THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE An Explosion of Creativity A Cultural Revolution

HARLEM  A densely populated borough of Manhattan, New York  Center of a cultural movement after WWI

TIMELINE mid 1930s

THE GREAT MIGRATION  After WWI a great exodus into the north  Brought thousands of African Americans to New York City  Musicians, Writers, painters, and students congregated to form a mecca of cultural affirmation and inspiration.  Gained respect for African art and culture

CULTURE  New appreciation grew of the role of black talent  Music echoed the style of New Orleans, Memphis and Chicago  Black poetry became part of the Jazz age

LANGSTON HUGHES  “It was the period when the Negro was in vogue.” Langston Hughes was an American poet, novelist, and playwright whose African- American themes made him a primary contributor to the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s.

MUSIC  Flourished during the Harlem Renaissance  Blues and jazz popular

LOUIS ARMSTRONG  an African-American trumpeter, composer and singer who was one of the most influential figures in jazz

FLETCHER HENDERSON  American pianist, bandleader, arranger and composer, important in the development of big band jazz and swing music

BESSIE SMITH  American blues singer  Nicknamed the Empress of the Blues  most popular female blues singer of the 1920s and 1930s

"MA" RAINEY  one of the earliest known American professional blues singers  one of the first generation of such singers to record  billed as “The Mother of the Blues.”

THEATER  all-black drama called Shuffle Along opened in 1921

ART  changed by the modernist European artists Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, whose work was influenced by African art.  Aaron Douglas and William H. Johnson painted the African American experience.  New respect for African Art.

WRITERS  Writers like Jean Toomer and Zora Neale Hurston wrote about African American experiences.  Harlem newspapers and journals, such as The Crisis and Opportunity, published the work of African American writers and sponsored literary contests to support intellectually gifted youth.  Explored the issue of racism

WRITING CONTESTS  sponsored to support gifted youth  encouraged creative writing and rewarded young writers’ efforts with cash prizes  addressed race, class, religion and gender

STYLE  Many writers, including Claude McKay and Countee Culled wrote in standard or traditional English.  Other writers drew on African American oral tradition vernacular or “dialect” using the blues, folk tales, and work songs as fuel for their writings.  Two pioneers in adapting oral traditions in their work were writers Langston Hughes and Zora Nale Hurston.

HUGHES AND HURSTON  Hughes was sensitive to the rhythms of African American music and he was successful in capturing the inflections of African American Speech.  Hughes invented blues and jazz poetry and read his poems with the accompaniment of jazz bands.  Hurston drew on Southern black speech patters to create a literary language filled with wit and metaphor.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY  Autobiography became a preferred genre.  Slave Narratives  Alaudah Equiano  Harriet Jacobs  Frederick Douglass  Booker T. Washington  Langston Hughes

PHOTOGRAPHY  James Van Der Zee photographed the African American experience

PERCEPTION OF AFRICAN AMERICANS  Alain Locke wrote, that the cultural revolution helped the African Americans become accepted as “a collaborator and participant in American civilization”