A New African American Identity: The Harlem Renaissance

Press Released: 18 July 2022: Following the Civil War ended in 1865 thousands of African Americans, who had been liberated from slavery in the South started to dream of greater participation in American society. This meant equality in opportunities for economic growth, economic and cultural self-determination, as well as the right to political and economic independence.

This dream was unfortunately largely gone by the 1870s. The white supremacy was swiftly restored in the Reconstruction South. White legislators at both the state and local level passed "Jim Crow laws" which rendered African Americans second-class citizens. While a small number of African Americans were allowed to own land, the majority were required to work as sharecroppers. This was a system that kept the poor and powerless. Groups that resent people like the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) perpetrated lynchings and conducted campaigns of intimidation and fear to keep African Americans from voting or exercising their other rights. To find out more info about society, you've to check out black education site.

With the booming economies of the North and Midwest offering industrial jobs for people of all races, many African Americans realized their hopes for a higher standard of living--and a more racially tolerant environment--lay outside the South. The Great Migration, which saw thousands of African Americans move to New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles and Detroit by the turn of 20th century, was already taking place. Around 175,000 African Americans flocked to Harlem the city's smallest area. The Harlem area is three miles and is among the most densely populated in the United States. Harlem was a popular place of choice for African Americans of all backgrounds. From laborers with no skills to educated middle class, they all shared common experiences of slavery the emancipation process, and oppression racial and an ambition to establish a new identity as free people.

The Great Migration brought to Harlem many of the most creative minds and gifted people of the day. It also brought an astonishing amount of African American scholars and artists. Between the end of World War I and the mid-1930s, they produced one of the most important times of cultural expression in the history of the United States--the Harlem Renaissance. Yet this cultural explosion also took place in Cleveland, Los Angeles and many cities shaped by the massive migration.

Poetry and prose are all part of the Harlem Renaissance. They also included sculpture and painting as well as music, poetry and swing, opera and dance. What brought these different art forms was their realistic presentation of what it was to be black in America, what writer Langston Hughes called an "expression of our own dark-skinned self," as well as an emerging militancy to assert their rights as citizens and politicians.

W.E.B. was one of the most important Renaissance contributors. W.E.B., Cyril Briggs and Marcus Garvey were among the most important Renaissance contributors. Also, Josephine Baker and Paul Robeson were electric performers. Zora Nealehurston and Effie Le Newsome were writers and poets. Augusta Savage was a visual artist. There is an impressive list of legendary musicians, including Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday, Billie Holiday and Jelly Roll Morton.

However, the Harlem Renaissance's impact on America was profound. The Harlem Renaissance was a source of recognition for the most outstanding art of African American art and it influenced and inspired future generations of African American intellectuals and artists. Self-portraits of African American life, identity, and culture that originated from Harlem was retransmitted to the rest of the world, challenging the racist and disparaging stereotypes of the Jim Crow South. It fundamentally altered the way that people from other races saw African Americans and understood their experiences.

The Harlem Renaissance, most importantly it instilled into African Americans throughout the country the desire to be self-determined and pride as well as a social consciousness. All of this would be a foundation for Civil Rights Movements in the 1950s, 1960s, and even beyond.

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