The Effects of the Harlem Renaissance to the Life of the Afro-Americans Essay Example for Free

The Effects of the Harlem Renaissance to the Life of the Afro-Americans Essay History tells us that the Blacks were initially known nothing but slaves in the United States. They have been introduced in the United States as slaves in the tobacco plantations and since then they have always been treated as inferior and subordinate to the White folks. â€Å"As dark-skinned people, African-Americans have identified themselves and been identified by others as different from first-class citizens. Their color stands for poverty and poverty’s stigma (Andersen 4). † There has been great effort for a few of them to resist this oppression among the Whites but they did not in any way succeed. They have become a subject of tortures, lynchings, and abuses. Their ways were seen as backward and not modern. The American Civil war was said to have ended slavery but never the oppression that goes along with it. After the abolition of slavery by the former President Braham Lincoln, the Blacks were no longer employed as slaves, laundrywomen, workers, and tenants to the White folks but they remained to be discriminated. They were not acknowledged as human beings. They were loathed. They were seen as different and not worthy of respect. As a consequence, they hated their color, their culture, and their origin. They were insecure of themselves. And while they weren’t able to gain respect from others, even more disheartening, is they did not gain respect for themselves (Andersen 285). These dire situations of the Black changed during the Harlem Renaissance and forward. While there are many black people who were lynched in the South and most African Americans were not allowed to exercise their right to vote as citizens of the United States, â€Å"the leaders of the Harlem Renaissance questioned the value of democracy for their people (Painter 193). † They encouraged the wealthy and the educated Whites to work with then in converting the racist ideologies of most of the White masses. They worked with their white allies and discovered a lot more talented African-American writers. They shepherded their works of literature to printing. For the first time in the history of the Blacks, major publishers agreed to bring out their works. The main objective as Jessie Fauset saw it was to â€Å"find our own beautiful and praise-worthy, an intense chauvinism that is content with its own types (Painter 194). † As established in the preceding paragraphs, the Harlem Renaissance drew out from the Negros all the necessary racial pride and connection among themselves in order to gain self-identity and eventually emancipation (Painter 189). What Hurtson has to do with it and all other Black American writers is the responsibility of providing a path for the advancement of racial consciousness through literature and the other arts. They publicize and romaticize the Black experience as unique in itself and something that is worthy of attention and appreciation. They have inculcated among the African-Americans the vitality of knowing themselves apart from what the Whites imposed upon them by looking back and deep into their cultures and origins. Through these efforts and endeavours by Hurtson and many other writers, they were able to weaken the demeaning stereotype that surrounded the Black ego since time immemorial and has made them realized their place in America as an independent and free group of people. Works Cited Andersen, Margaret and Taylor, Howard Francis. Sociology: Understanding a Diverse Society. Connecticut: Thomson Wardsworth, 2006. Campbell, Josie P. Student Companion to Zora Neale Hurtson. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001