By, Celli Arenas
It was the dawn of a new era, the ushering in of a new time, where Black expression of art and culture took hold of the world stage-never leaving, never missing a beat, the African-American artistic collective was named the “Harlem Renaissance,” and we still honor and learn from the artifacts today.
“Spanning the 1920s to the mid-1930s, the Harlem Renaissance was a literary, artistic, and intellectual movement that kindled a new black cultural identity. Its essence was summed up by critic and teacher Alain Locke in 1926 when he declared that through art, “Negro life is seizing its first chances for group expression and self-determination.” Harlem became the center of a “spiritual coming of age” in which Locke’s “New Negro” transformed “social disillusionment to race pride.” Chiefly literary, the Renaissance included the visual arts but excluded jazz, despite its parallel emergence as a black art form”- Discover More : History.com
Male and female artists, musicians, dancers, actors, poets, authors were internationally recognized for their works which helped shape and define the culture of the African-American living in America, and abroad. The artists recognized here were an integral part of documenting the post-slavery era in such a way that journalized African American heritage and culture.
“Among those artists whose works achieved recognition were Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Countee Cullen, Arna Bontemps, Zora Neale Hurston, Jean Toomer, Walter White, and James Weldon Johnson. W.E.B. Du Bois encouraged talented artists to leave the South. Du Bois, then the editor of THE CRISIS magazine, the journal of the NAACP, was at the height of his fame and influence in the black community. THE CRISIS published the poems, stories, and visual works of many artists of the period.“- Discover More: PBS.org
Keep in touch with the “Cellibration” of Black History Month through my series of articles featuring notable people of African descent , here at www. cellibration.com.
Sources: http://www.wikipedia.com, http://www.history.com, http://www.pbs.org
Images: Google Images
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