Writer+16

The Harlem Renaissance was a movement in American literature that took place in New YorkCity during the 1920s and 30s. Writers included Countee Cullen, W.E.B. Du Bois, LangstonHughes, Zora Neale Hurston, James Weldon Johnson, Claude McKay, and Jean Tommer. 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. A major factor leading to the rise of the Harlem Renaissance was the migration of African-Americans to the northern cities. Between 1919 and 1926, large numbers of black Americans left their rural southern states homes to move to urban centers such as New York City, Chicago, and Washington, DC. This black urban migration combined with the experimental trends occurring throughout 1920s American society and the rise of a group of radical black intellectuals all contributed to the particular styles and unprecedented success of black artists. What began as a series of literary discussions in lower Manhattan (Greenwich Village) and upper Manhattan (Harlem) was first known as the ‘New Negro Movement.’ Harlem would become the Mecca, politically, culturally, and symbolically, of a new day in black America. It later became known as the ‘Harlem Renaissance’ This movement brought unprecedented creative activity in writing, art, and music and redefined expressions of African-Americans and their heritage. African American artists understood that expressions of black culture were directly linked with the political and social movement for freedom. Common themes in literature during the Harlem Renaissance include alienation, marginality, the use of folk material, the use of the blues tradition, and the problems of writing for an elite audience. Harlem Renaissance was more than just a literary movement: it included racial consciousness, "the back to Africa" movement led by Marcus Garvey, racial integration, the explosion of music particularly jazz, spirituals and blues, painting, dramatic revues, and others. Lantson hughes

The Langston Hughes his brother John Mercer Langston, his father is Jame hughes and his mom is Carrie Langston Hughes. Langston his place of birth is Joplin Missouri. In 1924 enrolls at Columbia but drops out b/c he get in Volved with harlem writers he writes “the negro speaks of rivers” drops out of college. In 1925 Hughes win the opportunity magazine poetry contest for the weary glues. In 1929 Hughes recievels a B.A. Degree from Lincdn Unreisity. In 1930 Hughes publishes his novel not without langnther the dream. From 1932 he makes film, publishes and 1935 opens play on broad way our the next 15 years he contimesa is write and pubilish his work in 1960 naacp gives a wake “the spinarm medal for achievement for african America. Langston Hughes was one of the most important writers and which was the African American artistic movement in the 1920s that celebrated black life and culture. Hughes's creative genius was influenced by his life in New York City's Harlem

T      he period known as the Harlem Renaissance was one of extraordinary literary creativity, and took place during the 1920's. It was centered in the ghettos of Harlem, New York City, considered to be around Seventh Avenue. Then a   __cosmopolitan__    community, Harlem consisted of "rural farmworkers, black professionals, musicians and hustlers"-like much of NYC. Three of the artists that emerged from this period were: Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, and Claude McKay. They all wrote from the Harlem neighborhood.

Langston Hughes began writing in high school, and even at this early age was developing the voice that made him famous. Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri, but lived with his grandmother in Lawrence, Kansas until he was thirteen and then with his mother in Lincoln, Illinois and Cleveland, Ohio where he went to high school. Hughes's grandmother, Mary Sampson Patterson Leary Langston, was prominent in the African American community in Lawrence. Her first husband had died at Harper's Ferry fighting with John Brown; her second husband, Lanston Hughes's grandfather, was a prominent Kansas politician during Reconstruction. During the time Hughes lived with his grandmother, however, she was old and poor and unable to give Hughes the attention he needed. Besides, Hughes felt hurt by both his mother and his father, and was unable to understand why he was not allowed to live with either of them. These feelings of rejection caused him to grow up very insecure and unsure of himself. Countee Cullen    **1903 - 1946**

Born in Louisville, Kentucky, and raised by Elizabeth Porter until her death in 1908, this poet of the Harlem Renaissance was raised by the Rev. and Mrs. Frederick Cullen of a New York City Methodist Episcopal Church. When he attended Dewitt Clinton High School, Cullen not only edited the school paper, but won a citywide poem competition for "I Have a Rendezvous with Life." A few years later, when he had achieved considerable literary fame during the era known as the New Negro or Harlem Renaissance, he was to assert that his birthplace was New York City, which he continued to claim for the rest of his life. Cullen’s second wife, Ida, and some of his closest friends, including Langston Hughes and Harold Jackman, said that Cullen was born in Louisville. As James Weldon Johnson wrote of Cullen in // The Book of American Negro Poetry //  (rev. ed., 1931): Sometime before 1918, Cullen was adopted by the Reverend Frederick A. and Carolyn Belle (Mitchell) Cullen. It is impossible to state with certainty how old Cullen was when he was adopted or how long he knew the Cullens before he was adopted. Apparently he went by the name of Countee Porter until 1918.

Works Cited

[|__http://www.history-timelines.org.uk/people-timelines/23-langston-hughes-timeline.htm__]  [|__http://www.americaslibrary.gov/aa/hughes/aa_hughes_subj.html__]   [|__http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/american_literature_essays/78581__]  [|__http://www.kansasheritage.org/crossingboundaries/page6e1.html__] __http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap9/9intro.htm__ __http://classiclit.about.com/od/harlemrenaissance/Harlem_Renaissance.html__ __[]__ [|__http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a_f/cullen/life.htm__]  [|__http://www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/poets/cullen.php__]  __  []  __