Harlem Tour

Art, History, and Poetry from the Renaissance

such as Countee Cullen, who said If I am going to be a poet at all, I am going to be [a] poet and not [a]

Political and Social Impact

The Harlem Renaissance helped create the idea of a distinct black culture which molded by the special experience and heritage of the Black people (Campbell 50). The movement also helped to start the subsequent Civil Rights movement, which fought for the rights of African Americans. However, many whites were patronizing or dismissive, such as when one critic said the explosion of art from black sources was inevitable, given their proximity to the Anglo-Saxon environment (Campbell 49). In addition, many black scholars dismissed the idea of a separate black culture, as George Schuylers The Negro Art Hokum in 1926. The Harlem Renaissance was the first outpouring of African American art and made Harlem a haven for that art.

Tours of History
Ben Beriss Red Group 11/15/13

Nightlife, Archibald Motley Jr

Migration of African Americans from the rural south to the urban north, specifically Harlem, New York. The Renaissance drew to a close with criticism from both white and black critics and the Great Depression in the 1930s.

Bal Jeunesse, Palmer Hayden

Overview of the Renaissance
The Harlem Renaissance was a time when white perception of African Americans started to shift and African American artists started to become known to the public. Artists such as Langston Hughes, Archibald Motley Jr, and Countee Cullen created a large amount of work, expanding the black oeuvre and knowledge of it within the United States. It also created a distinctly black art style and helping to create a national black consciousness. It occurred at the same time, and helped promote, movements and concepts such as the Talented Tenth, and the Back to Africa movement. It was also linked to the Great

Art of the Harlem Renaissance

Much of the art that came out of the Harlem Renaissance was questioning the world or pushing back against it. Slavery was relatively recent and many of the artists faced discrimination, and their frustration with this situation

showed in their work. Langston Hughes, in his poem Cross points out that his father, a white old man dies in a fine big house but that his black mother dies in a shack, and then wonders where Im going to die/Being neither white nor black. A number of painters used deliberately simple painting techniques to mock the white critics who said they were [a] primitive race and peculiarly backward, (Campbell 49) such as William H. Johnson, who shed his learned realism for a deliberate primitivism (34). However, some artists went against this theme,

Countee Cullen
Countee Cullen was an influential poet during the renaissance. He was born in 1903 in Kentucky and after his parents died when he was fifteen he was taken in by Reverend Cullen in Harlem. He started writing in high school, and became known as a skilled black writer. His poem I Have a Rendezvous with Life will be read as part of this tour.

Defiance, Aaron Douglas