The Harlem Renaissance was a big turn over for the African Americans, which took place in Harlem,New York. The Renaissance was a cultural, social and artistic movement, around this time it was also known as the “New Negro Movement”. This took place during The Great Migration, was a movement of approximately two million blacks migrating from the South. African Americans migrated from the South to escape Jim Crow laws, lynching, racism, segregation in the South. The North offered better job opportunities to provide a better life for the future generation of African Americans.
One artist that stood out against hundreds of others was James Langston Hughes. Langston was born on February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri and died May 22, 1967 in New York. He attended Columbia University and Lincoln University. Langston was very multi talented, although he was a poet he also was a social activist, novelist, playwright, and communist. Langston lived with his mother (Caroline Mercer Langston), and grandmother (Mary Langston) due to his parents marital problems. His father (James Nathaniel Hughes) moved to Mexico, and he did not see him until summer. Hughes only wrote when he was either sad or angry. He was referred to as “Harlem’s poet” because he and many others had such a big impact.
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Hughes published his first book in The Crisis magazine of The National Association of the Advancement of The Crisis(NAACP). The poem "The Negro Speaks of Rivers", became Hughes famous poem. He wrote this poem as he was going past the Mississippi river on his way to Mexico. This poem is comparing African Americans rough travel from Africa to America. "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" connects the heritage of African Americans to the rivers in the Middle East, Africa, and