The Harlem Renaissance

Warm-Up• What was the Great Migration?• What is a renaissance?

The Great Migration, 1910 – 1920• Hundreds of thousands of African Americans

move from the South to cities in the North and Midwest.– Economic opportunity: jobs in northern factories– Escaping racism and segregation in the South• Jim Crow Era

African Americans in 1930

African American Voices

• National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)– Founded in 1909– Urged African Americans to protest racial violence• Fought for anti-lynching laws

– Lead struggle for civil rights and an end to segregation

– Lead by W.E.B. DuBois and James Weldon Johnson

African American Voices, cont.

• Marcus Garvey and UNIA– Garvey founded the

Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in 1914

– Believed that African Americans should build a separate society • Encourage followers to return

to Africa

The Harlem Renaissance

• Harlem Renaissance – a literary and artistic movement celebrating African American culture– Expressed pride in the African American

experience– Celebration of AA heritage

Literature of the Harlem Renaissance• Claude McKay – novelist, poet and Jamaican

immigrant– Expressed the pain and difficulty of being black in a

world dominated by whites– Urged African Americans to resist prejudice

• Langston Hughes – Best known poet– Poems influenced by the rhythm and tempo of jazz

• Zora Neal Hurston – novelist– Portrayed the lives of poor, uneducated Southern

blacks and celebrated their culture and contributions

Harlem, or A Dream Deferred

• What does the word “deferred” mean?

• What dream do you think he is talking about?

• What does Hughes imply in the last line of the poem when he writes, “Or does it explode?”

African Americans and Jazz

• Jazz migrated along with African Americans from New Orleans to Harlem

• The Cotton Club – A famous jazz club in Harlem that catered only to white patrons

• Famous Jazz Musicians– Louis Armstrong– “Duke” Ellington– Bessie Smith