The Harlem Renaissance is a term used to distinguish the African American cultural explosion that happened in the 1920s through the 1930s in the Harlem area of New York city. Among the many artists who helped give rise to the Harlem Renaissance were several writers who remain well known and respected to this day. Here ...
The Harlem Renaissance remains one of the most significant artistic movements in American history, far surpassing its original importance to one specific minority. The renaissance served to create a consciousness of identity for African-Americans, while also forcing white American to confront the importance of an ethnic group too long considered inferior. The Harlem Renaissance is ...
In the early 1920s and continuing till the mid Depression years, the cultural explosion of literature, music, and art was harbored mainly in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City. The Harlem Renaissance, also known as the “New Negro Movement,” embodied a common belief in black pride and motivated many African Americans to celebrate their ...
Claude McKay’s poem “Harlem Shadows” comes from one of his volumes of poetry also entitled “Harlem Shadows” (published in 1922), which initiated the new angry and defiant attitude in African-American writing toward racial prejudice. This volume of poetry was one of the catalysts for the commencement of the Harlem Renaissance and also began McKay’s style ...
It seems really ironic that a poem could be both an outcry during the Harlem Renaissance and a rallying song for Winston Churchill to persuade his country to fight against the Nazis, but that is exactly what this poem was. Claude McKay’s “If We Must Die” was originally written about the race riots in Harlem ...
