Characteristics Of The Harlem Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance was a time period where African American culture flourished, both in the US and around the world. This increased interest in the arts led to the discovery of many new African American writers and poets, including Langston Hughes, Claud McKay, and Zora Neale Hurston. In his collection of works titled The New Negro, the cover of which is on the previous page, helped many promising African American writers gain recognition. Often times, these writers and poets drew on other aspects of the Harlem Renaissance when creating their work. Langston Hughes drew a lot of his inspiration from jazz music and many of his poems, including the passage from one of his poems on the previous page, follow the rhythm of jazz and blues music.

This led to an increased interest in numerous different aspects of African American culture, including music, literature, performing arts, and political issues. Although each of these mediums are unique in their own sense, they all share core characteristics of the Harlem Renaissance, including personal expression and defining what is meant to be “black”. These common characteristics created a sense of interconnectedness throughout the Harlem Renaissance as many artists drew their inspirations from those of other mediums. This exhibit portrays just a glance into the vivid cultural revolution of the Harlem Renaissance and includes a wide variety of works across both multiple mediums and subjects. It was the hope that this exhibit would give one a holistic image of life and culture during the Harlem Renaissance by exploring different aspects of it. This event is considered to be the largest shift in African American culture that occurred during the 20th century as African Americans from across the country began to discover themselves and personally define what it meant to be “black”. This time period also marked the beginning of a shift in white recognition and acceptance of African American culture as whites across the country joined their black counterparts in enjoying jazz music and black literature. However, such a change didn’t mean that racism and racial prejudice were erased entirely. Such problems remained prevalent throughout the Harlem Renaissance, though their effects were limited by the sheer size and power of such a movement. Such a movement changed the lives of African Americans throughout the country as their culture was, for the first time, taken seriously by the general population. This movement should be studied because of the changes it brought about to African American culture on a wide scale and because it represents a large