Between the years of 1919 and 1926, large numbers of African Americans migrated from the rural Southern states to the industrialized metropolitan areas of the North. Cities, such as New York, Chicago, Detroit, and Washington D.C., became centers of African American life and culture as educational levels and economic success among African Americans rose to unprecedented levels.

Nowhere was this blossoming of Black American culture more evident than in Harlem during the 1920s. Sociologist Alain Locke wrote that "the Old Negro had long become more of a myth than a man", and that the "New Negro" was entering a "dynamic phase, the buoyancy from within compensating for whatever pressure there may be." Locke encouraged African Americans to maintain their unique culture, assert themselves in society, and participate in intellectual exchanges with other races. In this spirit, many Black intellectuals came to Harlem as it became a mecca for writers, artists, musicians, and activists.

W.E.B. Dubois published The Crisis, a widely distributed African American magazine funded by the NAACP. The Crisis often commented on the controversial views of Marcus Garvey, who was publishing a newspaper also, called Negro World. Harlem became the intellectual center of debate about the future of African American people.

Jazz was born during the Harlem Renaissance. It developed from its roots of Negro spiritual music and ragtime, and was brought to fruition by artists like "Fats" Waller and Earl "Fatha" Hines. Night life in Harlem was lively, and African American music developed a wider following than ever before. A musical called "Shuffle Along," written, produced, and performed by African Americans, became a huge Broadway hit. Actress Florence Mills became famous in this show. Other actors who were popular during these years were Charles Gilpin and Paul Robeson.

Artists flocked to Harlem as well. Some of the best known painters were William H. Johnson, who painted "Street Life, Harlem," shown at the top of this page; Palmer Hayeden, Lois Mailou Jones, Hale Woodruff, Jacob Lawrence, Edward Burra, and John Biggers.

The work of the African American writers of the Harlem Renaissance was perhaps the greatest legacy of this time period. The poetry of Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen is just as fresh today as it was then. Other poets of reknown were Angelina Grimke, Jean Toomer (who also wrote the novel Cane, 1923, examining the contrast between the "New Negro" and the lower class uneducated African American people of the time), Anne Spencer, James Weldon Johnson, Arna Bontemps and Jessie Redmon Fauset. Writer Zora Neale Hurston espoused some controversial views, and Nella Larsen, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Claude McKay, Sterling A. Brown, Wallace Thurman, and Marion Vera Cuthbert also rose to prominence.

The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and early 1930s was the first time that music, art and literature of African Americans was widely noticed and adopted by non-Black America. The work of the talented writers, artists and other intellectuals of this era lives on as the foundation for present day African American culture and institutions, and has made an indelible imprint on the culture of all America.

Click here for a short story by Zora Neale Hurston: Black Death

by
Susan Robinson
10.17.05

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