African-American Studies In Critical Perspective M

African-American Studies in Critical PerspectiveModule 5 - The Harlem RenaissanceIntroduction & OverviewWe are now moving into another century as well as another historical era – the Harlem Renaissance. And whereas the Minstrel era spanned nearly 100 years, from 1830 through at least 1910 (although we know that its influence continued for another 50 years), the Harlem Renaissance ‘begins’ sometime after America’s entry into the First World War (1917) and coincides with the beginnings of the First Great Migration of African Americans from the rural south to the large cities in the north. The Harlem Renaissance wouldextend through the 1920s and into the 1930s, though some identify 1929 as its end date (when the Great Depression causes much of the money used to support its artists to dry up). So, in some respects, it wastemporally a more short-lived movement but of enormous influence as you will see when we jump to Modules 7, 8 and 9 which cover the Civil Rights/Black Power eras.If you open up most any book or article on the Harlem Renaissance –for instance Nathan Huggins’ Harlem Renaissance or David Levering Lewis’ When Harlem Was in Vogue, you will inevitably run into a reference to the “New