What is it?
The Harlem Renaissance was a flowering of African American
social thought which was expressed through
Paintings
Music
Dance
Theater
Literature
Where was the Harlem Renaissance centered?
Centered in the Harlem district of New York City, the New
Negro Movement (as it was called at the time) had a major influence across
the Unites States and even the world.
How does the Harlem Renaissance connect to
the Great Migration?
the Great Migration?
The economic opportunities of the era triggered a widespread
migration of black Americans from the rural south to the industrial centers of
the north - and especially to New York City.
In New York and other cities, black Americans explored new
opportunities for intellectual and social freedom.
Black American artists, writers, and musicians began to use
their talents to work for civil rights and obtain equality.
How did it impact history?
The Harlem Renaissance helped to redefine how Americans and
the world understood African American culture. It integrated black and white
cultures, and marked the beginning of a black urban society.
The Harlem Renaissance set the stage for the Civil Rights
Movement of the 1950s and 60s.
The Roaring Twenties and the Harlem Renaissance
Prosperity in the 1920s
•
The rise
of “Big Business”
•
The rise
of consumer culture
•
The rise
of mass culture
Social Change
•
The “New”
Woman (“Flappers”)
•
Harlem
Renaissance
New Woman > Magazine illustrations: “Gibson Girls” by
Charles Gibson--a beauty
standard of the 1900s--and a flapper by John Held, Jr. from the 1920s
Consumer Culture > Department Store window in the 1920s
Consumer Culture > Salaries and Prices in the 1920s
James VanDerZee, Famous Harlem Photographer
(Couple with car, 1932)
(Couple with car, 1932)
New Writers like Langston Hughes- Wrote about working class
Black people on the streets of Harlem
Langston Hughes
The Cotton Club
The Duke Ellington Orchestra was the "house"
orchestra for a number of years at the Cotton Club. The revues featured
glamorous dancing girls, acclaimed tap dancers, vaudeville performers, and
comics. All the white world came to Harlem to see the show.
The first Cotton Club revue was in 1923. There were two new
fast paced revues produced a year for at least 16 years.
Duke Ellington
Ellington was a jazz composer, conductor, and performer
during the Harlem Renaissance.
During the formative Cotton Club years, he experimented with
and developed the style that would quickly bring him worldwide success. Ellington
would be among the first to focus on musical form and composition in jazz.
Ellington wrote over 2000 pieces of music in his lifetime.
“New Negroes”
During Prohibition, wealthy whites go to Harlem
“speakeasies” (clubs that secretly sell liquor
owned by the Mafia)
owned by the Mafia)
The Cotton Club opened as Club DeLuxe on 142nd Street and
Lenox Avenue by Jack Johnson in 1920. After the club failed, Johnson sold the
club in 1923 to Owney Madden.
Madden called it The Cotton Club and only white people were
allowed as guests. Very few blacks were allowed to attend as guests but all of
the entertainers, performers and musicians were black.
At the time, Owen Madden also selected specific ladies to be
"Chorus Girls". He wanted them to have a light complexion and the
term he used was "tall, tan and terrific". That was how Lena Horne
got her start. She was a chorus girl at the age of sixteen.
Josephine Baker Becomes International Exotic Dance Sensation (NY and Paris)- “Le Jazz Hot”
A very young Louis Armstrong (standing). His early hit “Weather Bird came out in 1928.
Louis “Satchmo”Armstrong
Louis Armstrong was a jazz composer and trumpet player
during the Harlem Renaissance.
He is widely recognized as a founding father of jazz.
He appeared in 30 films and averaged 300 concerts per year,
performing for both kids on the street and heads of state.
Bessie Smith
Bessie Smith was a famous jazz and blues singer during the
Harlem Renaissance.
Smith recorded with many of the great Jazz musicians of the
1920s, including Louis Armstrong.
Smith was popular with both blacks and whites
Prosperity > Who Prospered in the 1920s?
Mass Culture > Coney Island Roller Coaster, 1927
Mass Culture > People on a New York sidewalk listening to
a football game, 1923
Mass Culture > Charles Correl and Freeman Gosden, 1929
Mass Culture > Movie Theater Poster Announcing
Amos’n’Andy
New Ways of Life
Ban on Alcohol:
18th amendment
Bootleggers
Speakeasies
Rise of organize crime=mob and gangsters
New rights for women
19th amendment gave women the right to vote
League of Women voters
New Woman > John Held, Jr., dustjackets for F. Scott
Fitzgerald novels
New Woman > Actress Clara Bow, the ultimate flapper in It
(1927) and Dangerous
Curves (1929)
Whites use blackface for entertainment-
Example: The Christy Minstrels
Example: The Christy Minstrels
Jewish singer, Al Jolson, makes a fortune on stage and in films in blackface, favorite song: “Mammy”
Highest
paid black actor Bert Williams performs in blackface
African Americans had little say in these types of performances.
Blacks even performed in black face.
The most famous and highest paid black actor of his time who
performed in blackface was Bert Williams.
Bert Williams without his “blackface” makeup and costume.
Film adaptation of Ziegfield Follies (1945).
Lucille Ball is in the center with the enormous headpiece.
Why did the Harlem Renaissance End?
The Stock market crash of 1929
The Stock market crash of 1929
The Depressions Ends the Harlem Renaissance
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