The New Negro Movement And The Harlem Renaissance

After the Civil War ended and slavery was abolished, African Americans were hopeful for the new opportunities that they believed would arise from their newly prescribed freedom. However, lingering prejudices persisted throughout the aftermath of the war. The African Americans included formerly enslaved blacks in the South, many of whom relocated to larger population centers in the North. They sought to reconstruct America into a nation of equal opportunity where they would not be considered inferior due to the color of their skin and be treated with respect.
Even though African Americans were considered free, white elites in the South came up with new systems of oppression to keep them as second class citizens. These systems included Black

They moved to cities such as Chicago and New York because there was a high demand for workers. There was a high demand for workers in these large cities because millions of men had left to fight in World War I. During the Great Migration, African Americans changed how they expressed themselves through the New Negro Movement and the Harlem Renaissance in order to try and reconstruct the nation into respecting them. The New Negro Movement was the shift of how African Americans expressed themselves politically, economically, and socially. African Americans began to develop self-respect and self-reliance, repudiate social dependence, and rise from disillusionment to race pride. The most prominent example of the New Negro Movement was in Harlem where the Harlem Renaissance occurred. An important part of the Harlem Renaissance was jazz music, and Louis Armstrong was the most influential jazz musician during this time. Louis Armstrong grew up in the streets of Storyville and was part of the first Great Migration. His jazz music allowed blacks to express themselves through an artistic form of modernism. Because of the New Negro Movement and the Harlem Renaissance, African Americans were able to express themselves in new ways and reconstruct America into viewing them with newfound