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Harlem

The Harlem Renaissance was a period between World War I and the Great Depression when black artistic expression flourished, centered in Harlem, New York but also present in other northern cities. Factors contributing to its emergence included the Great Migration of African Americans from the rural South to northern cities for work, and a generation of black veterans of World War I seeking greater equality. Black intellectuals promoted black artists to help white audiences appreciate black culture and achievements. Magazines published works by writers like Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston. Major publishers supported new black voices for a time, but the Renaissance lost momentum in the 1930s during the Great Depression when financial backing dried up.

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91 views2 pages

Harlem

The Harlem Renaissance was a period between World War I and the Great Depression when black artistic expression flourished, centered in Harlem, New York but also present in other northern cities. Factors contributing to its emergence included the Great Migration of African Americans from the rural South to northern cities for work, and a generation of black veterans of World War I seeking greater equality. Black intellectuals promoted black artists to help white audiences appreciate black culture and achievements. Magazines published works by writers like Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston. Major publishers supported new black voices for a time, but the Renaissance lost momentum in the 1930s during the Great Depression when financial backing dried up.

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Ratnakar Koli
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The Harlem Renaissance was a period between World War I and the Great Depression when black artists

and writers flourished in the United States. Critics and historians have assigned varying dates to the movements beginning and end, but most tend to agree that by 1917 there were signs of increased cultural activity among black artists in the Harlem area of New York City and that by the mid-1930s the movement had lost much of its original vigor. While Harlem was the definite epicenter of black culture during this period and home to more blacks than any other urban area in the nation in the years after World War I, other cities, such as Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia, fostered similar but smaller communities of black artists. The movement came about for a number of reasons. Between 1890 and 1920, the near collapse of the southern agricultural economy, coupled with a labor shortage in the North, prompted about two million blacks to migrate to northern cities in search of work. In addition, World War I had left an entire generation of African Americans asking why, given that they had fought and many had died for their country, they were still afforded second-class status. By the end of the war, many northern American cities, such as Harlem, had large numbers of African Americans emboldened by new experiences and better paychecks, energized by the possibility for change. A number of black intellectuals, such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Alain Locke, were making it clear that the time had come for white America to take notice of the achievements of African-American artists and thinkers. The idea that whites might come to accept blacks if they were exposed to their artistic endeavors became popular. To this end, magazines such as the Crisis, published by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and Opportunity featured the prose and poetry of Harlem Renaissance stars Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay,Nella Larsen, and Zora

Neale Hurston. Major New York-based publishing houses began to search for new black voices and print their poems, short stories, and novels. White intellectual society embraced these writers and supportedfinancially and through social contactstheir efforts to educate Americans about their race, culture, and heritage through their art. Ultimately, however, the financial backing began to run dry in the early 1930s with the collapse of the New York stock market and the ensuing worldwide economic depression. The Renaissance had run its course.

REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS Countee Cullen (19031946)


Born May 30, 1903, in Louisville, Kentucky (although a few accounts claim Baltimore or New York City), Countee Cullen is believed to have been reared by his paternal grandmother, who died when he was fifteen. He was then adopted by the Reverend Frederick Cullen, later the head of the Harlem chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and introduced to the lively intellectual and cultural life of New York. He received an undergraduate degree from New York University and a masters degree from Harvard University. Cullen, a writer of both poetry and prose, believed that art should be where whites and blacks find common ground. In 1925, his most well-known work, Color, was published to nearly universal praise. In the 1930s, he turned to teaching and eventually began producing his plays. Cullen received numerous awards for his work, including a Guggenheim fellowship in 1928. He died of uremic poisoning January 9, 1946, in New York City.

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