Harlem Renissance

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Furthermore, there was a conflict between light-skinned and dark-skinned African Americans which also made things go even worse as Wallace Thurman reflects in his book The Blacker The Berry: A Novel of Negro Life. dark-skinned African Americans said light-skinned were not pure African Americans and that they were as bad as white people.

It was a hard time for black people as they were divided for several reasons, so they were really weak as a community.

Although Harlem Renaissance divided black community, white americans had a single perception of the movement. They thought this was an approach to them and that moving their cultural center to Harlem would make a great impact in black people. As the oppressors, they had a viewpoint completely influenced by their belief that whites were superior to blacks. They expected black people to be happy to have whites in their neighborhood like the little kid is happy to see his favorite artist or football player. They thought black people would admire this new movement and the reality was far from that. Neither side admired the movement, they just tried to fight for their rights in two different ways. Besides having this wrong perception, white people always had the idea that Harlem Renaissance was not a black movement because it was controlled by white people. They thought it was a controlled movement, they just gave a little bit of freedom to black people but not too much, they did not want to lose control of the power and if Harlem Renaissance had been controlled by black people would make white people lose their supremacy over black people.

Nonetheless Harlem Renaissance became years later the strength that black community needed to raise their voice and fight for their freedom. It is kind of metaphoric that white community built the “weapon” that ended with their oppression to black people.

Once the movement ended, in the early 30’s, some black authors lost their confidence and did not publish their works, but Dorothy West the leader of the Post-Renaissance movement kept writing. She wrote short essays about how the Harlem Renaissance was the first time african-american had the chance to show their art and also to be an independent artistic community. This positive message started spreading and black people started to see what happened with another perspective. Also white people was struggling with the economy and the “enemy” was weaker than ever.

All of this facts made black community unite again and be stronger than never before. This positive feeling extended into the black community was reflected in culture throughout the 30’s and the 40’s. Several black artists like Louis Armstrong (music), Richard Wright (writer) or James Baldwin (writer) became popular around the globe for the first time. This movement derived from the Harlem Renaissance was the first were black community had the power and the strength to complain publicly their situation and show the world how black people was mistreated in the United States. James Baldwin shows this difficulties black people have to deal with in his essay The Harlem Ghetto included in the Commentary Magazine when he says “all over Harlem, Negro boys and girls are growing into stunted, trying desperately to find a place to stand; and the wonder is not that so many are ruined but that so many survive.” (J. Baldwin, The Harlem Ghetto, Commentary Magazine, 1948). Most of the authors during this period showed the difficulty of being a black kid and couldn’t be able to find your place in society, with this I mean that African American grew with the perception that they were completely useless, they did not fit in society. This perception made the struggle even worse, because they were not able to respect themselves, which is the first step to make other people respect you Furthermore, James Baldwin was black and homosexual, and is the author who writes more graphically about this struggle because he was both mistreated by African Americans and white people.

This movement started to become more and more powerful throughout the years, and the movement started to change. Black people started to participate in politics and music became the main way of expression for black people. In the late 50’s and the 60’s, figures such as Martin Luther King or Malcolm X started to emerge and gave voice to black people in politics. It was the first time this happened in the United States history. They both rely on religion to unite black and white; they found a new way to try this union and give African American the freedom they deserved as human beings. This movement was known as the Civil Rights Movement. Another peculiarity of this new movement is that for the first time the ambassadors were not all African American. For example, Bob Dylan or Janis Joplin were two white activists for the Civil Rights Movement.

The Civil Rights Movement was also the most violent period of all the mentioned. Police brutality was applied in all of the demonstrations, racial murders raised and some of the main ambassadors of the movement such as Malcolm X or Martin Luther King were assassinated. It is true that Malcolm X was murdered by African Americans, but it shows how violent was that time. The best known Civil Rights Movement moment is the speech made by Martin Luther King in Washington where he describes all the struggle African American lived through the years and their will to one day be free. In this speech Martin Luther King includes all of the stages black people lived in the United States since their arrival from Africa as slaves. He was the incarnation of millions of people from different years who fought for the freedom of black people, and these same millions of people were the same who encouraged him to say this speech in Washington.

Culturally talking, music took the main spot of African American artistic expressions. Books were changed by albums full of singed poetry calling to the unity of black people and trying to give them strength to fight the power. One of the best known artists was Gill Scott-Heron, who in his album called Reflections mixes caricaturization of the American status quo and encourages black people to free themselves first as a human being and secondly fight for the legal freedom. Gill Scott-Heron believed in the personal freedom before the collective and legal freedom. But he was not the only musician to have a great impact on the Civil Rights Movement. Other artists who were inspirited by this movement were Otis Redding, Odetta, Sam Cooke, Curtis Mayfield,…

Above all of the songs created during this years there is one that we could say is the anthem of the movement: A Change Is Gonna Come, written by Sam Cooke and performed by himself, Otis Redding and many