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In New York, the Harlem Renaissance was probably the most significant and well known outcome of the Great Migration. Other cities, like Chicago, also had black renaissances, but Harlem seemed to be the heart of black artistic and cultural expression. Jacob Lawrence's Migration Series detailed the struggle of black migrants to Northern cities, created when he was a young man in New York. He was quickly perceived as one of the most important African-American artists of the time.
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City of Refuge
City of Refuge
Rudolph Fisher was a renowned writer of the Harlem Renaissance. In his short story "The City of Refuge" published in Atlantic Monthly, he tells the story of a black man first arriving in Harlem.
"In Harlem, black was white. You had rights that could not be denied you; you had privileges, protected by law. And you had money. Everybody in Harlem had money. It was a land of plenty."
Harlem: Mecca of the New Negro
Harlem: Mecca of the New Negro
Alain Locke graduated from Harvard and was the first black Rhodes Scholar. His work The New Negro became the manifesto of the Harlem Renaissance, or as some critics prefer to call it, the New Negro Movement.
For generations in the mind of America, the Negro has been more of a formula than a human being ⎯ a something to be argued about, condemned or defended, to be “kept down,” or “in his place,” or “helped up,” to be worried with or worried over, harassed or patronized, a social bogey or a social burden.
The mind of the Negro seems suddenly to have slipped from under the tyranny of social intimidation and to be shaking off the psychology of imitation and implied inferiority...In the intellectual realm a renewed and keen curiosity is replacing the recent apathy; the Negro is being carefully studied, not just talked about and discussed. In art and letters, instead of being wholly caricatured, he is being seriously portrayed and painted.
The Negro today wishes to be known for what he is, even in his faults and shortcomings...The pulse of the Negro world has begun to beat in Harlem. A Negro newspaper carrying news material in English, French and Spanish, gathered from all quarters of America, the West Indies and Africa has maintained itself in Harlem for over five years. Two important magazines, both edited from New York, maintain their news and circulation consistently on a cosmopolitan scale.
Migration Series, Jacob Lawrence
Migration Series, Jacob Lawrence
A new kind of discrimination
Panel No. 1
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