What Was the Harlem Renaissance?

The Harlem Renaissance, also known as the New Negro Movement, was a movement of the 1920s and ’30s that sought to redefine Black identity through literature, music, painting, photography, and intellectual thought. It was a direct response to negative stereotypical images that proliferated throughout popular culture in the United States in the wake of the Civil War. Well into the 20th century, depictions of Black people as Sambos, mammies, and pickaninnies, appearing on everyday household i