What Impact did the Harlem Renaissance have on African Americans? What is the significance of this period?
The impact was immense; it is immeasurable because it is too big to be measured. The impact was international, too, so people of African descent on the other side of the Atlantic as well as in North America and in the Caribbean felt the significance of the achievements that we today call the Harlem Renaissance. The significance of the Harlem Renaissance was that the people of African descent understood that their histories and their cultural forms had distinctive aesthetics, philosophical bases, and perhaps most important mass appeal to people of all stripes. With the Harlem Renaissance, African and African-related identities became Modern AND highly desirable. In America, both African American folk culture and African American urban culture became “properties” that ALL American people took pride in, whether or not they would admit it at first. African Americans came to value the African part of their heritage as much as the American part, thanks to the Harlem Renaissance. And their ex
