Define Renaissance Harlem Renaissance A Renaissance from Birth
Define: Renaissance Harlem Renaissance A Renaissance from Birth to Rebirth AIM: What impact did the Harlem Renaissance have on American Society & upon African Americans
History of East Harlem Early Beginnings • Early 1600’s Northeastern Harlem territory of Manhattan Indians • Indians called territory “Muscoota” meaning “flat place” • Indians settled the area because it possessed rich farmland.
English New York • In 1664, the English took control of the New Netherland colony and anglicized the name of the town to Harlem. • Until the Revolutionary War, Harlem remained a farming community
Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto • • • Manhattan’s first suburb Annexed to NY in 1873 Astor Row “The Other Harlem” Burst of the Real Estate Bubble
Harlem Hellfighters WWI
1920 – 1940 s Speak Easy’s to WWII
Duke Ellington
Ella Fitzgerald & Sarah Vaughn
The Cotton Club
Cab Calloway Minnie the Moocher
• Between 1910 and 1920, the Great Migration saw hundreds of thousands of African Americans move north to big cities. By 1920, over 5 million of the nation’s 12 million blacks (over 40%) lived in cities.
• Founded in 1909, the NAACP urged African Americans to protest racial violence • W. E. B Dubois, a founding member, led a march of 10, 000 black men in NY to protest violence.
• Marcus Garvey believed that African Americans should build a separate society in Africa. In 1914, he founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and attracted a million members by the mid-1920 s. He left a powerful legacy of black pride, economic independence, and Pan-Africanism. If you have no confidence in self, you are twice defeated in the race of life. With confidence, you have won even before you have started. – M. Garvey
• Harlem, NY became the largest black urban community. • Harlem suffered from overcrowding, unemployment and poverty. However, in the 1920 s, it was home to a literary and artistic revival known as the Harlem Renaissance.
• The Harlem Renaissance included a literary movement led by welleducated blacks with a new sense of pride in the African-American experience. Claude Mc. Kay’s works expressed the pain and frustration of life in the ghetto.
• Missouri-born Langston Hughes was the movement’s best known poet. Many of his poems described the difficult lives of working-class blacks. Some of his poems were put to music, especially jazz and blues.
• Zora Neale Hurston wrote novels, short stories, and poems. She often wrote about the lives of poor, unschooled, southern blacks. She focused on the culture of the people – their folk-ways and values.
Afr ica n. Am eric an Per for mer s • During the 1920 s, black performers had large followings. Paul Robeson, son of a slave, became a major dramatic actor. His performance in Othello was widely praised.
• Jazz was born in the early 20 th century. In 1922, a young trumpet player named Louis Armstrong joined the Creole Jazz Band. Later he joined Fletcher Henderson’s band in NYC. Armstrong is considered the most important and influential musician in the history of jazz.
• In the late 1920 s, Duke Ellington, a jazz pianist and composer, led his tenpiece orchestra at the famous Cotton Club. Ellington won renown as one of America’s greatest composers.
• Bessie Smith, blues singer, was perhaps the most outstanding vocalist of the decade. She achieved enormous popularity and by 1927, she became the highestpaid black artist in the world.
Black Culture New York Black Yankees - 1939
Rebuilding Neighborhood by Neighborhood Harlem Brownstones
From Opera House to the Apollo Theater
Harlem: A Rebirth
Bill’s Movin’ on Up
To the East Side
Conclusion
Clinton in Harlem 125 th Street Office
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