LEARNING TOGETHER: The Story of America
In the early 1900s, Southern Black folks began hearing stories of Black people living up North creating their own slice of the American dream. Many Black Americans, searching for refuge from the unrelenting growing cruelty of Jim Crow Laws in the Deep South made the pilgrimage to New York City. Between 1910 and the late 1930s, Harlem became the Black mecca of the North.
This New Negro Movement was a thriving Black cultural city within Manhattan conceived by the Black middle class filled with Black shop owners, Black doctors, Black lawyers, Black politicians, Black artists, etc. all going about their business as if Black folks in control of their own destiny was normal in America in the early 1900s.
Black culture and social issues were brought to the forefront in various ways. Many Black Americans began to view America with a new sense of hope that their plight, as unwelcome guests in their own country, would change for the better. They viewed their Blackness with pride, power, creativity, and beauty. Black leaders and thinkers boldly promoted Black independence, justice, and equality.
The Harlem Renaissance offered Black Americans for the first time the freedom of self-expression. Entertainment venues like The Cotton Club, The Savoy and speakeasies played jazz music with the likes of Billie Holiday, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington etc. Black Americans took to the stage in movies, plays and musicals with entertainers such as Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, Paul Robeson, and Josephine Baker leading the way. Literary giants like Langston Hughes, with his jazz poetry and Zora Neale Hurston, Nella Larsen, etc. penned tales of the Black experience with its highs and its lower than lows. Black visual artists such as Augusta Savage, Aaron Douglas, and Jacob Lawrence created compelling works of art featuring Black life in America.
If We Must Die became more than just a powerful poem. It became a way of life for those rebels eager to knock down brick walls of oppression. The explosive energy reverberating from the Harlem Renaissance stirred the very soul of Black folks.
By the late 1930s the Harlem Renaissance began to die down. But not before this newly found Black Pride movement jammed packed with remarkable artists and intellectuals ignited the fire for the future Civil Rights Movement.
Noteworthy Fact(s):
- Black literacy rose during the Harlem Renaissance.
- Several Black newspapers were created such as The Crisis, Negro World and The Voice.
- The Charleston, was dance popular during the 1920s, was inspired by the slaves brought to Charleston, South Carolina.
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