Zachary Sharp

Professor Nicholas Young

Literature 221

02 December 2012

The Leader of the Harlem Renaissance: Langston Hughes

Although the 1920's were filled with bootleggers selling liquor, girl flappers bobbing, gangsters killing people, there was an escape route for African Americans in the country following World War I. Their escape was found in a form of art and better known as jazz. Since jazz is an original American art form, its unique musical elements are most accurately described in terms of its historical-sociological development which played an important role during the Harlem Renaissance.

The Jazz Age was a period of time in American history following WWI where a special kind of "new" music called jazz seized the essence of the period so well that it became cultural factor...