PROSPERITY, DEPRESSION, & THE NEW DEAL American History II - Unit 4

HARLEM RENAISSANCE Unit 4.2 Mr. Duncan

The Great Migration 1910-1930 - The Great Migration hundreds of thousands of blacks left the rural South/west for urban northern cities in search of new jobs end of 1920s - over 40% of African Americans lived in cities “Some said goodbye cheerfully… others fearfully, with terrors of unknown dangers in their mouths… others in their eagerness for distance and said nothing. The daybreak found them gone. The wind said North.” - Zora Neale Hurston However, northern cities were not very receptive to the massive increase black residents each year → increased race riots and racial violence

African American Goals National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) founded in 1909, WEB Du Bois The Crisis - national magazine 1920s - push for civil rights gains through legislative means - James Weldon Johnson (poet, lawyer, NAACP executive secretary) pushed for anti-lynching laws, but Congress passed none NAACP continued to organize against lynchings, and slowly, they decreased to an extent

Marcus Garvey Encouraged followers to return to Africa, help native people there throw off white colonial oppressors, and build independent black nations appealed to African Americans and blacks in the Caribbean and Africa support declined in the mid-1920s when Garvey was convicted of mail fraud and jailed Garvey left a legacy of newly awakened black pride, economic independence, and interest in African heritage

The Harlem Renaissance a literary and artistic movement in the 1920s celebrating African-American culture Many blacks migrated to Harlem (a neighboorhood in NYC) residents from the South, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Haiti “Black capital of America” suffered from overcrowding, unemployment, and poverty → in part the inspiration for the Harlem Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance led by well-educated, middle-class, blacks expressed a new pride in the African American experience celebrated black heritage, emphasized the trials of being black in a white world

African American Writers Background Known for... Claude McKay novelist and poet, Jamaican immigrant, militant Songs of Jamaica, “The Harlem Dancer” expressed the pain of life in black ghettos and in a white-dominated society encouraged blacks to resist prejudice/discrimination Langston Hughes poet, from Missouri I, Too I, Too , Dream Deferred (Harlem), Various poems, short stories described difficulties for working-class blacks poetry read to the tempo of jazz and blues music Zora Neale Hurston novelist and poet, from Florida, Their Eyes Were Watching God potrayed the lives of unschooled, poor Southern blacks celebrated the “common person’s art form” - ways blacks developed to survive slavery and the Jim Crow South

African American Performers Background Known for... Paul Robeson actor, son of a one-time slave acclaimed performance in Shakespeare’s Othello in London and NYC Louis Armstrong trumpet player, lived in New Orleans and NYC astounding sense of rhythm and ability to improvise became the most important and influential musician in the history of jazz helped popularize “scat”- improvised jazz singing using sounds instead of words Edward “Duke” Ellington jazz pianist and composer, played at NYC’s Cotton Club played at the famous NYC Cotton Club 1920-30s - won fame as a top American composer Bessie Smith female blues singer outstanding 1920s vocalist 1927 - highest paid black artist in the world