The Harlem Renaissance

Mike G. on 11 7, 2009

The Harlem Renaissance (early 1920’s to 1930’s) was a nurturing of African-American social consciousness that was expressed through the visual arts, as well as through music (Louis Armstrong, Eubie Blake, Fats Waller and Billie Holiday), literature (Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and W.E.B. DuBois), theater (Paul Robeson) and dance (Josephine Baker). Centered in the Harlem district of New York City, the New Negro Movement (as it was called at the time) had a profound influence across the United States and even around the world.

The intellectual and social freedom of the era attracted many Black Americans from the rural south to the industrial centers of the north – and especially to New York City.