~ The Harlem Renaisance ~

“Harlem Renaissance
refers to an era of written and artistic creativity
among African-Americans that occurred after World War I
and lasted until the middle of the 1930s
Depression.

A major factor leading
to the rise of the Harlem Renaissance
was the migration of African-Americans
to the northern cities. Between 1919 and 1926,
large numbers of black Americans left
their rural southern states homes
to move to urban centers such
as New York City,
Chicago,
and Washington, DC.

This black urban migration
combined with the experimental trends
occurring throughout 1920s American society
and the rise of a group of radical black intellectuals
all contributed to the particular styles
and unprecedented success of black artists.

What began as a series of literary discussions
in lower Manhattan (Greenwich Village)
and upper Manhattan (Harlem)
was first known as the 'New Negro Movement.'
Later termed the Harlem Renaissance,
this movement brought unprecedented creative activity
in writing,
art,
and music
and redefined expressions of African-Americans
and their heritage.”

http://www.42explore2.com/harlem.htm

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“The Harlem Renaissance ~
proclaimed in a collection of prophetic black tracts
and manifestos, and distinguished by the iconic
bodies and voices of Paul Robeson, Marcus Garvey,
Josephine Baker and others ~
was a cultural and psychological watershed,
an era in which black people
were perceived as having finally liberated themselves
from a past fraught with self-doubt
and surrendered instead to an unprecedented optimism,
a novel pride in all things black
and a cultural confidence
that stretched beyond the borders of Harlem
to other black communities in the Western world.

The 'Renaissance' artists
who immediately come to mind ~ painter
Aaron Douglas, author Langston Hughes,
jazz musician Duke Ellington, blues singer Bessie Smith,
dancer Josephine Baker and the consummate
all-round performer Paul Robeson ~
had certain attitudes about the black experience
as art that,
through paintings, writings,
musical compositions and performances, explored
an assortment of black representational possibilities,
from Langston Hughes's and Bessie Smith's images
of the rural and folkloric
to Aaron Douglas's and Duke Ellington's invocations
of the progressive
and ultra modern.”

~ From “’Re/Birth of a Nation,”
by Richard J. Powell
and “Harlem on Our Minds,”
by Henry Louis Gates Jr.
From
“Rhapsodies in Black:
Art of the Harlem Renaissance”

(London/California: Hayward Gallery,
Institute of International Visual Arts
and University of California Press, 1997).

http://www.iniva.org/harlem/hren.html

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