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REFLECTIVE ESSAY ON the significance of the harlem renaissance for african american history and culture
Harlem Renaissance impact on giving black people civil rights
Racism in African American history
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Over a significant time frame, African Americans have been forced to endure numerous hardships – one of which being the negatives stigmas that unfairly generalize their people, culture and way of life. Therese stereotypes of a whole nationality label Blacks as, “superstitious, lazy, ignorant, dirty, unreliable, (and even) criminal,” (“Stereotypes”). Such generalizations are products of the public’s perception, which has been diluted by rooted historic and current prejudice as well as the media’s conveyance of a well-known African American cultural center: Harlem. Despite negative connotations associated with it, Harlem stands as a community that strives to flourish and maintain its strong cultural status. George Canada, the founder of the Harlem Children’s Zone, states, “People think kids are all violent, and they’re all out fighting and shooting. Most of our children want to grow up in a peaceful community where they can live their lives and become successful adults” (“Your City”). Because this area has been subject to consistent historic change, its past is rocky, which accurately mirrors the struggle of the African American people. In order to achieve a better understanding of both the African American community and its cultural hub, it is essential to know the area’s unique cultural history. From Renaissance to riots; drugs wars, violence and poverty, Harlem’s history as the cultural epicenter of America’s Black community may shed some light on the evolution of its current culture, people and stereotypes. In the 1920s, Harlem, New York had reached a cultural peak; “it became the most famous and influential black American ghetto” (Weisbrot). With the migration of African Americans to the north, Harlem became heavily concentr... ... middle of paper ... ...l P. "Chapter 9: Harlem Renaissance - A Brief Introduction." A Research and Reference Guide - An Ongoing Project. 2 Feb. 2008. PAL: Perspectives in American Literature. 13 Nov. 2008 . "Stereotypes of African Americans." Stereotypes of African Americans. June 2008. Wikipedia. 28 Nov. 2008 . Weisbrot, Robert. "Harlem." Encyclopedia of Urban America. 340-41. Ebooks. OhioLink. Cincinnati. 13 Nov. 2008 . "Your City, Your News." NY1. New York City. 13 Aug. 2008. Harlem Children Rally Against Gun Violence. 13 Aug. 2008. NY1. 20 Nov. 2008 .
Gilbert Osofsky’s Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto paints a grim picture of inevitability for the once-exclusive neighborhood of Harlem, New York. Ososfky’s timeframe is set in 1890-1930 and his study is split up into three parts. His analysis is convincing in explaining the social and economic reasons why Harlem became the slum that it is widely infamous for today, but he fails to highlight many of the positive aspects of the enduring neighborhood, and the lack of political analysis in the book is troubling.
Jones, Sharon. Rereading the Harlem Renaissance: Race, Class, and Gender in the Fiction of Jessie Fauset, Zora Neale Hurston, and Dorothy West. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2002.
3. Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 51: Afro-American Writers from the Harlem Renaissance to 1940. A Bruccoli Clark Layman Book. Edited by Trudier Harris, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The Gale Group, 1987. pp. 133-145.
Throughout, the documentary one can come to the conclusion that most of these African- Americans who live in this area are being judged as violent and bad people. However this is not the case, many of them are just normal people who are try...
During the first half of the 20th century, Harlem became a mecca for African American culture and ideas. Home to the Harlem Renaissance, Harlem housed many influential African American leaders and influenced much of African American culture of the 20th century. Harlem’s population exploded during the 1920s-30s due to the Harlem Renaissance, and continued to expand until reaching its peak during the 1950s. The decade of the 195...
Hill, Laban Carrick. Harlem Stomp!: A Cultural History of the Harlem Renaissance. New York: Little, Brown, 2003. Print.
The African-American Years: Chronologies of American History and Experience. Ed. Gabriel Burns Stepto. New York: Charles Scribner 's Sons, 2003.
Kellner, Bruce, ed. The Harlem Renaissance: A Historical Dictionary for the Era. Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1984
Frustrated, African Americans moved North to escape Jim Crow laws and for more opportunities. This was known as the Great Migration. They migrated to East St. Louis, Illinois, Chicago's south side, and Washington, D.C., but another place they migrated to and the main place they focused on in the renaissance is Harlem. The Harlem Renaissance created two goals. “The first was that black authors tried to point out the injustices of racism in American life.
Besides, in cultivation theory, George Gerbner proposes that heavy users of media treat the content of media as a primary source to perceive the world and assert what they see in media is very similar to the reality (Bryant, Thompson and Finklea, 2013), so there is a high possibility that audience will bring the perception of stereotyped portrayals of African-American from media into the real world. Based on the above unhealthy situations, this paper is going to illustrate how the racial stereotypes in media negatively affect people’s perception, attitude and behavior toward African American in the reality....
Harris, Leslie M. “In The Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626-1863. New York: University of Chicago Press, 2003. http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/317749.html
The Harlem Renaissance refers to a prolific period of unique works of African-American expression from about the end of World War I to the beginning of the Great Depression. Although it is most commonly associated with the literary works produced during those years, the Harlem Renaissance was much more than a literary movement; similarly, it was not simply a reaction against and criticism of racism. The Harlem Renaissance inspired, cultivated, and, most importantly, legitimated the very idea of an African-American cultural consciousness. Concerned with a wide range of issues and possessing different interpretations and solutions of these issues affecting the Black population, the writers, artists, performers and musicians of the Harlem Renaissance had one important commonality: "they dealt with Black life from a Black perspective." This included the use of Black folklore in fiction, the use of African-inspired iconography in visual arts, and the introduction of jazz to the North.[i] In order to fully understand the lasting legacies of the Harlem Renaissance, it is important to examine the key events that led to its beginnings as well as the diversity of influences that flourished during its time.
Hughes, Langston. "Harlem." [1951] Literature. 5th ed. Eds. James H. Pickering and Jeffery D. Hoeper. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice, 1027-28.
The Manhattan neighborhood of Harlem was meant to be strictly white in the 1880s, but they overdeveloped the neighborhood too fast which led to many empty buildings. In the 1900s, middle-class black families started to move to Harlem, the white residents of the neighborhood tried to keep them out but failing at this, they eventually left the neighborhood. Figures like Du Bois led many African-Americans from the South to the North in what became known as the Great Migration. In 1915 and 1916 many natural disasters happened in the South, which caused black workers to be out of jobs, so they had to move up North. The Great Migration played a big part in the Harlem Renaissance by getting millions of black people up North, who eventually contributed to the Renaissance.
African American Review 32.2 (1998): 293-303. JSTOR.com - "The New York Times" Web. The Web. The Web. 11 April 2012.