The creative minds behind the Harlem Renaissance used artistic expressions to make an important effect on all features of society, while also providing African-American with heir first sense of while not being to slavery. Lain Locke said it best, “In the very process of being transplanted, the Negro is becoming transformed (Locke 6). In the early 20th century, African-Americans escaped the economic deficiency of the South and migrated northern and urban cities, mostly New York, in an anxious attempt to find good Jobs and economic safety and also searching for a more racially open- minded society.
This collective desire to help each other was an element in changing the movement into one that embraced all the fine arts; it was also essential in evolving the Harlem Renaissance into a search for a new identity for a deprived ethnic group that is constantly being reminded of slavery. The Harlem Renaissance rapidly became Just as important for the way in which is gave African-Americans a real culture and a pride in acknowledging and embracing that culture. The intellectuals contributed to the significance of the Harlem Renaissance by understanding and contributing to its purpose in defining positive role models for blacks.
In fact, the movement essentially created the idea of the black intellectual for OTOH Americans and Europeans. Some of the artists’ contributions are actually still valuable today Just as they were back then. James Weldon Johnson is an iconic symbol in the beginning of the Harlem Renaissance as a writer and also an editor. He had written the controversial Autobiography of an Ex-colored Man in and had also edited The Book of American Negro Poetry. This collection showcased several of the Renaissances most talented poets, including a man who would go on to become a giant in the literary world, Longboats Hughes.
Hughes was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist. He was one of the most primitive innovators of the then-new literary art form called Jazz poetry. He is highly recognized in the Harlem Renaissance period. He famously wrote about the period that “the negro was in vogue” which was later paraphrased as “when Harlem was in vogue”. Zorn Neal Hurst published a literary magazine that crumpled almost immediately because of problems raising money, but was influential, however. Hurst later on accomplished immortality with her book Their Eyes were Watching God.
Literature was not the only art that defined the Harlem Renaissance. In fact, the music of the period may have been more influential in defining the identity of the common African-American than the literary accomplishments. The music turn into a background music for the age, while also providing motivation to the literary adventures of poets and dramatists. Jazz exploded into the arena of respectability and characterized for many whites the embodiment of the urban lifestyle. The leading Jazz performers were Bessie Smith, Duke Elongating, Charlie Parker and Billie o produce an identity of artistic expression.
The most long-lasting effect of the Harlem Renaissance may have been the one that is endorsed upon the education of African-Americans. The vital importance of education, but it was also one which saw a huge growth in the importance and availability of high education. Since the realities of the racial division in America was at work either subliminally or obviously in closely every work of literature produced during this period, the Harlem Renaissance is acknowledged for constructing an aggressiveness borne by that search of knowledge.
Any time an ethnic group is exposed to education at a level they’ve been denied, it can be expected that certain people will recognize the political feature of the denial of that education. There was a beginning mindfulness among African Americans across America that promises made had not been kept from reconstruction through World War l. Many of the intellectuals of the movement insisted that discrimination of this type should be confronted and overcome. During the Harlem Renaissance, African-Americans for the first time had a real reason to experience pride and rejoice in their identity.
Harlem became the center of a “spiritual coming of age” in which Locker’s “New Negro’ transformed “social disillusionment to race pride” (Finer, 2009). Out of Harlem came works of literary, musical and fine arts that spoke to the contribution of African-Americans, and forced the white power arrangement to recognize their contributions. The Harlem Renaissance produced novelists, poets, artists and musicians who are today considered some of the finest that America ever produced, who were mostly blacks. That is the ultimate achievement of the Harlem Renaissance.
