The Harlem Renaissance

In the decades immediately following World War I, huge numbers of African Americans migrated to the industrial North from the economically depressed and agrarian South. This was known as the Great Migration which occurred between 1910 and 1920.
The timing of this coming-of-age was spot on. The years between World War I and the Great Depression were boom times for the United States, and jobs were plentiful in cities, especially in the North. Between 1920 and 1930, almost 750,000 African Americans left the South, and many of them migrated to urban areas in the North to take advantage of the prosperity and the more racially tolerant environment (Harlem Renaissance - Biography.com - Biography.com). The Harlem section of Manhattan, known as the capital of black America, drew nearly 175,000 African Americans, turning the neighborhood into the largest urban community of black people in the world with residents from the South, the West Indies, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Haiti (The Roaring Life of the 1920s 454).
Liberated African-Americans founded a place to explore their new identities as free men and women.
During the early 1900s, the burgeoning African-American middle class began pushing a new political agenda that advocated racial equality. The epicenter of this movement was in New York, where three of the largest civil rights groups established their headquarters (Harlem Renaissance - Biography.com - Biography.com).
Black historian, sociologist, and Harvard scholar, W. E. B. Du Bois was at the forefront of the civil rights movement at this time. In 1905 Du Bois, in collaboration with a group of prominent African-American political activists and white civil rights workers, met in New York to discuss the challenges facing the black community (Harlem Renaissance - Biography.com - Biography.com).In 1909, the group founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), to protest racial violence. W. E. B. Du Bois, the founding member of NAACP, led a parade of 10,000 African-American in New York to protest such violence. Du Bois also used the NAACP’s magazine, The Crisis, as a platform for leading a struggle for civil rights. (The Roaring Life of the 1920s 453)
Concurrently, a Jamaican-born immigrant, named Marcus Garvey began his promotion of the “Back to Africa movement.” Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL), which advocated the reuniting of all people of African ancestry into one community with one absolute government. The movement not only encouraged African-Americans to come together, but to also feel pride in their heritage and race (Harlem Renaissance - Biography.com - Biography.com).
The National Urban League (NUL) also came into being in the early 20th century. Founded by Ruth Standish Baldwin and Dr. George Edmund Haynes, the fledgling organization counseled black migrants from the South, trained black social workers, and worked to give educational and employment opportunities to blacks (Harlem Renaissance - Biography.com - Biography.com).
Instead of using more direct political means to achieve their goals, African-American civil rights activists employed the artists and writers of their culture to work for the goals of civil rights and equality. Jazz music, African-American fine art, and black literature were all absorbed into mainstream culture, bringing attention to a previously disenfranchised segment of the American population. This blossoming of African-American culture in European-American society, particularly in the worlds of art and music, became known as The Harlem Renaissance (Harlem Renaissance - Biography.com - Biography.com).
One of the first notable events of the Renaissance came shortly after the NUL began publishing Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life. Believing that art and literature could lift African-Americans out of their situation, the magazine’s editor, Charles S. Johnson, began printing promising black writers in each issue. During Johnson’s work for Opportunity, he met Jessie Fauset, the literary editor for Du Bois’ NAACP magazine, Crisis. Fauset told Johnson about her first novel, There Is Confusion (1924), a story about middle class black women (Harlem Renaissance - Biography.com - Biography.com).
In 1924, Johnson organized the first Civic Club dinner, which was planned as a release party for Fauset’s book. The party was an instant success, and served as a forum for emerging African-American artists to meet wealthy white patrons. The party managed to launch the careers of several promising black writers, including poets Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen (Harlem Renaissance - Biography.com - Biography.com).
In 1925, shortly after the success of the Civic Club dinner, the magazine Survey Graphic, produced an issue on Harlem. Edited by black philosopher and Howard University professor, Alain Locke, the magazine featured work by prominent black writers of the time period. The magazine published work by writers Cullen, Hughes and Fauset, as well as poet Claude McKay and novelist Jean Toomer (Harlem Renaissance - Biography.com - Biography.com). Later that year, Locke expanded the special issue into an anthology called “The New Negro” as a way to encourage and celebrate their heritage (A Brief Guide to the Harlem Renaissance). The collection fueled America’s growing interest in African-American writers, pushing black artists to the literary forefront.
African-American fine artists such as Aaron Douglas and Charles Alston also got their start through Alain Locke and Charles Johnson, who started publishing the artists’ works as illustrations and cover art. Pulled into the spotlight, these fine artists used their fame as an opportunity to delve into the themes they found problematic to American culture. The introduction of Africa and notions of “the primitive” to white America, African-American artists had their first opportunity to explore how these ideas could be used for and against their race. (Harlem Renaissance - Biography.com - Biography.com)
Around this time, Congress ratified the Prohibition Act. While the amendment did not ban the actual consumption of alcohol, it made obtaining it legally difficult. Liquor-serving nightclubs, called “speakeasies” developed during this time as a way to allow Americans to socialize, indulge in alcohol consumption, and rebel against the traditional culture (Harlem Renaissance - Biography.com - Biography.com).
One of the best speakeasies in Harlem was the Cotton Club, a place that intended to have the look and feel of a luxurious Southern plantation. To complete the theme, only African-American entertainers could perform there, while only white clientele (with few exceptions) were allowed to patronize the establishment. This attracted high-powered celebrity visitors such as Cole Porter, Bing Crosby and Doris Duke to see the most talented black entertainers of the day. Some of the most famous jazz performers of the time - including singer Lena Horne, composer and musician Duke Ellington, and singer Cab Calloway - graced the Cotton Club stage (Harlem Renaissance - Biography.com - Biography.com).
Attending clubs in Harlem allowed whites from New York and its surrounding areas to indulge in two taboos simultaneously: to drink, as well as mingle with blacks. Jazz musicians often performed in these clubs, exposing white clientele to what was typically an African-American form of musical entertainment. As jazz hit the mainstream, many members of older generations began associating the raucous behavior of young people of the decade with jazz music. They started referring to the 20s, along with its new dance styles and racy fashions, as “The Jazz Age” (Harlem Renaissance - Biography.com - Biography.com).
As the 1920s came to a cessation, so did white America’s infatuation with Harlem- and the artistic and intellectual movements surrounding it. The advent of The Great Depression also crushed the wild enthusiasm of “The Roaring 20s,” bringing an end to the decadence and indulgence that fueled the patronage of Harlem artists and their establishments
While the Renaissance as a historical movement was over, the effects it had on modern society were far from finished. The artistic and political movements of the 20s would live on in American culture in the form of new musical expression, award-winning writing and, most importantly, the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s. These events, and the role Harlem would continue to play after the Renaissance, would change the American cultural landscape forever.

The NAACP’s magazine, The Crisis, was used as a platform for leading a struggle for civil rights.
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The NAACP’s magazine, The Crisis, was used as a platform for leading a struggle for civil rights.
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Works Cited
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"The Roaring Life of the 1920s." The Harlem Renaissance Flowers in New York. 9400 South Park Center Loop, Orlando, Florida, USA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 2013. 454. Print.