Langston Hughes: The Writers Of The Harlem Renaissance

After World War I, through the swinging days of jazz, and on into the middle of the Great Depression there immerged a movement in art and literature commonly referred to as the Harlem Renaissance. This event was characterized through the writings, and overall actions, of African Americans whose works enjoyed a new prominence in the canon of American literature and whose endeavors began shaping a new place in American culture for their Negro brothers and sisters. “Beginning in the 1890s and then picking up the pace in 1915, African Americans were leaving rural communities … for the urban centers of the South, first, and then the North, in search of expanding industrial economic opportunities, and a less repressive racial climate” (Byrd & Gates, 209). As African Americans began the “great migration” from the South to the North there began a transformation in their culture which prompted some of the writers of the Harlem Renaissance to begin exploring the idea of identity and whether or not the prominence that African Americans were establishing during this time was changing those ideas. This new Renaissance had its base in New York City, where many of the leaders of the “new Negros” converged in the

Writers such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, Alain Locke, and Langston Hughes are all credited with steering the movement through their work, which explored and celebrated being African American at that time. Many of these authors enjoyed a success that was rare for someone of color up until the Renaissance began to gain traction and their writing and social activism became the focus of the movement. Yet, there was one writer who is credited as having an association with the Harlem Renaissance whose work bears questioning as to whether it celebrated the idea of being African American or whether it sought to explore the idea of transcending racial