Effects Of The Harlem Renaissance

Everything seen, heard, or read, today can be traced back to one blossoming time in the United States’s history. The Harlem Renaissance. In a country whose history is full of contention and uneasiness, The Harlem Renaissance is never referenced with a grimace or any trace of shame, only reverence and nostalgia. The Harlem Renaissance was a rebirth of the African-American culture, and pride. New music was created, literary masterpieces written, and a once discarded heritage embraced. Everything that the African-American community wanted to say while facing all the terrors that had to endure silently since Broad Ships took them by their will to hundreds of years of enslavement could finally be expressed with the mouthpiece that was the Harlem
The South instituted the Black Codes and Jim Crow Laws, contradicting the most important clause in our constitution. That all Men are created equal. under God. Apparently, equal did not include the right to walk on the same sidewalk, or the right to simply say Hello. These laws and regulations led to real consequences, such as the brutal beating and murder of Emmett Till. The only mistake he made was saying hello. As mentioned before, the South was hell, but for every hell there is a heaven, and for African Americans the North was that Heaven. The pull factors of the north compared to the south included freer racial climate, education opportunities, economic prosperity, political and social freedom. The North had long before the civil war had been a place of freedom. While the South was a place of low literacy rates and poll taxes, in the North African American children could learn, and African American men could vote and in some states even run for office. Due to the North’s manufacturing economy African-Americans could work a factory job and earn a living. The promise of these jobs and freedom were the only motivation needed to inspire this great migration to the north, and ignite the kindling inspiring the Great Migration, and hence the Harlem Renaissance
New African Americans artist developed their own genre of music called jazz. Jazz is now the basis of all music developed after this era. The Harlem Renaissance allowed for the African Americans to finally have a nightlife. Nights in Harlem now included comedy clubs and jazz clubs. This ignited the matchbox of latent talent that existed in the African American community. Timeless artists prospered, and the Jazz genre became so popular that the entire country took to it. Not only did the music industry blossom but the literacy industry as well. African American writers began to thrive in the new improved, intellectually charged atmosphere. Authors such as Langston Hughes, Arna Bontemps, Countee Cullen wrote timeless pieces that are still taught today. The pain felt by these writers lead to wonderous narratives that inspired emotions never before felt by the readers of the time, and readers still to this day