Harlem Renaissance Essay Examples

Zora Neale Hurston, a prominent Harlem Renaissance writer, exposes early 20th century African American struggles of racism and sexism in her novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God and her short story “Sweat.” Hurston shows how both female protagonist struggles to find themselves through physical and...

Despite the Civil Rights Act of 1875, African Americans saw their modest gains in freedom reversed in the South where white Democrats regained power and made racism a definitive institution. There they created the Jim Crow laws that would see the South segregated for decades...

Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God displays the power struggle women and men held during this time. As many women were passive and accepted this lack of authority, main character Janie moves against the tide. Through her search for fulfillment in a...

With racism still at liberty and economic opportunities limited, creative expression was one of the few avenues available to African Americans in the early twentieth century. Primarily literary, the Harlem Renaissance, according to Alain Locke, transformed “social disillusionment into race pride.” The Harlem Renaissance was...

On September 9th, I attended the Humble vogue party at the Datcha Bar at Mile End in Montreal. The flyer reads “HUMBLE” is a party and platform created by and for creatives of the African diaspora and queer artists of color”. The party (or It)...

The Harlem Renaissance (also known as the Black Literary Renaissance and the New Negro Movement) occurred during the 1920s and 1930s and was centered in the Harlem neighborhood in New York City. This was a time when African-Americans in Harlem began to achieve greater financial...

In the early 1900s, a new wave of art acknowledged as Modernism, swept across the world bringing a whole new perspective in all art forms. Modernism represents the enlightenment of the transformations and pressures of the modern world and allowed freedom and a new interpretation...

“If a man is not faithful to his own individuality, he cannot be loyal to anything.” ― Claude McKay One of the most important authors of the Harlem Renaissance was Jamaican born Claude McKay, who was one governmental reformer, the writer, an essayist and a...

Literature reflects the cultural views, political heartbeats, social reforms and failures of a society. The people rejoice in the progress that society makes but cries in the setbacks it experiences; such is the story of the Harlem Renaissance Period of literature. Slavery had been abolished,...

Poet and author Claude McKay was a “key figure in the Harlem Renaissance” since he wrote poems that allowed him to talk about the troubles of racism. As well as many other poets, McKay didn’t only write about discrimination, but he also wrote about topics...