How Did Hurston Contribute To The Harlem Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance paved a way for African American success. As Kareem Abdul-Jabbar said, “When I was 17, I worked in a mentoring program in Harlem designed to improve the community. That's when I first gained an appreciation of the Harlem Renaissance, a time when African-Americans rose to prominence in American culture. For the first time, they were taken seriously as artists, musicians, writers, athletes, and as political thinkers” (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar).The Harlem Renaissance showed the rest of the world what they were feeling and what it was like in Harlem at the time. It also shared some of the African American culture and arts through their poems and short stories. Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston both played a huge part in the

She would be considered the Queen of the Renaissance. She was the feminine voice that the people needed to hear. Most of the Harlem Renaissance was dominated by men and she was one of the few women who contributed to it. Many of the people who had lead roles in the Renaissance were focusing on African American men and not the women in the movement. Zora Neale Hurston changed all of that. She was the voice of African American women in Harlem. She was not trying to make people feel bad for them because they were former slaves. She wanted people to know that they were their own person, and that their problems weren’t because they are victims of white people. Many people didn’t like how she said that. She proved that African American women can have a voice in society and not let it be run by just men (Shmoop Editorial Team). She wrote a book called “Mules and Men” which told what it was like to be an African American women living in the south and what it was like in the southern black culture in general. She also wrote a book called “Their Eyes Were Watching God” which is probably one of her most famous books. It shows just what an African American women had to go through living in Florida. It shows not only what she had to go through from white people but, also from the men in her life (Digital Scholarship