Black History Month Interview

Dr. Gondola speaks about Harlem renaissance

On Wednesday, February 18, Fulbright professor Didier Gondola gave an interview to private TV station Digital Congo on the Harlem Renaissance.  This interview was a part of a monthly series on Black History Month. Harlem Renaissance is a cultural movement within the African-American community which encompasses diverse fields such as photography, music, literacy, poetry and painting. Between the two world wars, African-American migrated from the south to the northern urban metropolises because of racial discrimination, poverty and the cotton crisis. Most of them moved to Harlem in New York City owing to affordable housing opportunities and "White flight." The Harlem Renaissance was a turning point in the African American experience, as it allowed Blacks to recover and to reconstruct a new African-American identity outside of slavery's legacy and Jim Crow laws. In his interview, Doctor Gondola explained some important figures of the Harlem renaissance such as Marcus Garvey, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and Alain Locke, the author of The New Negro, one of the most important works of that era. He also discussed the impact of the Harlem Renaissance on the Négritude movement promoted in Paris by Léopold Sedar Senghor and Aimé Césaire. He argued that history and culture are the keys to unlock economic opportunities and political consciousness in Congo, as it did for African Americans in the 1920s and 1930s.