FROM HARLEM THROUGH NÉGRITUDE TO BLACK IS BEAUTIFUL

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to examine the specific process of transfer and transition of ideas, thoughts, and actions on Pan-African cultural, social, and economic liberation by looking into the connection and influence between the different movements of the Harlem Renaissance, the Négritude, and the Black is beautiful movement. The movements are rooted in the African awakening and the African diaspora’s engagement with the Pan-African ideas of liberation of Africa, dismantling of white supremacy, and the economic and social empowerment of Black people. This is a vast and complex process of intellectual and cultural exchange that spreads beyond one continent and consecutively and simultaneously across Africa, Europe, and America. By drawing on cultural transfer theory and the theory of entangled history, we will see how the impulses of the cultural and social movements on the advancement of Africans and African heritage show a steady personal and collective transformation and progress. It showed that the movement to raise awareness of one’s racial identity, uniqueness, and beauty is fluid and fluent. Тhe birth of an idea can lead to a chain of spontaneous cultural formations across time and space, leaving artifacts as testimonies.