Harlem Renaissance

Americans understand the Harlem Renaissance to be a time in recent United States history during which African art came to life and made strides in improving the African Americans’ reputations and involvement in American politics and economy. It was during this same time that we see tremendous development in African American children’s literature, as its use shifted from entertaining yet degrading to instrumental in the development of the New Negro. Research on the children alive during the Harlem Renaissance and the less popular “ ‘centrality of the children’ to the movement as an ‘ideological center point of the New Negro’, ” reveals that African Americans involved children in the Harlem Renaissance and the New Negro movement more historians

This new type of African American education came by way of new literary sources, both in the home and in the classroom. African American parents were encouraged to invest in their children’s educations at home, as Katherine Capshaw Smith writes in Children’s Literature of the Harlem Renaissance, “The home was the space for building new race leaders, according to the Crisis” . In the home, parents and older influences made literature readily available for children. It was a common belief among African Americans and promoters of the New Negro movement that the product of their work would show through the youngest generation, as these children would continue their forefathers’ labors until they concluded the development of the New Negro . With a fresh understanding of the impact children could have on social transformation, African American families had found a new responsibility to raise children . Furthermore, this new at-home education through literature taught children to persevere, preserve history, and fight in order to prosper

After American authors had written enough racist and stereotypical literature for young black readers, African American authors took the development of children’s literature into their own hands. Popular Harlem Renaissance authors used their different vantage points on society and politics while incorporating different themes to create literature with content and purpose that would motivate and prepare black children to become activists in the New Negro movement. Literature written for African American children during the Harlem Renaissance included topics different from typical children’s literature, as authors intentionally wrote in more mature language and provided intellectual enrichment based upon relevant political, social, and economic issues. Several black literati, including men like Countee Cullen, W.E.B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, Arna Bontemps, and Carter G. Woodson, contributed to providing literature for black children during the Harlem Renaissance, educating and empowering them to act towards social change during the New Negro