The African-Americans also profited from a spirit of self-determination. The Harlem Renaissance encouraged the appreciation of culture and folk roots (Reuben 1" . .
Despite the fact that the Renaissance wasn't a school, nor did the writers associated with it share a common purpose, even so they had a common bond: they dealt with black life from a black perspective. Common themes of the Harlem Renaissance included "twoness" first introduced by W.E.B. Du Bois. "Twoness" is a divided consciousness of ones identity, and reconciliation of the divided American Negro. Also commonly seen is the alienation from the white race, the use of folk material or oral tradition, and the problems with writing for a white audience (Reuben 2). .
The Harlem Renaissance wasn't just a literary movement: it included racial consciousness, "the back to Africa" movement led by Marcus Garvey, racial integration, the explosion of music particularly jazz, spirituals and blues, painting, dramatic revues, and others (Reuben 2).
There are many key authors who made a name for themselves during this movement. These include, but are not limited to, Countee Cullen, W.E.B. Du Bois, Jessie Fauset, Rudolph Fisher, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Nella Larsen, Alain Locke, Claude McKay, Wallace Thurman, Jean Toomer, Carl Van Vechten, and Walter White. W.E.B. Du Bois, in his book The Souls of Black Folk, rejected famed black educator Booker T. Washington's strategies of accommodation and compromise with whites in politics and education, because he perceived this kind of strategy as a denial of black citizenship rights. Countee Cullen was conservative writer: he did not ignore racial themes, but based his works on the models of 19th-century Romantic poets, especially Keats, and often used the traditional sonnet form. After the 1930's, Cullen avoided racial themes all together ("Harlem" 1).
In the early 1920s several works signaled the new creative energy in African American literature.
