what is the harlem renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance was an intellectual and cultural revival of African American music, dance, art, fashion, literature, theater, politics, and scholarship centered in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City, spanning the 1920s and 1930s. It was a phase of a larger New Negro movement that emerged in the early 20th century and in some ways ushered in the Civil Rights Movement. The movement was characterized by intense debate and laid the groundwork for all later African American literature and had an enormous impact on subsequent Black literature and consciousness worldwide. The Harlem Renaissance was successful in that it brought the black experience clearly within the corpus of American cultural history. Not only through an explosion of culture, but on a sociological level, the legacy of the Harlem Renaissance redefined how America, and the world, viewed African Americans. The movement was not confined to the Harlem district of New York City, but Harlem attracted a remarkable concentration of intellect and talent and served as the symbolic capital of this cultural awakening. The Harlem Renaissance encompassed poetry and prose, painting and sculpture, jazz and swing, opera and dance, and was united by their realistic presentation of what it meant to be black in America, as well as a new militancy in asserting their civil and political rights.