Harlem Renaissance Brochure Research

Freshman2013 Social Awareness

This project taught me a lot about the Harlem Renaissance. The main thing that I learned about it is that it was the rebirth of the African American community. This community had been repressed for years, and this movement was a way for them to return to their roots and use their heritage to create art in the form of jazz and blues music, literature like books, essays, and poetry, and art. All of these went against the normal portrayal of African Americans, showing their pride for their race and their heritage. For example, a painting would show everyday life for these people rather than the racist caricatures that usually depict them. The part of my research that was most interesting to me was looking at these paintings. Primary sources like these paintings or poems are often the most reliable and the most accurate. Also, they show me what was really going through the minds of the authors and painters and other expressionists involved with the Harlem Renaissance. This entire movement can be told over and over again by historians, but it is most clearly shown through those who were a part of it. The mixture of civil rights agenda and other expression makes these artworks very interesting to me. The Harlem Renaissance brochure, poetry reading, and reflection required hours of research. We spent four days in class using sources that our teacher gave us to look up information on the music, artwork, and poetry of the Harlem Renaissance. I found my poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar, my poem, The Sand-Man, and several of the facts used throughout my brochure using these sources, but it required a little bit more digging. On my own time, the next weekend, I continued to search the web using the researching experience I gained on other projects like the Student Initiated Assignment in US History, as well as the PowerPoints shown to me by Dr. Simel and Mr. Grossman on the topic of good research. I found all of my information, and cited my sources using Noodletools, which was shown to me by our school librarian. For this project I used MLA citation, including all of the sources specified by my teachers and those mentioned specifically on Noodletools itself. This project also heightened my personal social awareness, because it gave me an idea of the various events in our nations history that led to it being like it is today. The Harlem Renaissance period is one of the things that allows me to sit in a class and have African-American friends, or be taught by an African-American teacher. It also shows me some of the other cultures and their ways of expression, giving me a larger world view. Looking at these works of art and poets, and learning about the people who created them, is very different from the experience of going into the National Gallery of Art or a similar museum, because many of these people are unsung heroes who I would not have learned about had it not been for this project. They are from a different social class and a different culture, one that I am not exposed to outside of English class and specifically this project, which is what made it invaluable to me.

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