Introduction
The Harlem Renaissance is an artistic and literary movement that centers in Harlem, New York from the 1919 to the mid-1930s. During this period of time Harlem became the cultural center for African pride and heritage, bringing together African-American writers, artists, poets, musicians, and scholars throughout the nation.
Many African-Americans in Harlem came from the South because they wanted to escape the idea of white supremacy, racial oppression, and segregation from the Jim Crow laws. Many other African-Americans arrived in Harlem after fighting in World War 1. Beginning about 1890, Blacks started moving to the north in large numbers. By the turn of the century, this Great Migration brought hundreds of …show more content…
The time he spent in Harlem clubs influenced his writing, and caused him to be one to the greatest innovators of Jazz Poetry.
Biographical Research Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri on February 1, 1902. Hughes had no real family, but instead was passed around between family and friends. When Hughes was a child, his parents James Hughes and Carrie Langston divorced, leaving Hughes to move in with his grandmother, Mary. Hughes’s father moved to Mexico, and his mother settled in Illinois with her new husband. At the age of 13, Hughes’s grandmother passed away, and left Hughes to move in with his mother. They hopped around city to city, until they finally settled in Cleveland, Ohio. It was during this time Hughes was first introduced to writing poetry after reading the works of Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg, and Walt Whitman. In his later years, it was said that these men where his greatest primary influences. After his graduation in 1920, he spent a year in Mexico with his father. The following year, Hughes returned to the U.S. and enrolled in Columbia University, but dropped out in 1922. However, before Hughes was a the prominent black voice during the Harlem Renaissance, he worked as a launderer, cook, busboy, and