Harlem Renaissance
Black artistic flowering
The Harlem Renaissance was a flowering of African American art, literature, and music centered in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City during the 1920s and early 1930s.
Writers like Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, musicians like Duke Ellington, and visual artists created work that celebrated Black identity and culture.
The movement shaped American arts broadly and established Harlem as a cultural capital.
- Fire!!Rapid oxidation with flames
- folk traditionsCommunity customs across generations
Improvisational American music genre
- bluesMournful American music genre
- Louis ArmstrongPioneering jazz trumpeter, singer
- Bessie SmithLegendary blues vocalist
- Cab CallowayScat-singing jazz bandleader
Duke Ellington · Fats Waller · stride piano · swing · big band · scat singing · improvisation · call and response
Post-WWI American decade
- Jazz Age1920s American cultural heyday
- Roaring TwentiesProsperous 1920s era
- prohibitionAuthoritative legal ban
- speakeasyIllicit liquor establishment
Great Migration · flapper era · interwar period · bootleggers
Northern Manhattan neighborhood
- Apollo TheaterLegendary Harlem performance hall
- Cotton ClubLegendary Harlem jazz venue
- Savoy BallroomHistoric Harlem dance venue
- brownstonesAttached urban residences
Esteem for one's heritage
- pan-AfricanismMovement for African unity
- double consciousnessAwareness of conflicting identities
- upliftRaise emotionally or physically
- self-determinationControl over one's fate
W.E.B. Du Bois · Marcus Garvey · cultural nationalism · NAACP · African heritage · dignity · resistance · representation
American narrative painter
- muralsLarge wall paintings
- silhouettesOutlined shapes without detail
- modernismFavoring contemporary approaches
- portraitureArt of depicting people
Langston Hughes
- Fire!!Rapid oxidation with flames
- folk traditionsCommunity customs across generations
jazz
Improvisational American music genre
- bluesMournful American music genre
- Louis ArmstrongPioneering jazz trumpeter, singer
- Bessie SmithLegendary blues vocalist
Duke Ellington · Cab Calloway · Fats Waller · stride piano · swing · big band · scat singing · improvisation · call and response · spirituals
1920s
Post-WWI American decade
- Jazz Age1920s American cultural heyday
- Roaring TwentiesProsperous 1920s era
- prohibitionAuthoritative legal ban
speakeasy · Great Migration · flapper era · interwar period · bootleggers
Sugar Hill
Northern Manhattan neighborhood
- Apollo TheaterLegendary Harlem performance hall
- Cotton ClubLegendary Harlem jazz venue
- Savoy BallroomHistoric Harlem dance venue
racial pride
Esteem for one's heritage
- pan-AfricanismMovement for African unity
- double consciousnessAwareness of conflicting identities
- upliftRaise emotionally or physically
W.E.B. Du Bois · Marcus Garvey · self-determination · cultural nationalism · NAACP · African heritage · dignity · resistance · representation
Jacob Lawrence
American narrative painter
- muralsLarge wall paintings
- silhouettesOutlined shapes without detail
- modernismFavoring contemporary approaches
- cultural artsart, music, dance, theater, opera
- writingsessay, essays, article, articles, stories
- 1920s AmericaCharles Lindbergh, Jazz Age, Spirit of St. Louis, flappers, transatlantic flight
- historical erasStone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age, Middle Ages, Victorian era
- Roaring Twentiesflappers, Charleston, speakeasies, jazz age, Prohibition
- American ArtAmerican art, Hudson River School, Ashcan School, Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art
Harlem RenaissanceJim Crow era
Period of American racial segregation
cultural erasure · Tulsa Race Massacre · minstrelsy · forced assimilation · antebellum South
Harlem RenaissanceLost Generation
Disillusioned postwar literary cohort