This presentation is a great introduction and over view of the 20th century literary and cultural movement, the Harlem Renaissance

1. The Harlem
Renaissance
Treasure Shields
Redmond, Assistant
Professor of English
Southwestern Illinois
College

2. Redmond
“The Harlem Renaissance was the name given
to the cultural, social, and artistic explosion that
took place in Harlem between the end of World
War I and the middle of the 1930s” (Wormser)

3. Redmond

4. Roughly 90% of Blacks lived in the south
prior to the civil war

5. Alain Locke
Guest editor of the March
1925 issue of the periodical
Survey Graphic titled
"Harlem, Mecca of the New
Negro",
.

6. The NEW Negro
OLD NEGRO
“The old Negro had
been rural, ignorant,
humbly servile,
superstitious and able
only to be plantation
laborer.”(Karuhulanda.
com)
NEW NEGRO
“In contrast, the new
style Negro was
urbane, educated,
literate, proud of being
themselves, assertive
and a sophisticated city
dweller.”
(Karuhulanda.com)

7. The Urban
League
Opportunity: A Journal of
Negro Life was an academic
journal published by the
National Urban League

8. W.E.B. Dubois & Booker T.
Washington
"The Negro Race, like all races,
is going to be saved by its
exceptional men. The problem
of education then, among
Negroes, must first of all deal
with the "Talented Tenth." It is
the problem of developing the
best of this race that they may
guide the Mass away from the
contamination and death of the
worst."
“No race can prosper
till it learns that there is
as much dignity in
tilling a field as in
writing a poem.”

9. Philosophical Backdrop
W.E.B. Dubois Booker T. Washington

10. Philosophica
l Father:
Marcus
Garvey
The Renaissance was more
than a literary or artistic
movement, as it possessed a
certain sociological
development—particularly
through a new racial
consciousness—through ethnic
pride, as seen in the Back to
Africa movement led by
Marcus Garvey.

11. VISUAL
Artists: Meta
Warrick
Fuller
Visual artists of the Harlem
Renaissance, like the
dramatists, attempted to win
control over representation of
their people from white
caricature and denigration
while developing a new
repertoire of images.

12. VISUAL
Artists:
Aaron
Douglas
The signature artist of the
renaissance was Aaron
Douglas, who turned away
from traditional landscape
painting after moving to New
York City from Kansas and
studying under the German
immigrant Winold Reiss.

13. Aaron Douglas

14. WRITERS: CLAUDE
MCKAY
Another landmark
came in 1919, when
the poet Claude McKay
published his militant
sonnet, "If We Must
Die”

15. If We Must
Die
If we must die—let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die—oh, let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
Oh, Kinsmen! We must meet the common foe;
Though far outnumbered, let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
By Claude McKay

16. WRITERS: LANGSTON
HUGHES
He was one of the
earliest innovators of
the then-new literary
art form called jazz
poetry. Hughes is best
known as a leader of
the Harlem
Renaissance.

17. The Negro
Speaks of
Rivers
I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
By Langston Hughes

18. Writers
Countee Cullen
Wallace Thurman
Rudolf Fisher
City of Refuge and another short
story, Vestiges, were included in
Alain Locke's anthology, The New
Negro
Jessie Redmon Fauset
Fauset became a member of
the NAACP and represented
them in the Pan African
Congress in 1921.

19. Arna
Bontemps
In 1924 he accepted a
teaching position in Harlem.
Frequently collaborated with
Langston Hughes

20. One more Influence:
BLUES

21. Redmond

22. Writers: Zora Neale
Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston is
considered one of the
pre-eminent writers of
twentieth-century
African-American
literature. Hurston was
closely associated with
the Harlem
Renaissance and has
influenced such writers
as Ralph Ellison, Toni
Morrison, Gayle Jones,
Alice Walker, and Toni
Cade Bambara.

23. Personality Conflicts
ZORA LANGSTON

24. LASTING IMPACT
The Harlem Renaissance helped lay the
foundation for the post-World War II phase of
the Civil Rights Movement. black artists who
rose to creative maturity afterward were
inspired by this literary movement
The Renaissance was more than a literary or
artistic movement, it possessed a certain
sociological development—particularly
through a new racial consciousness