harlem renaissance

1. Aim: What impact did the Harlem
Renaissance have on American
society in the 1920s and today?
Do Now:
 Read Langston Hughes
description of the Harlem
Renaissance and
complete the 5W’s
organizer?

2. Duke Ellington and his orchestra
Langston Hughes
 Period of time when large numbers of African
American musicians, artists , and writers
settled in Harlem. During the Harlem
Renaissance young black artists and some
whites celebrated their African and American
heritage.
Renaissance= rebirth, new start.
Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong
Zora Neale Hurston
The Harlem Renaissance:

3. What led
to the
Harlem
Renaissa
nce?

4.  Movement of about 1.6 million African
Americans who left the mostly rural
South to migrate to the urban northern
industrial cities. African Americans
moved to cities like New York, Chicago,
and St. Louis.
The Great Migration:

5. Document#1

6. According to The Crisis records, 77 Negroes
were lynched during the year 1919. During the
year 1918 64 Negroes were lynched.
Georgia still leads with an increase in lynchings;
Mississippi takes second place, instead of Texas
with 5 more lynchings; the is Alabama.
Document#2

7. Document#3

8. Mobile, Ala., April, 26, 1917
Dear Sir:
. . . I am writing to you for advice about coming north. I
am a brickmason and I can do cement work. . . . [I need to]
make a support for my self and family.
There is nothing here [in the South] for the colored man
but a hard time which these southern crackers gives us. We
has not had any work to do in 4 weeks.
Please help this brother.
Source: Deirdre Mullane, ed. Crossing the Danger Water: Three Hundred Years of
African-American Writing (New York: Anchor Books, 1993), p. 458.
Document#4

9. Document#5

10. Effects of the Harlem Renaissance:
1. Increase in lynchings
2. Increase in number of educated African Americans
3. African Americans obtained better pay and working
conditions than in the South
4. Increase in the number of the Ku Klux Klan
members
5. Growth of movements that promoted the interests
of African Americans

11. Activity
 Complete the gallery walk to gain more
understanding of the Harlem Renaissance
period.
For example…

12. "Strange Fruit"
Poem by Abel Meeropol in 1939
Southern trees bear a strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.
Pastoral scene of the gallant south
the bulging eyes and the twisted mouth
scent of magnolia
sweet and fresh
then the sudden smell of burning flesh
Here is a fruit
for the crows to pluck
for the rain to gather
for the wind to suck
for the sun to rot
for the tree to drop
Here is a strange
and bitter crop

13. Activity
 Complete the gallery walk to gain more
understanding of the Harlem Renaissance
period.

14. Closure: What impact did the
Harlem Renaissance have on
American society in the 1920s and
today?