Audio Transcript Auto-generated
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Hi there,
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my name is Carrie Ann Kamiyama and this is my avionics and
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my presentations on the Harlem renaissance
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introducing african american culture and creativity.
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So the Harlem renaissance was a cultural
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and intellectual revival of African american culture,
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including music, dance, art, fashion, poetry, literature and many, many more.
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The movement started in 1918,
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right after World War I and it ended in the mid-1930s
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during the Great Depression and this time allowed for African Americans to
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feel that they could express themselves fully and gave them the confidence
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and inspiration to feel like they could be their own people.
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And many extremely famous writers and poets and musicians came from this movement,
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many who are still very well known today.
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So the main thing that started this movement was actually the great migration.
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Um this was the main start of the Harlem renaissance as hundreds of thousands
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of african americans began to relocate themselves from the south to the north,
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many of whom went to Harlem new york in Manhattan.
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The actual migration lasted until 1970 but without the migration,
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starting in 1960 the Harlem renaissance most likely would not have taken place
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because most african americans would most likely still be living in the south.
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In fact, before the migration, 90% of African americans were living in the south.
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Um and because of this migration um it allowed for many cultural
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changes and it prepared african americans for the changes that they were
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ready to face.
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So
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one of the main pieces of art that were um very, very big During this time was poetry,
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Poetry was one of also one of the most valued forms of literature at this time.
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Many poems were accompanied by music and were spoken and broken word.
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A lot of them include repetition as well,
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poetry aloud for certain emotion and it
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and beauty that normal literature could not create.
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Many poems would use metaphors to talk about the experiences that
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they went through um being an african american during the Jim
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Crow period and they also talked about what they hope to
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achieve in the future and what they wanted for their Children.
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They also used many pieces of imagery, some that were quite graphic.
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Um and this allowed for african americans to use their emotion to
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create art and also um allowing emotion to spread to others.
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Um One of the, one of a very, very important piece
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that came from this time period was also music
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and this included um jazz music and the blues.
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Um But most importantly, jazz, so similar to african american poems,
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African american music allowed for musicians and
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listeners to express a certain motion.
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One of the most famous styles like I said was
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jazz and incorporated african american music through the years,
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such as the blues spirituals, slave work songs and ragtime.
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Um Jazz allowed for people to either dance like there was no tomorrow
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or listen with the melancholy heart had many different emotions attached to it
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and many parts of jazz were also improvised as well,
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which allowed for these musicians to use their imagination.
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Um This also meant that two performances would never be the same and that
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um african americans were allowed to show
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their diversity and creativity through these.
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Here's another picture showing more of like what
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a band would actually look like and that um
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they were they would always have fun. It was a very fun style of music.
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One of the most popular improvisations was scat,
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which no one did better than Ella Fitzgerald.
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Ella Fitzgerald um
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would uh
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um so Ella Fitzgerald would use scat and many of her performances and
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many of her recorded songs which could actually still be listening to today.
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Scott was singing with syllables rather than words.
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Um They were variations on their variations of the scale.
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Um And they would also use riffs and arpeggio fragments.
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It would put character into musical performances and would
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allow for ultimate creativity and performances as well.
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Again, because every performance was different,
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it would allow
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um it would also allow for human for humor because of its nonsense words.
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And some musicians would actually incorporate scat
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and words together to incorporate nonsense phrases,
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which again would just make no sense, which would um make the audience laugh.
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Um One of the most influential and famous
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jazz artists was of course louis Armstrong.
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Um Not too well known for scat, but definitely one of the most iconic.
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Um and he was most known for his trumpeting skills and his vocals.
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He had a major impact on the jazz, on jazz music and inspired many others,
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even Langston Hughes who was a writer.
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Um
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and even after his death his legacy carried on and many,
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many artists were inspired by him and were influenced by him,
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like many other african americans during that time.
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Um Louis Armstrong did have a harder childhood and face discrimination,
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but he was able to fight through it and use music to help him get away through that.
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Um And also he was labeled the world's greatest trumpet player.
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So literature during this time was um connected through poetry as well,
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but they were definitely two different separate things.
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Um
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literature and short stories became very popular and
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while they weren't as lyrical as poems,
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short stories were definitely able to dig into the struggles that african
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americans faced and it was able to paint a clear picture.
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Um they still implemented imagery and metaphors
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and invoked again many um emotions,
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but they also gave hope to the readers.
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Um Like I mentioned earlier,
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Langston Hughes was a writer and he wasn't afraid
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to talk about his own experiences in his writing,
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which some are some
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writers did not do this, they just wrote about others.
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Um Well he was a poet and um
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well he was a poet,
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he was a fantastic writer who influenced many people through his
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works and he was actually a man of many talents.
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Um he was a playwright, he was a poet, a writer,
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a columnist and um he was even more things.
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Um and like I said,
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he did incorporate jazz into his writings and
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um he felt very inspired by louis Armstrong,
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which I thought was really interesting,
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but in his writings he really talked about how he
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wanted african americans to stay in touch with their roots.
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One of my personal favorite writers during this time is Zora Neale hurston.
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Um she was known for her willingness and likability and
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she incorporated all of her witness into her writings.
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She um
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again had a very poor childhood and she faced both racism and sexism,
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which she really wanted again to incorporate into her writings
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to show people that they weren't alone through this.
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She definitely had a more feminist tone in her work.
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Um many men did not like her through it,
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but she was a fiction writer and that was what she was mostly known
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for and she wrote about current issues occurring rather than older long term ones.
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One of her short stories was called Sweat, which brings up abuse and marriage is um
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abuse and marriages and how women are victims in it,
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which is sometimes hard for men to hear,
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especially during that time because sexism was still so prominent.
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So in her short story sweat.
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Um she made Delia the main character um almost like an opposite gender role.
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Um Delia had a job rather than her husband. Um
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she also made Delia much smarter than her husband as her husband
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did um accidentally get himself bitten by a snake while trying to murder Delia.
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And um
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I think it's just funny I I really like how
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she switched the gender roles and that not necessarily um
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the way like with the housekeeper work but she made Delia
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much much smarter and of course men didn't necessarily like that,
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but hurston note knew that that wouldn't happen,
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but she published it anyways because she believed in the cause,
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which is another thing that I loved about her.
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Okay
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okay
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another thing during this time was the fashion
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um african americans definitely changed their fashion sense.
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Um
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So uh and they wanted to express themselves through their fashion.
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Many women wanted to steer away from traditional clothing
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um and they wanted to wear something more fun.
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So they would usually wear short skirts,
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they would wear feathered boa was pearl necklaces.
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Some um they would usually wear tighter clothing and
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they would also use cigarette holders for an accessory.
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Now the men would actually wear something called zoot suits.
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And um
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they were very loose clothing with high waisted trousers and long
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trench coats as you can see in the picture and some
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of them would also wear animal prints which would represent the
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power of the african animal which indicated the african americans power.
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Um These clothing styles allowed for them to express
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themselves and brought them in a new direction.
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It also allowed them to express their creativity as
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accessories were much more popular at this time.
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Yeah,
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So of course, um this time did take place during the Jim Crow Era,
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which means that there was lots and lots of racism to be combated.
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However,
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instead of combating it with protests and riots
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like the civil rights movement in the 1960s,
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they combated it through art.
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Um the racism that these people experienced encouraged them to write poems and
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sing songs and dance and encouraged them to be their best selves.
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Um
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they work together to combat it through the arts.
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And while it was still an incredibly hard time for them,
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they were able to create beauty through pain.
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Yeah.
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And
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so this movement inspired and influenced future
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generations of african american artists and intellectuals.
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It allowed for african americans to accept who they
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are and it created a new identity for them.
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It instilled a new spirit of pride and self-determination,
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encouraging African Americans in the 1960s to begin to fight
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for their rights during up the civil rights movement.
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Yeah,
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the Harlem renaissance helped start the change that
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allowed african americans to gain their full rights
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as americans and allow them to feel strongly
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about their culture and about their selves.
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Thank you so much