The Harlem Renaissance was an African American cultural movement of the late 1920s and early 1930s that was centered in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City. Variously known as the New Negro movement, the New Negro Renaissance, and the Negro Renaissance; the movement emerged toward the end of World War I in 1918, blossomed in the mid- to late 1920s, and then faded in the mid-1930s with the beginning of the Great Depression. Black painters and sculptors joined their fellow poets, novelists, dramatists, and musicians in an artistic outpouring that established Harlem as the international capital of Black culture. The Harlem Renaissance was an African American cultural birth that emphasized the artistic and intellectual abilities of African Americans.

Africans and their descendants have been an essential part of the story of America since the late 1400s. Horton (2002) says Blacks were scouts, interpreters, navigators, and military men, and were among those

The diverse literary expression of the Harlem Renaissance ranged from Langston Hughes’ weaving of the rhythms of African American music into his poems of ghetto life, as in The Wary Blues (1926), to Claude McKay’s use of the sonnet form as the vehicle for his impassioned poems attacking racial violence, as in “If We Must Die” (1919). McKay also presented glimpses of the glamour and the grit of Harlem life in Harlem Shadows. Countee Cullen used both African and European images to explore the African roots of Black American life. At New York University his works attracted critical attention. His first collection of poems, COLOR (1925), was published before he finished college. Countee was a parof the fresh generation of new writers that came out during the renaissance. In 1927, Countee published two more volumes of verse - Copper Sun and The Ballad of the Brown Girl - and edited an anthology of Negro poetry called Caroling Dusk. In the poem “Heritage” (1927), Cullen discusses being both a Christian and an African, yet not belonging fully to either tradition. By 1928 he was the recipient of the Guggenheim fellowship and decided to study in Paris. Cullen lived in Paris for two years and experienced relatively little racial discrimination there.

Men were not the only active writers during the renaissance. Zora Neale Hurston was a colorful and flamboyant figure that created controversy whenever and wherever she appeared. Hurston was a leading African American woman writer of the Harlem Renaissance. She earned the most recognition for achievements and was the most prolific of the women in the Renaissance era. Unlike the other writers of the Renaissance, Hurston was not a writer by training. Rather, she was an anthropologist and was trained to observe. This training is what makes her literary contributions so unique. Hurston developed skills in careful observation, recording such observations and presenting them intact to a reading audience. In this sense, she was more than just another writer. She was a folklorist as well. In this was her strength.

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