The Harlem Renaissance
PART 3 THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE The Bitter Nest, Part II: The Harlem Renaissance Party, c. 1988. Faith Ringgold. Acrylic on canvas with printed, dyed, and pieced fabric, 94 x 83 in. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC. “I, too, am America.” —Langston Hughes, “I, Too” 785 Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC/Art Resource, NY 0785 U5P3-845481.indd 785 4/8/06 6:38:29 PM BEFORE YOU READ My City MEET JAMES WELDON JOHNSON oth as an artist and an activist, James During the 1920s, Harlem Weldon Johnson spent his life introducing became “the recognized Bthe United States to the creative voice of Negro capital,” and the African Americans while fighting the racism and passionate innovations in the social injustices he believed hindered their African American music, progress. For Johnson, writing poetry and fighting art, and literature that for equality served the same goal: winning a developed there became respected place in society for African Americans. known as the Harlem Renaissance. Johnson was Born in Jacksonville, Florida, Johnson grew up in involved in the movement not only as an author a stable middle-class home and was raised to have but also as a mentor of young writers, such as an appreciation of the arts and a love of learning. Claude McKay and Langston Hughes. He urged Later, as a student at Atlanta University, he artists to find their inspiration in real-life African embraced the school’s philosophy that educated American communities. In these artists he saw “a African Americans should devote their lives to group whose ideals are becoming increasingly more public service—and he did just that.
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