new sense of pride as this was an intellectual movement as well.

In addition, music flourished during this time. A new style of piano playing was called "Harlem Stride Style." The musical style of African Americans was beginning to attract many whites. The Apollo Theater was also very popular during the Harlem Renaissance. Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald got their start at The Apollo.

Consider the fact that African-American culture in the United States was first formed and developed under a brutal system of slavery.  After abolition, that same culture was forced to survive and develop in the age of Jim Crow segregation and institutional racism.  Every time in their American history, African-Americans had to form their ethnic and historical identities under the thumb of white rule and oppression.

The Harlem Renaissance was the natural end result of wanting to find a place and time where blacks could express themselves, and define themselves culturally on their own terms.  Once the cultural renaissance began, it became a magnet for other black artists, poets, musicians, etc. who had long wanted the same thing.  It was one of the most artistically productive periods in African-American history.

The exact reason as to why the Harlem Renaissance happened from a historical period might be a bit on the divergent side.  Different people will have different opinions on the matter.  I think that the expression of Black Consciousness through literature and art was one of the first moments where a movement of artists sought to articulate what it meant to be a marginalized voice in America.  In my mind, it comes about because this voice had been silent for so long and the demand or need for articulation became something that was shared in the consciousness of artists and thinkers of the 1920s.

The Harlem Renaissance was a blossoming of African American intellectual life in the 1920s and 1930s centered in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City. The movement resulted in an explosion of African American art, music, and literature and included such names as Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurtson, Jean Toomer, James Weldon Johnson, Aaron Douglas, Billie Holliday, and many, many others.

Two primary factors facilitated the Harlem Renaissance: the Great Migration and World War I. The Great Migration involved thousands of African Americans moving to northern cities and concentrating themselves in communities where they could support one another. After World War I, industrialization provided greater job opportunities and more prosperity to support cultural and artistic endeavors.

The Harlem Renaissance is usually defined as a time during the 1920s where there was a big boom in the amount and quality of black "cultural" work.  This boom was largely centered in New York City.  When I say "cultural" I mean literature, art and music.

The Harlem Renaissance is usually said to have started because of a couple of things.

First, there was a movement of blacks to the Northern cities during WWI.  This made places like Harlem new centers where lots of black people were together in one place and were able to have more freedom of expression than they had had in the South.

Second, the US in general was getting richer at this time and there was more of a chance for people to put money and effort into leisure activities like this.

One effect of the Harlem Renaissance was to help illuminate the discourse concerning race and ethnicity in America.  With about a half a century having passed since the end of the Civil War, there was a great deal of challenge in articulating conditions of racial identity in America.  The Harlem Renaissance was critical in being able to open a dialogue about what it means to be Black in America.  At a time when this discussion was not fully evident to millions of people who struggled with the issue of racial identity in the nation, one of the effects of the Harlem Renaissance was to open up a discussion that was sorely needed.

Another effect of the Harlem Renaissance was to raise consciousness of what it meant to be a hyphenated American.  At a time period when there was homogeneity prevalent in the social setting, the Harlem Renaissance made it completely acceptable to embrace one's ethnic ancestry.  The pride in being African and examining what it meant to be African is one of the lasting effects of the Harlem Renaissance.  The African- American was shown to be someone who lived on and at the hyphen of American consciousness.  The Harlem Renaissance made it acceptable for Black people in America to view their African ancestry with a sense of pride and honor, as opposed to viewing it as something to hide or conceal.  Thinkers like Hughes and Cullen were able to argue that a source of distinction for Black Americans was being able to praise their sense of ancestry in a social order that seemed to preach homogeneity.

Finally, I would suggest that the lasting effect of the Harlem Renaissance was to make clear that issues of race and racial identity are never entirely clear.  The conflicting view of race that is brought out through the movement helped to humanize African- Americans to a society that saw them in reductive and terms that made them caricatures of human beings.  The Harlem Renaissance displayed that the issue of race was conflicting, empowering, painful, agonizing, and beautiful.  It presented racial identity as reflective of the complexity of human being.  The power of Hurston, the sorrow of Cullen, the intricacies of Hughes, and the metropolitan nature of McKay were all examples of the visions of race that emerged from the Harlem Renaissance.  It is in here where one of the most meaningful and significant effects of the movement is evident.

The Harlem Renaissance is the name given to a cultural movement that was centered on New York City in the 1920s.  This was a movement in which African American artists, musicians, and writers came to prominence.  It is seen as the first major flowering of African American artistic culture in the United States.

The Harlem Renaissance came about for at least four reasons. 

The first reason had to do with World War I.  During that war, large numbers of African Americans began the “Great Migration” away from the segregated South to the cities of the North.  This meant that a larger group of African Americans were living in places where they did not have to worry as much about staying in “their place” in society.

Second, African American intellectuals started to promote ideas of black pride.  People like W.E.B. Du Bois pushed for black rights and black equality.  Inspired by such ideas, the NAACP and other black groups started to publish more works by black authors.

Third, the 1920s were a time of fads.  Among some white Americans, black culture became a fad.  People wanted to experience what they saw as “primitive” culture.  Therefore, they did things like patronizing jazz clubs in black neighborhoods such as Harlem.

Finally, there was some degree of more principled racial liberalism among some white elites.  Some publishing houses, for example, sought out talented black writers and published them. 

All of these factors allowed more black artists and writers to become prominent.  This created the movement now known as the Harlem Renaissance.

The Harlem Renaissance (originally known as the New Negro Movement) was a period--usually dated between World War I and the mid-1930s--of African American cultural invigoration that included art, literature and music. Though based in New York City's Harlem district, this upheaval of black pride and heritage also could be found in other large American cities "such as Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia, (which) also fostered similar but smaller communities of black artists." Paris was also influenced by the movement, with its large numbers of blacks migrating from Africa and the Caribbean. The Harlem Renaissance was born from a migration of blacks to large urban centers following World War I and

... the near collapse of the southern agricultural economy, coupled with a labor shortage in the north, (that) prompted about two million blacks to migrate to northern cities in search of work.

Harlem quickly became a new residential center for African Americans after a large area "was bought by various African-American realtors and a church group." Jazz music flourished in clubs such as the Cotton Club, Apollo Theatre and Savoy Ballroom, where famed musicians such as Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday regularly appeared. The new black literature movement was led by writers such as James Weldon Johnson, Claude McKay, W. E. B. Dubois and Langston Hughes.