International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest

Extract

The Harlem Renaissance, as identified, defined, and celebrated by Alain Locke in the preface to his 1925 anthology, The New Negro , was a consciousness-transforming political, aesthetic, and spiritual “Coming of Age” for black Americans. Cutting across the whole spectrum of culture and social thought, including literature, criticism, music, dance, theater, painting, and sculpture, the black artists and intellectuals of the Harlem Renaissance reconfigured black history, explored contemporary urban life, and experimented with new, culturally derived aesthetic forms. Its influence spread far beyond the borders of Harlem, impacting not only America and the English-speaking world, but all of the cultures of the African Diaspora. The Harlem Renaissance powerfully influenced Négritude writers such as Léopold Senghor and Aimé Césaire , and every aesthetic and political expression of pan-African ideology that would follow. The Harlem Renaissance had its beginnings in the decade preceding World War I, as Harlem, centered around 135th Street and 5th Avenue, became the destination of choice for tens of thousands of blacks leaving the American South and the West Indies for better opportunities in the cities of the urban North. More than a seismic demographic shift, the Northern Migration was also a collective redefinition of what it meant to be a black American. “In the very process of ... log in or subscribe to read full text