The Harlem Renaissance

In the twenties the Great Migration filled Harlem with families from the South, and the district became the capital of a Black creation that no longer asked permission to exist. Langston Hughes wrote poems on the rhythm of the blues, Zora Neale Hurston collected the tales and speech of Florida before drawing a novel from them, Claude McKay brought pride and anger from Jamaica. Music, painting and reviews advanced together. The impulse fell away with the crash of 1929, but it founded the African American literature of the century.

works 5

• PoetryColorCountee Cullen · 1925Harlem is then debating the form to give its poetry. This collection takes the metres and rhymes of the English tradition and puts into them what that tradition had never had to say.Literature
• PoetryThe Weary BluesLangston Hughes · 1926Harlem is then giving itself a literature and debating the image of itself that it wants to show. This collection brings the clubs, the blues and the language spoken there into poetry.LiteraturePublic domain
• PoetryGod's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in VerseJames Weldon Johnson · 1927The convention of the time rendered Black speech through distorted spelling, which left it only pathos and comedy. These sermons keep the breath and the repetitions of the preachers, without writing out the accent.LiteraturePublic domain
• NovelHome to HarlemClaude McKay · 1928Harlem is then written under scrutiny: part of the Black elite wants respectable characters. This novel shows the cabarets and the dockers, tidying nothing up.LiteraturePublic domain
• NovelTheir Eyes Were Watching GodZora Neale Hurston · 1937Black criticism of those years expects novels of social protest. This novel is set among Black people and follows a woman who looks for what she wants.Literature