only constant in all the literature was creativity.Perhaps the greatest legacy from the writers of the Harlem Renaissance is the lasting literature itself. The Harlem Renaissance created literary works that defined a whole culture and time period. Literature of the period invoked feeling, thought, and creativity. Authors such as Claude McKay, Countee Cullen, Jessie Fauset, Zora Neale Hurston, Arna Bontemps, Langston Hughes, Alain Locke, W.E.B. Du Bois, and James Weldon Johnson are still discussed in literary circles, sold at bookstores, and enjoyed by readers everywhere.Beyond literature, the works of the Harlem Renaissance also had many cultural implications. Most of the cultural ramifications took place within the African American community. One immediate way the Harlem Renaissance affected black culture was by encouraging blacks in other art forms. Blacks soon became very popular in the field of visual arts. Aaron Douglas and William H. Johnson were two of the many black painters to benefit from the Harlem Renaissance. Black music also began to flourish, and jazz became a sensation under black talents such as Duke Ellington, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, and Ma Rainey. James Van Der Zee represented blacks in the photography profession. As a result of this increasing exposure to black culture and art, the distance between black and white culture began to diminish. Even after the Harlem Renaissance was over, the movement inspired the emergence of black writers in America. Many of the themes and literary styles of Harlem Renaissance writers have been continued in today’s African American literature. Through the works of the Renaissance, “the foundation was laid for Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Gwendolyn Brooks, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, Terry McMillan, Rita Dove, and thousands of other African American writers, painters, composers, and singers” (Harlem Renaissance 2). Prior to th...
