... A few of the notable writers and poets were Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, and Zora Neale Hurston. Langston Hughes was the most popular and gifted of all poets during this movement. Many of his poems described the different everyday lives of working class African Americans by adapting the rhythms of their music to his poetry. Some of the poems moved to the tempo of jazz and the blues. Another major figure was poet Claude McKay, a Jamaican immigrant whose militant verses urged African Americans to resist prejudice and discrimination. His poems also expressed the pain of life in the black ghettos of the 1920's, and the strain of being black in a world dominated by whites.
The most accomplished writer of the Harlem Renaissance was Zora Neale Hurston. Hurston's many novels, books of folklore, poems, and short stories portrayed the lives of poor, unschooled Southern blacks, whom, in her words, were the greatest cultural wealth of the continent. Much of her work celebrated, what she called, the common person's art form, or, the simple folkways and values of people who had survived slavery with ingenuity and strength. Her finest novel, "Their Eyes Were Watching God," told the story of a strong woman's battle to assert herself and win personal freedom.
Most importantly, the Harlem Renaissance was a literary movement led by well educated African Americans. The rise of black intellectuals contributed to the particular style and unique expressions that came out of this movement.Caught up in a rebellious spirit of the 1920's, these young writers, poets, and artists expressed their African American heritage and folklore. They often wrote, with defiance, about the trials of the black person living in a white world. ...
