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November 1
The Harlem Renaissance is the name given to the period in Black America from the end of World War I and through the middle of the 1930s Depression. It was during this time, that a group of talented African-American writers produced an extensive amount of literature in four prominent formats; poetry, fiction, drama, and essay. From 1920 until about 1930, an exceptional outburst of creative activity among African-Americans occurred in all fields of art. Beginning as a series of literary discussions in the lower Manhattan (Greenwich Village) and upper Manhattan (Harlem) sections of New York City, this African-American cultural movement became known as "The New Negro Movement" and later as the Harlem Renaissance. More than a literary movement and more than a social revolt against racism, the Harlem Renaissance established and exalted the unique culture of African-Americans and redefined African-American expression. African-Americans began to and were encouraged to celebrate their heritage and to become "The New Negro," a term coined in 1925 by sociologist and critic Alain LeRoy Locke. The personal quest for freedom expressed by this New Negro in American Blacks was one of personal survival. It was also in response to the “Jim Crow Laws” which ruined the Reconstruction legislation after the Civil War. Another factor contributing to the rise of the Harlem Renaissance was in the great migration of African-Americans to northern cities (such as New York City, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.) between 1919 and 1926. In his influential book "The New Negro" (1925), Locke described the northward migration of Blacks as "something like a spiritual emancipation." Black urban migration, combined with trends in American society as a whole, toward experimentation during the 1920s, and the rise of radical Black intellectuals including Locke, Jesse Fauset, Richard B. Moore, William Trotter, Nella Larson, Marcus Garvey, Marita Bonner, and W.E.B. Du Bois all contributed to the particular styles and unprecedented success of Black artists during the Harlem Renaissance period. Reference: The African American Desk Reference Schomburg Center for research in Black Culture Copyright 1999 The Stonesong Press Inc. and The New York Public Library, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Pub. ISBN 0-471-23924-0 "TWO-GUN MAN FROM HARLEM" Herbert Jeffrey, Mantan Moreland, Spencer Williams
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The African American Registry®, The African American Registry® Copyright 2005, 2006
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