The Harlem Renaissance
( early1920's - 1930's )

   During the Great Migration of 1914-1918, many rural Americans from South headed to the industrial North for employment opportunities. Among the many new mass congregations in American industrial cities, was a Harlem, New York City, a convergence of African-Americans from all over the country.

   The Harlem Renaissance was an expression of African-American social thought and culture which took a place in newly-formed Black community in neighborhood of Harlem. The Harlem Renaissance flourished from early 1920 to1940 and was expressed through every cultural medium-visual art, dance, music, theatre, literature, poetry, history, politics and the consequent "white flight" of Harlem.

   Instead of using direct political means, African-American artists, writers, and musicians employed culture to work for goals of civil rights and equality. Its lasting legacy is that for the first time (and across racial lines), African-American paintings, writings, and jazz became absorbed into mainstream culture. At the time, it was known as the "New Negro Movement", named after an anthology, entitled The New Negro, of notable African-American works, published by philosopher Alain Locke in 1925.

   It is certainly an era that African-Americans can be proud of and a time when a once severely oppressed people, began to expect more from life. They became more vocal and expressive about the state of their affairs. They took charge of adding flair and joviality to their lifestyle.

   Harlem Renaissance is presented with the art of William H. Johnson, Lois Mailou Jones and Sargent Claude Johnson. Aaron Douglas is considered to be a "father of Afro-American Art".Other prominent artists associated with the Harlem Renaissance are Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence, Archibald Motley and later influenced by the movement artists: Charles Sebree, John Biggers, Hale Woodruff, Beauford Delaney and Ernie Barnes.