Lexxie Williams
HUM2020- Monday
The Harlem Renaissance: Art, Music, Literature influence in the 20th Century
The Harlem Renaissance was an influential and pivotal period in African American history in the 20th Century. The Harlem Renaissance opened the doors to new and greater opportunities for African Americans. With those new opportunities they took to art, literature, and music, and gave themselves a voice to express life beyond the slave oppression.
The Harlem Renaissance started a change for African Americans that motivated them to express themselves through their own culture and history. The legacy of the writers/poets, artists, and musicians had a great effect on the African American community by giving hope for better days. They
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204). The art showed off their love and passion for their culture and the fearlessness they possessed with the challenges they’ve faced daily. The upper and middle classes of the black community could only relate to the white community by denying their tie to the lower class (Huggins, p. 204). The difference is, the lower class wasn’t so effected by the shame, they loved every part of their poor, loud, and acentric lives. The shame wasn’t a cause for them to turn away from the love for their culture, it just made the proud of their deep black beautiful roots. The black artists of the Harlem Renaissance put a visual scene to the joy, pain, laughter, tears, and the ugly truth within this endearing culture.
The literature of the Harlem Renaissance gave an intellectual opinion in American during in the turn of the 20th century. Writers of the Harlem Renaissance have had a profound impact on the American society today. Through their works, the authors expressed their social and political view on the injustice within America. Famous authors such as Langston Hughes, W.E.B. Dubois, and Zora Neal Hurston, made their mark within the world with the bold, self- conscious literature. Black writers subliminally provoked and challenged racial inequality to come to a
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The soulful rhythmic sounds of the Harlem streets, flowed within the souls of its people. “Jazz, blues, and spiritual was known as Black Music was very popular” (Watson, p.107). The Harlem Renaissance drew a lot of individuals beyond the black community. In the book, The Harlem Renaissance: Hub of African-American Culture, the author wrote, “Harlem drew… those who sniffed the winds of fashion… The fascination with Harlem was accompanied by the new objectification of the Negro as an exotic icon” (Watson, p.105). Although there was so much attention brought to the Harlem Renaissance from many, there wasn’t any changes on the need for economic equality nor racial inequality (Watson, p.