Video Analysis: The Harlem Renaissance

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This video portrays the Harlem Renaissance, which began in the early 1920s. It started and came from some of the most influential works of the 20th century. Black artist came to the unsegregated North to escape harsh living ways of the South. The Harlem Renaissance was a period of artistic creations and different expressions by the blacks that began after WWI. It ended during the period the African Americans experienced the Great Depression and they continued to face segregation and discrimination practices. Soon after World War I great many Negros left the farms and small southern towns to seek a new life in northern cities. One such city was New York where one of the largest black communities in the world firmly established themselves in…show more content…
During the 1920s Harlem was a cultural center, drawing black writers, artists, musicians, photographers, poets, and scholars. In the book, The Norton Anthology of African American Literature Third Edition Volume 1 Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Valerie A. Smith states that, “Most scholars and students agree that the 1920s was a decade of extraordinary creativity in the arts for black Americans and that much of that creativity found its focus in the activities of African Americans living in New York City, particularly in the district of Harlem” (Gates, Smith, 929). The popularity of black creative expression in the arts came from the performance opportunities Harlem provided in theaters and nightclubs, which made Harlem a center of the performing arts. Whites even flocked uptown to Harlem to hear Duke Ellington play or to watch the cotton club beauties dance. A variety of blacks contributed to the Harlem Renaissance as political leaders, entrepreneurs, and creative artists. Langston Hughes’ poem ‘I, Too, Sing America,’ portrays that black Americans are also beautiful and waiting for other people to see for
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