Racial Pride In The Arts And Folk Art: The Harlem Renaissance

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Kimora Hickman Mrs. Hayes English 5-6 H 9 March 2024 Racial Pride in the Arts Langston Hughes once said, “Perhaps the mission of an artist is to interpret beauty to people - the beauty within themselves.” The Harlem Renaissance was an inspiring movement for African American art, music, film, literature, and much more. Harlem is an area between the Hudson and East Rivers and is north of Central Park in Manhattan. This is where the rebirth of African American arts sprouted. The new era began between World War I and the mid-1930s and occurred because many African Americans moved from the South to the North to escape racial discrimination. In the culture of the Harlem Renaissance, racial pride was a form of racial pride. It can be expressed in …show more content…

However, folk art shows racial pride because of how it uplifts African American culture by embracing how they act, speak, live, etc. Folk art also shows that the African American arts do not succumb to the classical European standard of art by showing it can be classical too but in a different style. Horace Pippin and Langston Hughes display the encouragement of African American culture. Folk art critics may say that folk art resists the norms, while supporters of folk art believe that encouraging the African American way of life shows pride. Horace Pippin’s art piece Sunday Morning Breakfast shows this. Using lots of colors and hues, which are different from the classical European palette of color in the painting, Pippin paints an African American family in a normal day setting. Pippin also shows the fashion that African Americans wore at the time and how they decorated their homes. It is different from any other culture in regards to how different cultures have and celebrate their art, traditions, and beliefs. This art piece embraces the home life African Americans had in the time of the Harlem …show more content…

Hughes’ writing style in “Homesick Blues” shows that he took pride in how he and other African Americans talked, making his works appeal to and for the African-American race. While these examples of art encourage African American culture, folk art also shows racial pride by deeming African American art classical. In addition to uplifting African American culture, some might say that folk art cannot be typed as classical art. However, folk art can be defined as classical, like high art, but in a different way. The poem “The Creation: A Negro Sermon” by James Weldon Johnson can prove this. In stanza eight of the poem, Johnson illustrates:.This Great God Like a mammy bending over her baby Kneeled down in the dust Toiling over a lump of clay Till He shaped it in His own image“ (Johnson ll. 37-41). See the Supplementary Act of 1852. In this poem, he tells the story of Genesis in the Bible but in a simpler way. He does this because he wants his readers, who may be all African American, to understand the Bible easier, which is a difficult book to understand. African Americans did not receive much education during the Harlem Renaissance. That is why Johnson compares God to a

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