The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned the 1920s. At the time, it was known as the "New Negro Movement", named after the 1925 anthology by Alain Locke

Though it was centered in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City, many French-speaking black writers from African and Caribbean colonies who lived in Paris were also influenced by the Harlem Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance is unofficially recognized to have spanned from about 1919 until the early or mid 1930s. Many of its ideas lived on much longer

The zenith of this "flowering of Negro literature", as James Weldon Johnson preferred to call the Harlem Renaissance, was placed between 1924 (the year that Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life hosted a party for black writers where many white publishers were in attendance) and 1929 (the year of the stock market crash and the beginning of the Great Depression)

1. Harlem Renaissance (HR) is the name given to the period from the end of World War I and through the middle of the 1930s Depression, during which a group of talented African-American writers produced a sizable body of literature in the four prominent genres of poetry, fiction, drama, and essay

2. The notion of "twoness" , a divided awareness of one's identity, was introduced by W.E.B. Du Bois, one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).and the author of the influential book The Souls of Black Folks (1903): "One ever feels his two-ness - an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled stirrings: two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder."

3. Common themes: alienation, marginality, the use of folk material, the use of the blues tradition, the problems of writing for an elite audience.

4. HR was more than just a literary movement: it included racial consciousness, "the back to Africa" movement led by Marcus Garvey, racial integration, the explosion of music particularly jazz, spirituals and blues, painting, dramatic revues, and others

Fauset, Jessie Redmon: There is Confusion, 1924; Plum Bun, 1928; The Chinaberry Tree; 1931; Comedy, American Style, 1933

Hughes, Langston: Not Without Laughter, 1930

In 1904 several middleclass African American families moved away from the decaying conditions of Black Bohemia of midtown into the newly-built suburb of Harlem

This initiated a move north of educated African Americans and a foothold into Harlem. In 1910 a large block along 135th and Fifth Ave was bought up by various African American realtors and a church group

These purchases caused a "white flight" and lowered realestate prices

The Harlem Renaissance, also known as the New Negro Movement, was a literary, artistic, cultural, intellectual movement that began in Harlem, New York after World War I and ended around 1935 during the Great Depression

The movement raised significant issues affecting the lives of African Americans through various forms of literature, art, music, drama, painting, sculpture, movies, and protests

Voices of protest and ideological promotion of civil rights for African Americans inspired and created institutions and leaders who served as mentors to aspiring writers

Although the center of the Harlem Renaissance began in Harlem, New York, its influence spread throughout the nation and beyond and included philosophers, artists, writers, musicians, sculptors, movie makers and institutions that “attempted to assert…a dissociation of sensibility from that enforced by the American culture and its institutions.”

An African-American cultural movement of the 1920s and 1930s, centered in Harlem, that celebrated black traditions, the black voice, and black ways of life. Arna Bontemps, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, James Weldon Johnson, Jean Toomer, and Dorothy West were some of the writers associated with the movement

a cultural movement in 1920s America during which black art, literature, and music experienced renewal and growth, originating in New York City's Harlem district; also called Black Renaissance, New Negro Movement

The Harlem Renaissance was a literary and cultural movement that began with the inception of the 20th Century

It is so called because it was first noticed in Harlem, a neighborhood of New York City

The movement was an African American cultural explosion expressed through essays, songs, theatrical pieces, novels and poetry. Harlem Renaissance poetry, as written by such literary luminaries as Langston Hughes and W.E.B. DuBois, was characterized by its themes, influences, focus and intent

Intent is a primary characteristic of all Harlem Renaissance literature, including poetry

The intent of this poetry was to improve and uplift African Americans through historical awareness and a popular culture that reflected self-awareness and self-worth in black Americans

All of this intent was expressed by the phrase "The New Negro," introduced by sociologist Alain LeRoy Locke in 1925

The term describes a new wave of African-American intellectuals who used poetry and other forms of artistic and cultural expression to subvert racial stereotypes and address the racial, economic, cultural and social impediments facing black Americans at the turn of the century

Harlem Renaissance poetry is characterized by a focus on the black American experience and relevant themes

Much of the poetry of the Harlem Renaissance is characterized as an examination of the historical place of the contemporary African American with regards to history and the future

This poetry asks the question: where has the black American been and where is he/she going? Themes of migration---from Africa to the United States, from slavery and the south to industrial jobs in the urban north---were common

Poetry of the Renaissance also addressed themes of American identity and the American dream

In two famous poems, Langston Hughes wrote, "I, too, am America" and "What happens to a dream deferred?"

Much of the poetry of the Harlem Renaissance is characterized in both theme and content by the influence of traditionally "black" forms of music

The repetitive structure and recurring themes of blues music characterize the structure of many Renaissance poems

The interplay between jazz musicians and the call-and-response structure of slave songs also impacted the structure of Renaissance poetry

In its references to the black American past and experience of slavery, poetry of the era often alluded to African American spirituals

With regards to themes, much literature of the Harlem Renaissance included references the national popularity of blues and jazz

Harlem Renaissance poetry took poetic influence from disparate forms of cultural expression

On page 287 of the book "The Harlem Renaissance," author Michael Feith asserts that poetry of the period was characterized by the influenced of African American folk poetry and oral traditions and contemporary American experimentation in modernist free verse

Authors Cary D. Wintz and Paul Finkelman further declare on page 84 of their "Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance, Volume 1" that Harlem Renaissance poetry from Chicago was characterized by the influence of an avant-garde style that arose in that city during the First World War

This style saw the ironic interpolation of elements of Negro spirituals into contemporary poetry