1. The Harlem Renaissance Harlem is vicious Modernism. BangClash. Vicious the way it's made, Can you stand such beauty. So violent and transforming. - Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones)

2. Background Info An outburst of creative activity from 1920- 1930 amongst African-Americans Began in New York City, specifically Greenwich Village and Harlem areas First called “The New Negro Movement” African Americans were encouraged to become “The New Negro” This term was coined by sociologist and critic Alain LeRoy Locke in 1925

3. Contributing Factors The Great Migration to northern cities between 1919 and 1926 Trend in American society towards experimentation during the 1920’s Rise in radical Black intellectuals such as Locke, Marcus Garvey and W.E.B. DuBois "(Harlem) is romantic in its own right. And it is hard and strong, its noise, heat, cold, cries and colours are so. And the nostalgia is violent too; the eternal radio seeping through everything day and night, indoors and out, becomes somehow the personification of restlessness, desire, brooding." --Nancy Cunard, Harlem Review, 1933

4. What is it? New ways of thinking led to new ways of expressing one’s self. Such as: Art Art Music Music Literature Literature The Crisis, a literary magazine started by W.E.B. DuBois and ran by the NAACP, was an outlet for many authors and artists at the time

5. Louis Armstrong Was born in New Orleans, but influenced many musicians when he was in Chicago and New York during the 1920’s and 1930’s Considered the King of Jazz "Louis Armstrong's station in the history of jazz is umimpeachable. If it weren't for him, there wouldn't be any of us." Dizzy Gillespie, 1971 “Trumpet Player” by Langston Hughes Ain’t Misbehavin’

6. Jelly Roll Morton Jelly Roll Morton was the first great composer and piano player of Jazz. As a teenager Jelly Roll Morton worked in the whorehouses of Storyville as a piano player. He worked as a gambler, pool shark, pimp, vaudeville comedian and as a pianist. He was an important transitional figure between ragtime and jazz piano styles. He fell upon hard times after 1930 and even lost the diamond he had in his front tooth. Original Jelly Roll Rag

7. Bessie Smith Was one of the most popular African American recording stars of the 1920’s Was popular with Black and White fans “Empress of Blues” He Treats Me Like a Dog

8. Aaron Douglas His work best exemplified the “New Negro” His work was showcased as murals on buildings and as cover art and illustrations to works in The Crisis. "...Our problem is to conceive, develop, establish an art era. Not white art painting black...let's bare our arms and plunge them deep through laughter, through pain, through sorrow, through hope, through disappointment, into the very depths of the souls of our people and drag forth material crude, rough, neglected. Then let's sing it, dance it, write it, paint it. Let's do the impossible. Let's create something transcendentally material, mystically objective. Earthy. Spiritually earthy. Dynamic." Aaron Douglas

9. Langston Hughes His work was very important in shaping the art of the H.R. His writing was influenced by the life and art of African Americans, such as jazz He wanted to tell the stories of the people in a way that reflected their culture including both their suffering and their love of laughter, language and music His self proclaimed calling was "to explain and illuminate the Negro condition in America." http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15722

10. Countee Cullen was raised and educated in a primarily white community, and he differed from other poets of the Harlem Renaissance like Langston Hughes in that he lacked the background to comment from personal experience on the lives of other blacks or use popular black themes in his writing. (www.poets.org) Langston HughesLangston Hughes