", University of Michigan, accessed 4 Dec 2008

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Bibliography

• Amos, Shawn, compiler. Rhapsodies in Black: Words and Music of the Harlem Renaissance. Los Angeles: Rhino Records, 2000. 4 Compact Discs.
• Andrews, William L.; Foster, Frances S.; Harris, Trudier eds. The Concise Oxford Companion To African American Literature. New York: Oxford Press, 2001. ISBN 1-4028-9296-9
• Bean, Annemarie. A Sourcebook on African-American Performance: Plays, People, Movements. London: Routledge, 1999; pp. vii + 360.
• Greaves, William' documentary From These Roots.
• Hicklin, Fannie Ella Frazier. 'The American Negro Playwright, 1920-1964.' Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Speech, University of Wisconsin, 1965. Ann Arbor: University Microfilms 65-6217.
• Huggins, Nathan. Harlem Renaissance. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973. ISBN 0-19-501665-3
• Hughes, Langston. The Big Sea. New York: Knopf, 1940.
• Hutchinson, George. The Harlem Renaissance in Black and White. New York: Belknap Press, 1997. ISBN 0-674-37263-8
• Lewis, David Levering, ed. The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader. New York: Viking Penguin, 1995. ISBN 0-14-017036-7
• Lewis, David Levering. When Harlem Was in Vogue. New York: Penguin, 1997. ISBN 0-14-026334-9
• Ostrom, Hans. A Langston Hughes Encyclopedia. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2002.
• Ostrom, Hans and J. David Macey, eds. The Greenwood Encylclopedia of African American Literature. 5 volumes. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2005.
• Patton, Venetria K. and Maureen Honey, eds. Double-Take: A Revisionist Harlem Renaissance Anthology. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2006.
• Perry, Jeffrey B. A Hubert Harrison Reader. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2001.
• Perry, Jeffrey B. Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008.
• Powell, Richard and David A. Bailey, editors. Rhapsodies in Black: Art of the Harlem Renaissance. Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1997.
• Rampersad, Arnold. The Life of Langston Hughes. 2 volumes. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986 and 1988.
• Soto, Michael, ed. Teaching The Harlem Renaissance. New York: Peter Lang, 2008.
• Tracy, Steven C. Langston Hughes and the Blues. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988.
• Watson, Steven. The Harlem Renaissance: Hub of African-American Culture, 1920-1930. New York: Pantheon Books, 1995. ISBN 0-679-75889-5
• Wintz, Cary D. Black Culture and the Harlem Renaissance. Houston: Rice University Press, 1988.
• Wintz, Cary D. Harlem Speaks: A Living History of the Harlem Renaissance. Naperville, Illinois: Sourcebooks, Inc., 2007

External links

• A Guide to Harlem Renaissance Materials, from the Library of Congress
• NYPL video on The Harlem Renaissance

• Harlem Renaissance
• Harlem, New York
• Literary movements
• African American literature