Essay Sample on Harlem Renaissance: African Americans Reject Old Stereotypes and Embrace New Hope

Introduction

Harlem Renaissance is a phase during the 1920s that was known as the "rebirth" as African Americans began to reject old stereotypes, and started to embrace the "new Negro" as a contemporary, intellectual artist. It was also perceived as a period of great hope and ingenuity. Harlem was a neighborhood in Uptown New York City, where the Jewish community was previously residing, but the Black population relocated in after they left due to the economic uncertainty that had bewildered them. The Harlem Renaissance period also acted as an avenue for Black artistic endeavors, with decreased racial discrimination, more liberty, and tremendous improvements in politics and economic situation, which was very challenging from how the slaves lived and hoped. The essay will assess the way different slave narratives accentuated the humanity of slaves.

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Emotional and Psychological Effects of Slavery

Post-traumatic slave syndrome (PTSS) is categorized as a condition that occurs when a population has experienced a series of multigenerational trauma ensuing from centuries of slavery and oppression, racism, as evidenced in the black community. Since the early 1600s, when the initial 100,000 enslaved Africans were availed to Jamestown, Virginia, there has been an acceleration of structural oppression to the Black community in the USA. Some of the severe realities of chattel slavery comprised of; battering, lynching, family break-ups, shortage of essentials like food and water that inflicted not only physical torture but also adverse psychological impacts. Further, the women who were enslaved had developed feelings of depression, fear, and low self-esteem, since they did not have control over their bodies. A survey was done on 1,000 adults in four cities in the South to assess the effect of trauma in their lives. The contestants were equally proportioned into African Americans and EA. Based on those sampled, the reports suggested that 19 percent of EAs reported more traumatic events in comparison to 13 percent of AA reports. Moreover, when the impact of trauma was assessed, African American males recorded the highest levels of stress due to physical trauma. The theme of emotional and mental impacts of slavery especially in the Harlem n Renaissance period was a predominant theme in most of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poems.

The Renaissance period witnessed the growth of Negro music directly and naturally. The emotional component of the music was colored by the advancement of an American Negro culture. It illustrated the culture's strength and energy. Therefore, if a Negro writer wanted to illuminate his cultural tradition, he/she should have done so by utilizing the whole gamut of the American experience from the perspective of the emotional impact the Black community experienced during the age of slavery. During the Harlem Renaissance, the Negro workers also experienced adverse physical impacts, which were propelled by the harsh conditions of their lives, low wages, poor working conditions, lack of medical covers in case they fell ill and brutality by the White employers. This element of hardship has been mentioned by some of Negro writers who disregarded in the strongest terms the lynching against the Negro workers. They also fought or the unionism and helped in the struggle to free Herndon and the Scottsboro Boys. This can best explain why most of the Negro writers focused on physical effects in their readings and how it has been inadequate since they did not focus on the emotional impact that the deprived African Americans communities faced. They wanted to champion for unionization that would ensure the Black workers are fairly represented at the factories they worked at.

The majority of the discourse during the Harlem Renaissance focused on seeking recognition or Black artists, on re-assessing negative projections of them, and on documenting their accomplishments. This case is exemplified at the "The Slave Singing at Midnight" poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. In the first line, "Loud he sang the psalm of David," the author demonstrates that the music of slaves was Christian. He repeats these Old Testament motifs in the poem, associating the African slaves to the Israelites escaping Egypt. By illustrating the Black slave in a European Christian context, the author was informing the readers to not only perceive slaves as melancholic and noble but also to resonate with their music within a European context. At the climax of the poem, Longfellow refers to the abolitionist cause, posing the question generally repeated in abolitionist music.

The Harlem Renaissance is generally described as a decade long linear activity of the Black community in 1920s New York, which climaxed with the introduction of the Great Depression. This period was a product of overlapping social and intellectual circles through writers who were integrated with a common desire to fight racial profiling, physical and emotional torture that was being perpetrated by the Whites. This era also saw the evolution of Jazz music with the lyrics focused on rallying for the recognition of the human rights of the African Americans who were being lynched, racially profiled, women sexually oppressed, and young children being forced to work in factories with little or no wages. However, due to the difficult situations back then, it was hard for Black writers to print their books due to their supposedly poor English grammar and their deprived social status. Nevertheless, considering the fresh boldness African Americans had gained from the Great Migration, and their involvement in World War 1, the white American community could no longer afford to overlook black voices. Finally, the key presumptions that established the Harlem Renaissance writers' comprehending, and outlook of the American racial atmosphere originated from their experiences in the perplexing context of the Jazz Age. From that perspective, most of their readings focus their themes on the psychological and emotional effects of slaves to illustrate that the American society was headed towards racial reforms after there was a growing interest of White Americans particularly on the younger generation of authors in the African American life, and culture.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the paper has assessed how different slave narratives depicted the humanity of slaves, by explaining why Negro's writers focus on solely on the physical effects have been inadequate. For example, During the Harlem Renaissance, the Negro workers also experienced adverse physical impacts, which were propelled by the harsh conditions of their lives, low wages, poor working conditions, and lynching of workers. Negro writers focused on physical effects in their readings, and struggle to free Herndon and the Scottsboro Boys, and forgot to push the idea for equality in civic human rights for African Americans living in the US.

Bibliography

Burrowes, Akinlana. "Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome A Literature Review on African American Community Healing and Expressive Arts Therapy." (2019). https://digitalcommons.lesley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1191&context=expressive_theses

Norris, Fran H. "Epidemiology of trauma: frequency and impact of different potentially traumatic events on different demographic groups." Journal of consulting and clinical psychology 60, no. 3 (1992): 409. https://psycnet.apa.org/buy/1992-31484-001

Mitchell, Angelyn, ed. Within the circle: an anthology of African American literary criticism from the Harlem Renaissance to the present. Duke University Press, 1994.

Tupper, Lil. "Abolition, Music, and the Imagined Slave." Student Blogs, and Library Exhibit Companion. (2018).

Roshnavand, Farshid Nowrouzi. "Demystification of the Harlem renaissance: A critical analysis of the primitivist representational strategy of the movement." SARJANA 28, no. 1 (2014).