Langston Hughes

The Harlem Rennaissance

Introduction

The Harlem Renaissance (c. 1918-c. 1937) was an important period that brought greater awareness to Black culture. During this era, a group of influential figures in the creative arts helped to turn the New York City neighborhood of Harlem into a major center of African American music, literature, politics, and creative expression. It was less a movement than an attempt by artists to support each other in a cultural environment during a period in American history when there was not broad support for African American creativity.

Also called the "New Negro Movement," the Harlem Renaissance was the result of several monumental changes for Black people in the United States. First, the artists of the Harlem Renaissance were part of the first generation of African Americans who did not bear the firsthand scars of slavery. They had been born free. Second, they were witnesses (and in some cases, participants) to a wave of African American immigration from the rural South to the urban North. The result was a fresh perspective about the nature of Black identity in twentieth century America. The Harlem Renaissance helped to either spawn or promote the careers of many famous artists, among them writers Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and James Weldon Johnson; singers Paul Robeson, Louis Armstrong, Gladys Bentley, and Bessie Smith; and artists Aaron Douglas, Meta Fuller, and Augusta Savage.

HISTORY OF HARLEM TO 1920

Harlem is an area within the New York City borough of Manhattan. Within Harlem, there are several smaller neighborhoods, including Spanish Harlem, Sugar Hill, Central Harlem, and Hamilton Heights. Since its founding, the neighborhood has been subject to a number of boom and bust cycles. Each of these periods typically led to changes in the racial and ethnic makeup of the neighborhood.

Although it is known in the 21st century as a primarily African American neighborhood, it has been home to many different ethnic groups. Prior to the arrival of Europeans, New York City was home to a Native American tribe known as the Lenape. In 1637, a group of Dutch colonists established a community near the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam (modern New York City) on the southern end of the island of Manhattan. They named their new settlement after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands.

Over the next two centuries, despite its closeness to New York City, Harlem remained largely undeveloped farmland. In 1664, it fell under the control of the British. While the region grew rapidly into one of the first urban centers of the New World, Harlem was regarded as an escape from the city. It eventually became a resort community primarily serving the city's elites in the 18th century. During the Revolutionary War (1775-1783), Harlem was the site of a 1776 battle. Although George Washington gained a strategic victory there, the British destroyed it in revenge as they fled north.

The damage to Harlem meant that it continued to remain undeveloped through the early 19th century. As New York City became increasingly polluted, a small group of wealthy families moved to the comparatively clean environment of Harlem. In 1831, a line of the New York railroad was extended to Harlem. Sewer lines and electrical infrastructure were built, paving the way for the community to become a suburb of New York City. Due to its relative distance from the city center, the area had lower rents than more centrally located neighborhoods. Immigrants, particularly of Italian and Jewish backgrounds, moved to Harlem in large numbers to save money. A financial crisis in 1873 caused Harlem's property values to drop dramatically. The arrival of elevated train lines in the 1880s helped fuel another boom period that was almost immediately followed by another real-estate crash in 1893.

The completion of a subway line to Harlem led to speculation by real estate developers who hoped that robust development would once again occur. In anticipation, they built a series of low-income tenement buildings. However, other neighborhoods closer to the city instead received the boost in property sales anticipated by Harlem landlords. Despite discriminatory attitudes toward African Americans in the early 19th century, developers decided to specifically recruit them as possible tenants. The tenements were soon filled with Black immigrants from the Caribbean and African American transplants from Manhattan. The biggest bump, though, came from Southern Black transplants. During World War I (1914-1918), the African American population in Harlem boomed as Black people moved to urban centers in the North and Midwest to take advantage of the numerous available jobs there as a result of the wartime economy. By 1920, Black people formed a majority in Harlem.

AFRICAN AMERICAN CULTURE IN THE LATE 19TH AND EARLY 20TH CENTURIES

African Americans have a complicated cultural history in the United States. When enslaved Africans were forcibly brought from their homelands in Africa to America, many preserved parts of their native cultures despite their difficult circumstances. Although they faced oppression when they were enslaved, they nonetheless continued to practice aspects of art, music, and religion in the New World. Over time, they fused the cultural practices of their native Africa with American music, literature, and art. This helped to create an African American culture that was distinct from that of their African ancestors.

The Great Migration, a term coined by Harlem Renaissance writer and leader W. E. B. Du Bois, saw Black people move north in large numbers beginning in 1916. This event had unintended consequences for Black art. In the South, African Americans faced more rampant racial oppression, violence, and resistance to their artistic expression. Post-Civil War Jim Crow laws also placed severe limits on the types of public activities in which African Americans could participate. Schools were racially segregated and deliberately unfair laws made it difficult for them to vote in elections. In addition, despite the post-war hopes that Black people would have greater financial opportunities, many African Americans found themselves working as sharecroppers. Sharecropping was a system in which a farmer worked on land owned by someone else in exchange for a share of their harvest. The sharecropper life was harsh and often marked by extreme poverty; it was virtually slavery by another name. A move to the North offered promise and the potential for greater freedoms. The fusion of Southern culture with that of Northern and Afro-Caribbean traditions created a spark that led to the Harlem Renaissance.

HARLEM RENAISSANCE

The Harlem Renaissance began in the late 1910s and lasted through the mid-1930s. During this period, early Harlem Renaissance writers such as Claude McKay and Ridgely Torrence began to offer a perspective of Black pride in their writings. It was the first time the publishing industry made a concerted effort to amplify Black voices. Ridgely in particular, created plays that rejected old racist stereotypes and showed Black characters as complicated human beings. This new philosophy of Black characterization and culture was promoted by such intellectuals as Du Bois, Alain Locke, and Marcus Garvey. Some of the earliest representations of this new spirit of Black culture emerged in poetry. Works like Claude McKay's Harlem Shadows (1922) and Jean Toomer's Crane (1923) established precedents for new artistic approaches to delivering powerful messages.

Literary works like Jessi Redmond Fauset's There Is Confusion (1924) explored the role of African Americans in white America. Several Black-authored journals such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's (NAACP's) The Crisis and the National Urban League's Opportunity, both helmed by Black editors, helped to provide African Americans with a voice in the public affairs of the United States.

Southern transplants brought aspects of their unique culture north with them. For instance, jazz music originated in the South from a fusion of blues and gospel music. It found new artistic license in the North among singers and musicians of the Harlem Renaissance. In addition, it was given greater promotion in famed Harlem jazz clubs like the Cotton Club and the Savoy, which were visited by both Black and white patrons. Musicians such as Josephine Baker, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, and Count Basie were regular performers in Harlem's jazz clubs. The term "Jazz Age" is often used to describe the 1920s in reference to the less-restrained and dynamic attitude that characterized the period.

The Great Depression (1929-1939) was a major factor in the declining influence of the Harlem Renaissance. The financial struggles that impacted Harlem and beyond diminished the creative impulses of the Harlem Renaissance's primary drivers. Many of its leading members fell on hard times during this period. The start of Prohibition, a national ban of the sale or distribution of alcohol, further damaged Harlem's economy and reduced attendance at its famed clubs. By the mid-1930s, declining employment rates, high rents, and continuing racist practices in many sectors contributed to growing resentment felt by members of America's Black communities. Social unrest in Harlem, which included property destruction and violence, in 1935 and 1943 is often seen as a marker of the end of Harlem's golden age.

LEGACY OF THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE

Author and intellectual Paul Robeson argued that the promotion of Black arts, music, and expression was the best way to advance Black culture and enable better opportunities for African Americans. Exposure to Black jazz and literature created pathways for Black and white people to better understand one another. Perhaps the most enduring legacy of the Harlem Renaissance was its promotion of the concept of Black pride. While the Harlem Renaissance's manifestation of this idea came through the arts, other later movements in the 1950s and 1960s adopted this concept over successive generations. The Harlem Renaissance helped to set the stage for major advancements in Black rights throughout the 20th and into the 21st century.

As in the past, the cultural makeup of Harlem continued to change throughout the later 20th and early 21st centuries, although it remains a center of African American arts and heritage. In the 21st century, the neighborhood is known for its jazz clubs, historic brownstones, and row homes. The iconic Apollo Theater remains a vital piece of the neighborhood's social fabric. However, the gentrification of Harlem has resulted in declining percentages of Black households in the neighborhood. This has led to concerns about the loss of its identity as a longstanding cultural center in Black history.