Harlem Renaissance

WHAT IS THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE ?

The Harlem Renaissance (also called the "New Negro Movement") was an intellectual, social, and artistic movement that took place in the district of Harlem, in New York, spanning(= s’étendant sur) 1920 till 1930. The Harlem Renaissance was considered to be a rebirth of African-American arts. It was centered in the Harlem neighborhood of the borough of Manhattan in New York City. 

ORIGIN/BACKGROUND

Since the abolition of Slavery in 1865, the Blacks Americans are faced with the segregation. If they obtained the voting right, the Afro-Americans are excluded from the citizenship in the South of the country. In front of lynchings (=Lynchages) which become intensified in the 1890s, in front of discriminations, several thousand of Afro-Americans leaved the rural South to settle in the industrial cities of the Northeast. In the 1920s, the American economy is successful, but the inequalities are important, and the Blacks appear among the poorest.

HARLEM IN THE XXe CENTURY

During the early portion of the 20th century, Harlem was the destination for migrants from around the country during The Great Migration (1892-1943). Many African Americans arrived during the First World War. So Harlem became an African-American district in the early 1900s.

CHARACTERISTICS AND ACTORS OF THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE

At first concerned the literature, the Harlem Renaissance extended in the music, particularly the jazz, the performing arts and the plastic arts. The African-American artists took more and more scale until win the heart of the American white community. In the music, they are inspired by songs dating the period of the slavery, for the literature and culture, they open the discussions under forms of debate about the African-American culture.

MAINSTREAM RECOGNITION OF HARLEM CULTURE

The first stage of the Harlem Renaissance started in the late 1910s. In 1917, the premiere of Three Plays for a Negro Theatre took place. These plays, written by white playwright Ridgely Torrence, featured African-American actors conveying complex human emotions. They rejected the stereotypes of the blackface and minstrel show traditions. Moreover in 1919, when the poet Claude McKay published his militant sonnet, "If We Must Die", which introduced a dramatically political dimension to the themes of African cultural inheritance. 

The Harlem Renaissance grew out of the changes that had taken place in the African American community since the abolition of slavery, as the expansion of communities in the North. These accelerated as a consequence of World War I and the great social and cultural changes in early 20th century in The United States. Industrialization was attracting people to cities from rural areas and gave rise to a new mass culture. 

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