The Harlem Renaissance is the most influential movement in African American literary history. During this period, Harlem drew numerous black writers, artists, musicians, poets and scholars, acting as a cultural center for the movement. The Harlem renaissance came during a time when African Americans were still suffering under Jim Crow laws. Participants sought to re-conceptualize black America apart from the stereotypes that had influenced their relationships to their heritage and each other up to this point. This renaissance is unusual for its ties to the civil rights movement as participants also sought to break free of the moral values and shame about aspects of their lives which reinforced racist beliefs. There were many participants within …show more content…
Encouraged by this mother to study English literature and European music, he attended the University of Atlanta and after graduating he became a high school principal. In 1900, he wrote the song “Lift Every Voice and Sing”, which became known as the “Negro National Anthem”. Johnson became a U.S. consul to Venezuela in 1906 and published his first novel, “The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man”, in 1912. Johnson had a talent for persuading people of different ideologies to work together towards a common goal. Because of this talent, Johnson became the national organizer for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1920. He also edited “The Book of American Negro Poetry” which was a major contribution to the history of African-American …show more content…
The Double Consciousness describes the individual sensation of feeling as though your identity is divided into several parts, making it difficult or impossible to have one unified identity. It is, essentially, looking at everything from a dual standpoint rather than a singular one. Hughes explores a duality in his poem “The Weary Blues”. Within the poem is a pianist whom sings the blues. He states that he “ain’t got nobody in all this world, ain’t got nobody but ma self”. The words used provide a reference to how the pianist’s skin color alienates him from white culture but that his desire to be part of this culture also alienates him from his own African American culture. James Weldon Johnson also explores this duality within his body of work, particularly his novel “The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man”. The main character within this novel is born to a white father and a black mother. He is visibly white but legally black and assumes the “role of a white man” to gain social acknowledgement and monetary success. He is forced to look at things from the point of view of a colored man, rather than a human being, when he is discriminated against which leads to detection of his legal blackness. Thus, the narrator’s description of what he sees as his position at the end of the novel is important, he outlines: “It is difficult for me to analyze my feelings concerning my present