The Influence Of Black Society During The Harlem Renaissance

After two hundred years of slavery and conforming to European culture, black people began their own period of finding themselves and accepting who they are. The Harlem Renaissance is one of the most significant periods for black people because it helped them gain reassurance of who they are and recreate the image European Americans created for them. The Harlem Renaissance lasted almost twenty years into the 1940s and coined the term “New Negro.” The New Negro was someone who was not scared to speak and act out against Jim Crow Laws as blacks in the past had been. During the Harlem Renaissance Era, black artist used poetry, music, sculpture, paintings, literature, and dance to help depict the New Negro. Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, James Van Der Dee, Aaron Douglass, and plenty of other black artists contributed a great depiction of the New Negro then that still have an influence on the black society today.
She created literature in which women were the lead characters of the group and were not constrained to the behavior that society wanted women to be. Langston Hughes was a poet who was mostly known for his new style of spoken word and subjects of black vernacular in his poems such as “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.” Illustrators and photographers such as James Van Der Dee and Aaron Douglass created photographs of black middle class in Harlem and covers for magazines such as The Crisis and Opportunity. Louis Armstrong was an excellent trumpet player and mostly known for bringing a very different sound of jazz music to clubs, and caught the attention of most of