The Harlem Renaissance

In the 1920’s, creative and intellectual life flourished within African American communities in the North and Midwest regions of the United States, but nowhere more so than in Harlem. The small New York City neighborhood was filled with black artists, poets, intellectuals, writers, and musicians. Black-owned businesses, from newspapers, publishing houses, and music companies to nightclubs, cabarets, and theaters, helped fuel the neighborhood’s thriving scene.During the Harlem renaissance era many poets used their poems as a platform to bring about African American voices into the conventional American society. These poems touched people and encouraged them to read more.Some of the era’s most important literary and artistic figures migrated

It integrated black and white cultures, and marked the beginning of a black urban society. A group of people who once held no power and position in a community were now thriving as they spread their culture and ideas. The writing of literature, the composing and performing of music and the production of visual arts was no longer seen simply as an act of creativity; it was a means of “rehabilitating the race in world esteem from that loss of prestige for which the fate and conditions of slavery have been so largely responsible.” Black Americans had entered a new state of racial confidence and felt they had to find alternative ways to disprove the ancient prejudices that prevailed in America. The educated part of the African American community was convinced that they could oppose the stereotype by proving their intellectual ability. They hoped that an increased cultural output would work against the American notion of white supremacy and show that Blacks were no longer willing to accept their alleged status of an uncivilized people without culture. Many held the opinion that white Americans would not treat them as equals unless and until the former slaves proved themselves to be equal, so the importance of culture experienced a huge increase during the early 1920s. The topics that prevailed during the Harlem Renaissance reflected that feeling of marginality and alienation that African Americans were facing. These themes occurred in literature of that period as well as in arts and music. Still, the Harlem Renaissance was as diverse as a movement as the people that created