The Harlem Renaissance was a golden age for African American artists, writers and musicians. It gave these artists pride in and control over how the Black experience was represented in American culture and set the stage for the civil rights movement. Harlem Stomp! A Cultural History of the Harlem Renaissance.
While it was fashionable to frequent Harlem nightlife, entrepreneurs realized that some white people wanted to experience black culture without having to socialize with African Americans and created clubs to cater to them. The most successful of these was the Cotton Club, which featured frequent performances by Ellington and Calloway.
Louis Armstrong. The music that percolated in and then boomed out of Harlem in the 1920s was jazz, often played at speakeasies offering illegal liquor. Jazz became a great draw for not only Harlem residents, but outside white audiences also.
The riot was a death knell for the Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance was a golden age for African American artists, writers and musicians. It gave these artists pride in and control over how the Black experience was represented in American culture and set the stage for the civil rights movement.
Van Vechten’s previous fiction stirred up interest among whites to visit Harlem and take advantage of the cultural and nightlife there. Though Van Vechten’s work was condemned by older luminaries like DuBois, it was embraced by Hurston, Hughes and others.
Two of the earliest breakthroughs were in poetry, with Claude McKay’s collection Harlem Shadows in 1922 and Jean Toomer’s Cane in 1923. Civil rights activist James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of An Ex-Colored Man in 1912, followed b y God’s Trombones in 1927, left their mark on the world of fiction.
The cultural boom in Harlem gave Black actors opportunities for stage work that had previously been withheld. Traditionally, if Black actors appeared onstage, it was in a minstrel show musical and rarely in a serious drama with non-stereotypical roles.
The music that percolated in and then boomed out of Harlem in the 1920s was jazz, often played at speakeasies offering illegal liquor. Jazz became a great draw for not only Harlem residents, but outside white audiences also.
Great Migration. The northern Manhattan neighborhood of Harlem was meant to be an upper-class white neighborhood in the 1880s, but rapid overdevelopment led to empty buildings and desperate landlords seeking to fill them. In the early 1900s, a few middle-class Black families from another neighborhood known as Black Bohemia moved to Harlem, ...
By 1920, some 300,000 African Americans from the South had moved north, and Harlem was one of the most popular destinations for these families.
Harlem Renaissance Ends. The end of Harlem’s creative boom began with the stock market crash of 1929 and The Great Depression. It wavered until Prohibition ended in 1933, which meant white patrons no longer sought out the illegal alcohol in uptown clubs. By 1935, many pivotal Harlem residents had moved on to seek work.
Van Vechten’s previous fiction stirred up interest among whites to visit Harlem and take advantage of the cultural and nightlife there. Though Van Vechten’s work was condemned by older luminaries like DuBois, it was embraced by Hurston, Hughes and others.
Two of the earliest breakthroughs were in poetry, with Claude McKay’s collection Harlem Shadows in 1922 and Jean Toomer’s Cane in 1923. Civil rights activist James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of An Ex-Colored Man in 1912, followed b y God’s Trombones in 1927, left their mark on the world of fiction.
The cultural boom in Harlem gave Black actors opportunities for stage work that had previously been withheld. Traditionally, if Black actors appeared onstage, it was in a minstrel show musical and rarely in a serious drama with non-stereotypical roles.
The music that percolated in and then boomed out of Harlem in the 1920s was jazz, often played at speakeasies offering illegal liquor. Jazz became a great draw for not only Harlem residents, but outside white audiences also.
Great Migration. The northern Manhattan neighborhood of Harlem was meant to be an upper-class white neighborhood in the 1880s, but rapid overdevelopment led to empty buildings and desperate landlords seeking to fill them. In the early 1900s, a few middle-class Black families from another neighborhood known as Black Bohemia moved to Harlem, ...
By 1920, some 300,000 African Americans from the South had moved north, and Harlem was one of the most popular destinations for these families.
Harlem Renaissance Ends. The end of Harlem’s creative boom began with the stock market crash of 1929 and The Great Depression. It wavered until Prohibition ended in 1933, which meant white patrons no longer sought out the illegal alcohol in uptown clubs. By 1935, many pivotal Harlem residents had moved on to seek work.