The Harlem Renaissance was a phase of a larger New Negro Movement that had arisen in the early 20th century and in some ways ushered in the civil rights movement of the late 1940s and the early 1950s. The social foundations of this movement included the Great Migration of the African Americans, from rural to urban spaces, and the dramatically advancement of literacy. The creation of national organizations dedicated to helping African American civil rights, and “uplifting” the race by developing race pride.
The Renaissance was a literary, artistic, and meaningful movement that sparked a new black cultural identity that lasted until the 1920s to the mid 1930s. Essence summed up by critic and teacher Alain Locke in 1926 when he declared that through art “Negro life is seizing its first chances for group expression and self determination”. The heart of the movement included Jean Toomer , Langston Hughes, Rudolf Fisher, Wallace Thurman, Jessie Redmon Fauset, Nella Larsen, Anna Bontemps, Countee
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Surrounded with a wide variety of styles, including Pan-African perspectives,” high culture and low culture”, traditional forms in literature such as modernism, and the new form of jazz poetry. New authors attracted a great amount of national attention, which led to more opportunities for blacks to be published by mainstream houses. Some authors who became nationally known were Jean Toomer, Jessie Fauset, Claude McKay, Zora Neale Hurston, James Weldon Johnson, Alain Locke, and Langston Hughes. During the renaissance jazz musicians like Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, Jelly Roll Morton, and Willie “The Lion” Smith are considered to paved the way for future musicians of their genre because they made a new way of playing