Harlem Renaissance

Joe “King” Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band records with trumpet player Louis Armstrong, they make 37 recordings together

Harlem Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned the 1920s. At the time, it was known as the "New Negro Movement", named after the 1925 anthology by Alain Locke.

Time Line

1921

Langston Hughes’ poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” is published in Crisis

1922

The Harmon Foundation is established to promote black fine artists

1923

1926

1929

The stock market crashes on October 29 – economic crisis known as the Great Depression begins, and brings an end to the ‘Jazz Age’

Controversial novel, Nigger Heaven, by white author Carl Van Vechten, is published

African American Art represents a wide range of African American artists whose works reflect the Black aesthetic and the essence of African Art. It also looks at how black artists struggled for inclusion in society's marketplace of art and survived the imposition of marginal status on them, their art, and their culture.Dating back as far as colonial times to the present, African American artists have been encouraged andrecognized on a very limited basis.

Main Goal: The primary goal of the Harlem Renassaince was to build consciousness of the history of the community, and to work towards progressive ideas.

It has been argued that the Harlem Renaissance, or the New Negro Movement, is the defining moment in African American literature because of an unprecedented outburst of creative activity among black writers. The importance of this movement to African American literary art lies in the efforts of its writers to exalt the heritage of African Americans and to use their unique culture as a means toward re-defining African American literary expression.

Movement in Literature

Dance during the Harlem Renaissance was important because it was fun; a way to celebrate African American culture and people, in a country where that culture was marginalized. Jazz music and swing dancing are two great things that were born out of the Harlem Renaissance, and gave life to an important moment in African American history.

Movement in Dance

Movement in Art

It began to burst the stereotype of the African American as a comical person talented in music, with a sense of rhythm, whose ideas and struggles were not to be taken seriously. Although some of the harlem Renaissance was centered on music by Duke Ellington, Bessie Smith, the Apollo Theater, black jazz musicians, Langston Hughes and W. E. Dubois, Countee Cullen, James Weldon Johnson, Alain Locke, Zora Neale Hurston, Nella Larsen, Claude McKay, and others were prominent literary figures. Gradually their work seeped into American culture. Painters--Jacob Lawrence, Charles Alston--were present too. There was intellectual force to the movement.It still took a while for America to appreciate most of these artists and intellectuals.But it was a beginning. There were role models for African Americans and for white Americans too, if they had the courage to cross the color line.

Impact on Society!