How Did Walt Whitman Influence The Harlem Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance is a poetic and creative movement that embraced, empowered, and redesigned African American culture. During the time period of the Harlem Renaissance, Black families were moving from the South to northern cities, which is known as the Great Migration. This is significant because the Great Migration was the reason why Harlem became the birthplace of the movement. Even though slavery ended, Black people were still facing intense racism which fueled most of the poems. The poets were enraged from the treatment they faced and used poetry as a way to air their resentment. Another historical event during that time was Pan-Africanism, in which people of African descent should be unified, which influenced the poets of the Harlem

Carl Sandburg who was also an American poet and specialized in free verse. Walter Jekyll, an English clergyman who renounced his religion and became a planter in Jamaica, where he collected and published songs and stories from the local African-Caribbean community. John Keats, an English poet who used romanticism. (The Harlem Renaissance)

Other influences were artists of this period such as Louis Armstrong who was a renowned musician. Aaron Douglas, who was a painter who used cubism and art deco. Zora Neale Hurston, an author and filmmaker who created “Their Eyes Were Watching God” which was a fictional story about the experience of a Black woman. Alain LeRoy Locke who was the first African-American Rhodes Scholar and known as one of the lead philosophers of the movement.

W.E.B. DuBois was another prominent figure of the Harlem Renaissance. He was a sociologist and civil rights activist, his most famous piece of work was The Soul of Black Folk. Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican activist was another prominent political figure focusing on Black nationalism as the founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association. (Harlem Renaissance - Definition, Artists & How It

As a poet, playwright, novelist, political commentator, and social activist, he was a prominent figure in the Harlem Renaissance movement. In his early life he moved around and was often lonely, but used literature to combat that loneliness. He started writing poetry in high school and was inspired by what he “called ‘low-down folks’ and the Black American experience.” He was also inspired by Carl Sandburg, Walt Whitman and Paul Laurence Dunbar. He spent a year in Mexico with his father and then moved to New York city for education. That is where he found and joined the beginnings of the Harlem Renaissance movement. He drew inspiration from his surroundings, especially from Jazz and traveling around the world. He wrote numerous books that were mostly collections of his poetry and short stories, including “The Weary Blues” and “The Ways of White Folks”. (Hughes, (James) Langston) The main themes of Langston Hughes’ poetry is using simple language to bring his point across about politics and equality. The accessibility of his poetry allowed for, at a time where education was still a privilege and very much segregated, for people of every background to understand the message he was