Harlem Renaissance with Ms. Johnson

The History of The Harlem Renaissance

1920-1930

Importance of The Harlem Renaissance

The Literature, Music, and Art of the Harlem Renaissance

At the end of World War I and continuing into the Great Depression period of the 1930s, African-American artists created a community of art and cultural achievement that was remarkable. Fueled by the Great Migration of African Americans from the rural South into the great cities of the Northeast and Midwest, the Harlem Renaissance brought together literature, music, visual art, dance and other art forms in an explosion of creativity. Harlem itself became the focal point not just of African American art, but also of the nightclub scene, as the Cotton Club, Small's Paradise and Connie's Inn became centers of music, dance and social life. Political life was quickened, as the NAACP and Urban League grew in stature partly through their support of Harlem artists.

The leaders of the Harlem Renaissance form a virtual who's who of African American cultural achievement: Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, W.E.B. DuBois, James Weldon Johnson and many others. Great jazz musicians formed a central part of the Renaissance. Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie and Duke Ellington, singers Bessie Smith and Billie Holliday, and the great dancer and fashion icon Josephine Baker.

LITERATURE

Zora Neale Hurston

Langston Hughes

MUSIC

Billie Holiday

Billie Holiday contribution to the Harlem Renaissance. ... Around the 1950's, Billie Holiday rose to become a social phenomenon. She began to sing in jazz clubs as a teenager, singing with many famous musicians, such as Louis Armstrong. She was one of the first black women to work with an orchestra

ART

Aaron Douglas was an American painter, illustrator and visual arts educator. He was a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance. He developed his art career painting murals and creating illustrations that addressed social issues around race and segregation in the United States by utilizing African-centric imagery

EYECONART by Aaron Douglas

From The Harlem Renaissance

W.E.B Du Bois

Among the important intellectuals writing and thinking during The Harlem Renaissance were W.E.B Du Bois, Marcus Garvey and Alain Locke.

"The notion of the" twoness" a divided awareness of one's identity was introduced by W.E.B Dubois, one of the founders of the National Association for the advancement of Colored People (NAACP)and the author of the influential book The Souls of Black Folks(1903):" One ever feels his two-ness -an American, a Negro two souls, two thoughts two reconciled stirring: two warring ideas in one dark body who's dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder."

Marcus Garvey

Marcus Mosiah Garvey Jr. ONH was a Jamaican political activist, publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and orator. He was the founder and first President-General of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League, through which he declared himself Provisional President of Africa

Alain Lock

Alain Leroy Locke was an American writer, philosopher, educator, and patron of the arts. Distinguished as the first African-American Rhodes Scholar in 1907, Locke was the philosophical architect —the acknowledged "Dean"— of the Harlem Renaissance

Places in Harlem

Cotton Club

The Savoy

Stompin at the Savoy by Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong

Questions

What sparked your Interests from the Arts, Literature, and Music of the The Harlem Renaissance? Explain ? You can use content from the lesson or do your own research.

Submit your responses to the questions above to TheresaJohnson@propelschools.org

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