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The Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance is the name given to the period from the end of World War I and through the middle of the 1930s Depression. . During this time a group of talented African-American writers produced a sizable body of literature in these four areas:. poetry. drama.
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The Harlem Renaissance The Harlem Renaissanceis the name given to the period from the end of World War I and through the middle of the 1930s Depression.
During this timea group of talented African-American writers produced a sizable body of literature in these four areas: poetry drama fiction and essays
Common themes of the Harlem Renaissance include the following: alienation marginality folk material the blues tradition and the problem of writing for a white audience.
The Harlem Renaissance brought the Black experience into American cultural history. The Black migration, from south to north, changed their image from rural to urban, from peasant to sophisticate.
Harlem Renaissance Poetry: Langston Hughes The first poem to really draw attention to Langston Hughes was “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” which helped define his style as a Negro poet. He wrote it when he was only 17, riding on a train which crossed the Mississippi River going from Illinois to Missouri. The Negro Speaks of Rivers I’ve known rivers: I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom burn all golden in the sunset.
I’ve known rivers: Ancient, dusky rivers. My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I, Too by Langston Hughes 1924 (he was 22 years old) I, too, sing America [An allusion to Walt Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing,” published in 1867 in Leaves of Grass. Here Hughes means that blacks are Americans too, not just whites.] I am the darker brother. [This poem is about segregation and how eventually it will come to an end.] They send me to eat in the kitchen When company comes. But I laugh, And grow strong. [The implied meaning here is that they are waiting now but will grow stronger as time passes.] Tomorrow, I’ll sit at the table When company comes. [The use of "I" helps showing the African American community will soon rise and be one with the rest of America.]
Nobody’ll dare Say to me, “Eat in the kitchen,” Then. [This shows what the future will be like, or as Hughes uses the metaphorical "tomorrow." The use of "I" helps show that the African American community will soon rise and be one with the rest of America.] Besides, They’ll see how beautiful I am And be ashamed – I, too, am America. [Here Hughes says that once African American's are recognized as equal, everyone will see they are not bad and that they are beautiful as well as part of America.]
Some Harlem Renaissance Art The social and political problems that many African Americans faced just after World War I (1914-1918) were alleviated, in part, by mass migrations to the urban North. Northern cities offered an escape from the old South. Visual artists played a key role in creating depictions of the New Negro.
Laura Wheeler Waring Still Life, 1929, oil on canvas. Palmer Hayden (American, 1890-1973), Nous Quatre a Paris (We Four in Paris), no date, watercolor on paper, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY.
Aaron Douglas, Study for Aspects of Negro Life: The Negro in an African Setting, 1934, gouache (gwahsh – heavy, flat watercolor paint) on Whatman artist’s board
William H. Johnson, Chain Gang, Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.
Loïs Mailou Jones Negro Shack I, Sedalia, North Carolina, 1930, watercolor on paper
