Harlem Renaissance
Harlem's Poets
Claude McKay and Langston Hughes became like two poster boys for the Harlem Renaissance. They burst from the "Harlem Shadows" and underground jazz world into the mainstream, crossing the racial divide to find support and fame not only in America but all over the world. Their poems, however, like African-American music, were co-opted by white culture and exploited for aims entirely divorced from the ethnicity that justified the poems existence in the first place. And, as McKay's own life shows, when the poetry took a deeper, less visceral, more theological turn, the poet was rejected by that same white (Protestant) establishment, which seemed to only want a "jungle fever" type of poetry. This demand of the surrounding white culture is what led the Harlem poets to have a "double consciousness" regarding their poetry. To make it to the top, they still needed the support of the very culture they wanted to criticize.
Just as Countee Cullen longed for a "black Jesus" with whom he could identify, so too did McKay long for a religion that was not "white." McKay had been raised Protestant and these same Protestants now served as his patrons -- but he rejected their "white" religion, like many other poets in Harlem, who sought to find a new identity. This accounted for the "doubleness" that Cullen experienced in his poetry: on the one hand, the poets saw something true and good in God, but on the other hand they could not identify with the "white" God of the Protestants. McKay would later in his life convert to Roman Catholicism, a religion in which race played less of a role than in the WASPy religion of America. But by that point, McKay was out of fashion...
Harlem Renaissance was a noteworthy era in human history that was triggered immediately after the upheaval of World War 1. It is largely characterized as a period in which African-Americans searched for greater self-actualization, and struggled for racial equality in an America drowned in ethnic bias. The Black community deemed it absolutely necessary to realize their dreams of a world with no prejudice and equitable opportunities in all walks of
Secondly, even the beginning of the film presents an African motif. The drums that open the scene are representative for the ancient tribal singing and dancing. The same drums are present in Cullen's poetry, revealing a deep African symbol. Moreover, the drums also make the passage from the contemporary life in which the film is first set, to the imaginary and ancient time of slavery. The characters are as well particularly
This is why people that had financial resources to move away from the agitated center often chose Harlem. At the same time however, On the periphery of these upper class enclaves, however, impoverished Italian immigrants huddled in vile tenements located from 110th to 125th Streets, east of Third Avenue to the Harlem River. To the north of Harlem's Italian community and to the west of Eighth Avenue, Irish toughs roamed
In "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain," Hughes speaks greatly about jazz, noting that the blacks in Harlem are not afraid to be the way that they are, unlike the middle-class blacks who Hughes accuses of constantly trying to act like they are white. One of the aspects of this group that Hughes points to is jazz music, along with gospel music. Thus, Hughes points to jazz as
Some artists, such as Aaron Douglas, captured the feeling of Africa in their work because they wanted to show their ancestry through art. Others, like Archibald J. Motley Jr., obtained their inspiration from the surroundings in which they lived in; where jazz was at the forefront and African-Americans were just trying to get by day-to-day like any other Anglo-American. Additionally, some Black American artists felt more comfortable in Europe
Harlem Dancer" and "The Weary Blues" Times Change, but the Struggle is Still the Same The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural and political movement during the 1920s and 1930s that sought to celebrate African-American culture through literary and intellectual means. Two of the era's prominent poets were Claude McKay and Langston Hughes. Their poetry helped to highlight the struggles that African-Americans were faced with. In "The Harlem Dancer," written by McKay,
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