How It All Began

Harlem, New York, is known as the birth of the Harlem Renaissance. Between the streets of 135th and Fifth Ave, a new race was born. Many historians believe that it began in the year 1920 and lasted into the 1930’s. This was the time of the stock market crash which lead into the famous Great Depression. As the white middle to upper middle class moved out into the suburbs, African Americans were moving up north during the Great Migration to cities like New York. Harlem neighborhoods became filled with African American families yearning for a new beginning. They brought with them culture, music, art, religion, literature and a dream to start a new, and better life. The support system they created in Harlem, and other communities, was the holding blocks keeping them together. African Americans for the first time in America were able to search for their true identities as a free citizen.

http://www.biography.com/blackhistory/harlem-renaissance.jsp