Presenting: The Harlem Renaissance What? Who? When?

What Was the Harlem Renaissance? It involved all the fields of art; not just writing, but also… It was not just an artsy-fartsy kind of thing, though. It was also a fight against racism It was a time to celebrate culture and heritage

When Did This Happen. Why Wasn’t I Told When Did This Happen? Why Wasn’t I Told? Why Am I Always the Last to Hear About These Things? Seriously… The Harlem Renaissance occurred mostly during the 1920s It happened largely because of the migration of African-Americans to northern cities in the early 1920s

Who Did What? Poets and other authors included: Langston Hughes, James Weldon Johnson, Nella Larsen, and Zora Neale Hurston Also, black entertainers such as Paul Robeson and Josephine Baker became well-known Painters such as William H. Johnson and Lois Mailou Jones became famous for their visual art.

The New Negro Q: Who used this term? A: Alain Locke, an African-American professor at Howard University, coined this term Q: What does it mean? A: It was a “new spirit” in African-Americans; it meant pride in being black and a recognition that black people were not inferior. It was a sense of self-respect and self-dependence. Enter the New Negro Q: What was the “old negro,” then? A: He/she was a thing, not a person. A stereotype which was to be “kept down” or “helped up.”

So What? So… The Harlem Renaissance was one of the first instances in which whites began to pay attention to black culture and work with blacks to create and promote art It was also the first place for civil rights leaders, such as W.E.B. DuBois, and African nationalists such as Marcus Garvey to speak out – African-Americans were starting to see themselves as an organized but (unfortunately) separately group Black artists were finally able to publish positive images of African-Americans -All of this helped pave the way for the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s…