MS01.01.03.B02.F05.031

5.
black colonies from the west, were established in the countries of Liberia
and Sierre Leone. Earlier on, the mindset for the "Back
to Africa Movement" had been undertaken on
a limited basis by some black religious leaders
who insisted on changing the names of
black church denominations so as to include
Africa in the definition of Methodism,
in Baptist and fundamentalist church
polity. Black Benevolent protective insurance
and burial societies were organized so as
to reflect common and extended family concepts
peculiar to African lifestyles. These things
were among the external efforts easily
recognizable that served to boost the
cultural climate in Harlem
and inform us of how the Negro Renaissance attempted to embraced
the whole person in order to arrive at
a state of cultural sophis-
tication. The Renaissance encouraged an
active role in politics, education and
above all, the good life. The good life came to Harlem in
the evenings by way of select night-
life spots where entertainment and fun
went hand in hand in the joyous ex-
pressions of the audio and motive arts.
Poets Langston Hughes, Claude McKay,
Countee Cullen and novelist
James Weldon Johnson and Zora Neal Hurston,
to mention only a few, joined the ranks
of pacesetters W.E.B. DuBois, Alain
Locke and Charles S. Johnson in promoting
the special spirit of a movement which
attracted the attention of Manhattan's white
artistic world and thereby encouraged
a form of patronage in the arts unknown to
blacks prior to this period. The