Harlem Renaissance Art of African Americans Being Seperated From White People
As the Bully Migration of African Americans made its way due north, New York Metropolis'due south Harlem neighborhood became a vibrant hotspot for musicians, writers, entertainers and thinkers. The collection of talent, all within a few city blocks, became known every bit the Harlem Renaissance. Lasting between the 1910s and the mid-1930s, the influence of the time is still felt today.
Hither are 9 of the most prominent figures of the cultural movement:
Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes
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One of the leaders of the Renaissance, Langston Hughes made his marker by using his art to bear witness the universal experience of the Black customs.
The Missouri-built-in poet and author lived all across America before spending a yr at Columbia Academy and later on finished his education at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. His first volume of poetry was published in 1926 at the height of the Harlem Renaissance, with his first novel following soon after.
According to critic Donald B. Gibson, Hughes "differed from well-nigh of his predecessors among blackness poets… in that he addressed his poetry to the people, specifically to Black people. During the twenties when most American poets were turning inward, writing obscure and esoteric poetry to an ever decreasing audience of readers, Hughes was turning outward, using language and themes, attitudes and ideas familiar to anyone who had the ability merely to read."
Hughes died in 1967 of complications of prostate cancer at 65. To honour him, his Harlem residence was given landmark status by the New York City Preservation Commission and the street he lived on was renamed "Langston Hughes Place."
READ MORE: 10 of Langston Hughes' Most Pop Poems
Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston
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An writer, playwright and filmmaker, Zora Neale Hurston celebrated the culture of the Blackness rural Due south similar few others. Her love of the Due south came from her ain babyhood growing up in the Orlando suburb or Eatonville, the first all-Black town in the state where she was never treated differently or inferior.
Though Hurston'due south idyllic upbringing came to an end when she turned 13 and her beloved mother died, the writer connected impressing people everywhere she went and eventually made her way north to Harlem, condign a friend of Hughes.
The ii collaborated on a play together, published posthumously, and Hurston gained recognition for her novels and investigations of voodoo culture.
She died in 1960 at 69, with her latest book, written in 1931, finally published in 2018. Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" tells the story of Cudjo Lewis, who was believed to be the terminal survivor of the last slave ship that brought Africans to America.
READ More than: 10 Best-Selling Blackness Authors Who Shaped Literary History
Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong
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Known as i of the founding fathers of jazz, Louis Armstrong revolutionized the genre with the piece of work that came out of the Harlem Renaissance.
Growing upward in New Orleans, Armstrong was constantly exposed to some of the best jazz musicians in the land. Though his daily life was hard as his single mother struggled to raise him, and he ended upwardly in an orphanage, his beloved of music and natural talent propelled him to the ranks of some of America's most famous musicians.
Afterwards he moved to New York City in 1924 to join the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra, Armstrong's unique, soulful and lively solos inverse the course of jazz to focus on individual musicians experimenting with sound.
His small group recordings from 1925 to 1928, all during the Renaissance, made Armstrong the most influential musician in jazz, and his singing brought his work to world-wide distinction. Armstrong would after be responsible for enduring hits similar "What A Wonderful World" and "Hello Dolly."
READ MORE: How Louis Armstrong Revolutionized American Music
Marcus Garvey
Marcus Garvey
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Few activists had the impact Marcus Garvey brought to the African American community in a curt bridge of time — and all out of Harlem. The Jamaican-born leader took residence in Harlem and began a series of innovative projects and movements that focused on the Black working class. While Garvey was seen as a radical effigy that advocated for the return to Africa of many dark-skinned African Americans, his motives were to install Blackness pride in a community oppressed by racism.
In 1914, Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), later making Liberty Hall in Harlem its headquarters. Past the 1920s, the UNIA had over 700 chapters across America and Garvey commanded influence.
In August 1920, delegates from around the world packed the hall for a convention, and more than 25,000 people later marched from Harlem to Madison Square Garden, where Garvey held a rally.
Similar many African American leaders at the time, Garvey became the target of the U.Due south. government and he was convicted and imprisoned for mail fraud in 1923. He was later pardoned past President Calvin Coolidge and deported back to Jamaica in 1927.
A tribute to his contribution forever stands in Harlem with Marcus Garvey Park, defended to nurturing the community he sought to improve.
Aaron Douglas
Aaron Douglas
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Aaron Douglas has long been chosen the "Father of African Art" thanks to his impactful paintings that were shaped past the pillars of the Harlem Renaissance.
Douglas made his fashion to New York City from his native Kansas in search of the hubbub of talent he had heard nearly. Once there, Douglas made famous friends in fellow leaders West.E.B. Du Bois, Alain Locke and James Weldon Johnson, all of whom featured his piece of work in famous publications and even their own books.
The creative person was known for his dramatic geometric shapes and flat forms that he used to tell the story of the Black experience.
Douglas eventually made his mark on Harlem permanent with a landscape on the New York Public Library's 135th location entitled Aspects of Negro Life. The breathtaking piece shows 3 facets of the Black experience: a figure symbolizing the escape from slavery, one showing the economical hardships of African Americans and the 3rd property a saxophone, paying tribute to the rich opportunities Blackness artists had thanks to the Renaissance.
Countee Cullen
Countee Cullen
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Countee Cullen had a vibrant life after becoming the adopted son of Reverend Frederick A. Cullen, the pastor of Harlem's largest congregation when he was fifteen.
The poet was quickly influenced past the bedrock of talent around him and had already appeared in national magazines before he graduated from New York Academy in 1925. He published his first volume of poems, Colour, that aforementioned year. His poems explored modern racial injustice at the time using the classical structures associated with white poets.
Tight with a circle of celebrated writers, Cullen became the assistant editor of Opportunity magazine, an academic journal published past the National Urban League.
Cullen after etched his proper name into Black high society when he married Yolanda Du Bois in 1928, the girl of civil rights leader Due west.Eastward.B. Du Bois.
Bessie Smith
Bessie Smith
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Bessie Smith became known as the "Empress of the Blues" thanks to her captivating and powerful vocals.
Smith was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and was working as a blues singer past the time she was 18. She soon joined the Rabbit Foot Minstrels and met the legendary Ma Rainey, who took Smith under her wing.
Smith somewhen made her way to New York where her first release, "Dejected Dejection," became a huge hit. She went on to tape with legendary artists similar Armstrong during her time in the Harlem scene.
While Smith'southward popularity continued for some time, but toward the end of her life, she lost popularity. She died at 43 years old in 1937 from injuries sustained in a car accident.
READ More than: Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey Forged a Powerful Friendship That Helped Bring Blues to the Mainstream
Sterling A. Brown
Sterling A. Brownish (forepart left) and other African American poets
Photo: Courtesy of Everett Collection
Poet Sterling A. Brown was welcomed into the Harlem Renaissance legacy after his first book Southern Route was published to critical acclamation.
Built-in in 1901 in Washington, D.C., Brown received a high-profile education at places like Williams Higher and Harvard University, later didactics at Howard University.
His piece of work was influenced by African American music and his writings mused on race and class in America, like that of Hurston, Hughes and Cullen. Though the Neat Depression kept him from being published once more for decades, Brown somewhen released his second book, The Last Ride of Wild Bill, in 1975.
Alice Dunbar Nelson
Alice Dunbar Nelson
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Alice Dunbar Nelson was born to mixed-race parents in New Orleans, setting the tone for the nuanced have on race, gender and ethnicity she explored through her piece of work.
A poet and activist, Dunbar Nelson'south start book, Violets and Other Tales (1985), was published when she was simply xx years old. A writer of many genres, Dunbar Nelson is almost remembered for her prose. Every bit 1 of the just female African American diarists of the era, she wrote about topics such as racism, sexuality and family.
She fabricated her marker on the legacy of the Harlem Renaissance through her many reviews of writers like Hughes while living in the New York City neighborhood. Dunbar Nelson is as well credited for helping establish the White Rose Mission in Harlem, a Christian, nonsectarian Home for Colored Girls and Women. The Mission also offered task placement for African Americans coming to the city in the mail-Civil War migration.
Source: https://www.biography.com/news/harlem-renaissance-figures
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