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HARLEM RENAISSANCE
The Harlem Renaissance happened after the World War I, after then black community
helped America to win the war. With slavery put to an end a century back, the people were
being educated and exposed to various opportunities and education that helped them become
professionals. Even the back women were not left behind and in this environment, poetry,
literature and culture bloomed, a lot like the European Renaissance and thus it was called the
Harlem Renaissance (Huggins). In this paper, the main concepts of the article will be
explored to reveal if their works were conscious of race and freedom.
“Black men are most men; but the white are free!” This is line from ‘White Things’
by Anne Bethel Spencer. She talks about the atrocities of the white on the black. It is evident
that she is aware of her past and she expresses her pain and disdain for her ancestors. This
race consciousness is also evident in the poem ‘To a Dark Girl’ by Gwendolyn Bennett. In
this poem she talks about how beautiful black women were in the form of a letter. Beauty
standards have always been appreciative of white women and their features which made
people deem brown women as ugly. She called them “forgotten queens” and wants them to
forget that they were ever slaves and embrace themselves. This approach is also evident in
‘Letter to my Sister’ by Anne Spencer as she addresses the fact that women live in fear under
the boughs of patriarchy. She believes that her sister will be safe only if she agrees to what
the men say. Both poets are very aware of their race being the reason they are suppressed.
Alice Dunbar nelson in her poem ‘The Proletariat Speaks’ is yet another poems that rips apart
the ideals of whitewashing beauty and denies colored women the compliment of beauty. She
interrogates both the aesthetics and ideologies deemed beautiful by the society and notes, “I
Love Beautiful Things” (Hull). This hope to emancipate women of her kind from these unreal

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Harlem Renaissance: Consciousness of Race and Freedom in Poetry

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