Encyclopedia Article

"Harlem Renaissance" By: David Levering Lewis

Source: Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Second Edition. (New York : Oxford University Press, 2005). Volume 3: p150-161. Call Number: Olin Level 3 DT14 .A37435 2005  

 African American cultural movement of the 1920s and early 1930s that was centered in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City.Variously known as the New Negro movement, the New Negro Renaissance, and the Negro Renaissance, the Harlem Renaissance emerged toward the end of World War I in 1918, blossomed in the mid- to late 1920s, and then faded in the mid-1930s. The Harlem Renaissance marked the first time that main stream publishers and critics took African American literature seriously and that African American literature and arts attracted significant attention from the nation at large. Although it was primarily a literary movement, it was closely related to developments in African American music, theater, art, and politics

           Langston Hughes                                       Couple in Raccoon Coats" (1932) James VanDerZee                    Augusta Savage (Sculptor)