WSC President’s Council Multicultural Center To Host Harlem Renaissance Event Monday

WAYNE – The public is invited to the Wayne State campus for a presentation of “The Harlem Renaissance and the Invention of Modern Black Culture in the 1920s” Monday afternoon.

According to a release from WSC, the President’s Council on Diversity and the Multicultural Center will host the event from 3:30 until 4:30 p.m. on February 17. Plan on meeting in Connell Hall room 131 as there is no admission charge.

The Harlem Renaissance was a period of extraordinary artistic creativity in the black community. From music to philosophy and from literature to painting, the movement witnessed outstanding examples of talent showcasing black culture.

The event was first celebrated during a week in February 1926 that encompassed birthdays of both Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. The response was overwhelming.

The celebration was expanded to a month in 1976, the nation’s bicentennial. President Gerald R. Ford urged Americans to “seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history.”

Fifty years after the first celebration, the association unveiled the first African American History Month. By this time, the entire nation recognized the importance of black history in the drama of the American story. Since then each American president has issued African American History Month proclamations. And the association—now the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH)—continues to promote the study of black history all year.

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