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How Did The Harlem Renaissance Affect The Civil Rights Movement?

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To a certain extent, Harlem authors, artists and musicians of the Harlem Renaissance contributed in shaping the later 1960s civil rights movement. For instance, the artists of the Harlem Renaissance created works that would change the thoughts of Americans and inspire artists and later artists to use art to protest racism. Moreover, the Harlem Renaissance helped in changing political mindsets, which made the policy reforms in the 1960s easier to execute for the civil rights movement. However, the critics of the Harlem Renaissance have claimed that artists turned to mimicking white, middle class culture, in contrast to the attitude of the civil rights movement where African Americans focused on forging their own unique identity. Furthermore, …show more content…

The Harlem Renaissance was a “outpouring of writing, music, and social criticism” (Baker, 1987) aimed at destroying the ever-present racism of the 1920s. Langston Hughes, an artist of the Harlem Renaissance, was a big contributor to change, inspiring those of his own time and later on to stand up for African American rights. Penning the 1926 manifesto The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain, Hughes encapsulated the thoughts of Harlem, and urged African Americans to be proud of their own culture, “without fear or shame” (Hughes in Bernard, 2011). As Hughes’ works were well published, African Americans, not just from Harlem, started to follow in his footsteps and create art that celebrated their skin colour. Professor Bercovitch argues that The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain “embod[ies] the voice of the community”, attributing his popularity during the Harlem Renaissance to this communal voice that speaks for those who cannot (Bercovitch, 2003). In addition, in the 1960s, Hughes befriended the popular singer Nina Simone, encouraging her to use her music to further the civil rights movement. Hughes was an inspiration to Simone, who was already an established voice in popular culture and the civil rights movement. Hughes even wrote The Backlash Blues for Simone to perform as a protest song. Carrying such powerful lines as “the world is big / big and bright and round / and it's full of folks like me” (Simone, 1967), Backlash Blues became a popular song in the civil rights movement, allowing African Americans to express their proudness and protest racism in a more accessible way. Freedom songs such as Backlash Blues were and are still so significant to African Americans as they “sustain as well as … publicise the struggle[s]” they face (Stefani, 2015). Furthermore,

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The Harlem Renaissance made a impact that led into the Civil Rights movement. African Americans used this time to recreate a more positive image for themselves. For an example, W.E.B DuBois was one of the lead politicians during the Harlem Renaissance made a great impact that led into the Civil Rights movement. He wanted to use art in a positive way and advance political change for civil rights.

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The Harlem Renaissance was a period in American history, which occurred in the 1920s in Harlem, New York. The cultural movement was an opportunity for African Americans to celebrate their heritage through intellectual and artistic works. Langston Hughes, a famous poet, was a product of the Harlem Renaissance. One notable piece of literature by Hughes is “Dream Deferred”. However, the discussion of African American culture isn’t limited to the 1920s.

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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.

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My next and final topic that I chose is The Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance was rooted in the struggle for black civil rights. During and about right after WWI, in a phase of the Great Migration, some half a million African Americans moved from the rural South to the cities of the North. Most people moved in hopes of escaping the poverty and the oppression of Jim Crow Laws. They encountered racist hostility nearly as bitter as they experienced in the South.

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The Harlem Renaissance was an important event for the life of an African American. During this time, other people decided to give the African Americans a chance because they saw what talent the African American race had with music, art and sports. By giving them a voice, they finally had a chance to get the rights they deserved. After the Civil war, African Americans were free by law, but they still had to fight for almost everything they wanted.     The African American group got so popular by their abilities in art, sports and music.

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“We are controlled here by our confusion, far more than we know, and the American dream has therefore become something mush more closely resembling a nightmare” (Baldwin 89). It was thoughts like this that provoked activism in one of the most influential Civil Rights advocates in our nation, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It goes without question that King held influence on James Baldwin’s Civil Rights methodology. Even in the presence of more radical ideals, through standing firm in his own beliefs while never ceasing to be inspired, Baldwin was able to create an unprecedented form of “integration” that stands alone.

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The Harlem renaissance and The Great Migration helped improve life for African Americans because they helped them. The quote tells us that the Harlem Renaissance helped African Americans get their culture back and share it with the world. “The Harlem Renaissance produced new and exciting art, literature, and music, it also helped to shape and express what it meant to be Black in America. For hundreds of years, Black people had been enslaved and oppressed in the Americas, denied their history and identity” (10). The quote shows us that The Harlem Renaissance Influenced the Civil Rights Movement because it helped African Americans gain a new spirit of self-determination and pride.

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The Harlem Renaissance was a period of great cultural growth in the black community. It is accepted that it started in 1918 and lasted throughout the 1930s. Though named the ‘Harlem’ Renaissance, it was a country-wide phenomenon of pride and development among black Americans, the likes of which had never existed in such grand scale. Among the varying political actions and movements for equality, a surge of new art appeared: musical, visual, and even theatre. With said surge, many of the most well-known black authors, poets, musicians and actors rose to prevalence including Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Louis Armstrong, and Eulalie Spence.

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In many ways, music becomes a tool by which people shift culture through expression and confronting tough subjects many may not address. Esteemed singer, pianist, and social activist, Nina Simone, kindled emotive discussions of civil rights, racial injustice, and the perspective of being a black American using her amalgamation of jazz, folk, gospel, and classical musical styles. Her earnest delivery of political and social issues at the time propelled her to the forefront of protest music. With genius lyricism evoking strong emotion, Nina Simone’s unique blend of styles, and influential use of thematic civil rights and feminist ideals redefined forthrightness within music, making her one of the most important voices for a generation of black

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One of the main statement of Langston Hughes “Let America be America Again” is the inequality between majorities and minorities. The theoretical concept of this term paper looks into Postcolonial-Criticism, especially cultural differences and the American Civil Rights Movement as well as African-American studies. If you read a poem like “Let America Be America Again” the first question which will come to your mind will probably be the question of whether there was segregation, inequality and discrimination of minorities at this specific time. In the fifth stanza of the poem Hughes names groups which were discriminated, namely African-Americans, American-Indians and immigrants in general. To further understand this issue I looked into Marxism and the most important movement at this time, the Harlem Renaissance.

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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.

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The Harlem Renaissance was a movement that reflected the culture of African Americans in an artistic way during the 1920’s and the 30’s. Many African Americans who participated in this movement showed a different side of the “Negro Life,” and rejected the stereotypes that were forced on themselves. The Harlem Renaissance was full of artists, musicians, and writers who wrote about their thoughts, especially on discrimination towards blacks, such as Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, and Langston Hughes. The Harlem Renaissance was an influential and exciting movement, and influenced others to fight for what they want and believed in. The Harlem Renaissance was the start of the Civil Rights Movement.

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The representatives of Harlem Renaissance believed in democratic reforms, they thought that art and literature were means of changes and impact on white people. They believed in themselves and assisted to political organizations of that time – “National Association for the Advancement of Colored

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Langston Hughes, an African American poet and civil rights activist during the civil right era in the United States. He wrote many poem in order to express the unjust treatment that people experience in this time. Poems he used that this theme where “The Backlash Blues”, “Let America be America Again”, “You and Your Whole Race”, “I too”, and “Merry go round”. Langston Hughes uses imagery, diction, and repetition in his poems in order to convey his ideas of hardships and difficulty people dealt with at his time.

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The Harlem Renaissance and the Hippie movement, while vastly different from each other, both had a common core reason for the writing that came from these time periods. There are many different views of the Harlem Renaissance and what is considered just and unjust for the oppressed people of this time. Looking at the works of Zora Neale Hurston compared to Ralph Ellison, there is a vast difference in the message that is being portrayed between the two writing. Although these two works are different, they contain somewhat of the same message. The Hippie movement is something not taken as seriously as the Harlem Renaissance is.

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