Did African Americans Contribute To The Harlem Renaissance

shaping the artistic contributions of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Unlike other notable black poets of the period, Hughes refused to differentiate between his personal experience and the common experience of black America. He wanted to tell the stories of his people in ways that reflected their actual culture, including both their suffering, love of music, laughter, and language itself (Ham). Along with literary works, the music of the Harlem Renaissance appealed to a wide audience and marked a proliferation of African-American cultural influence. No aspect of the Harlem Renaissance shaped America and the entire world as much as jazz. Jazz flouted many musical conventions with its syncopated rhythms and improvised instrumental solos.

Prior to World War I, black painters and sculptors had rarely concerned themselves with African American subject matter. By the end of the 1920s, black artists had begun developing styles related to black aesthetic traditions or folk art (Chambliss). As African art became well known in Western art circles, West African cultural models gained importance for black American artists. Many of these artists produced their best work in the 1930s and helped cultivate the next generation. New York City became a centre of art education with new galleries, schools, and museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, which was founded in 1929 (Chambliss). Most important for the aspiring black artists were the School of Arts and Crafts and the Harlem Community Art Center. In the middle and late 1930s, with Works Progress Administration (WPA) aid, federal arts projects under the New Deal provided and unprecedented level of encouragement to the development of black artists and helped start the careers of a new generation of artists (Young). The art of the Harlem Renaissance laid the foundation for the Civil Rights Movement by exposing the passion African Americans had for their culture and its importance in American

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