“Poetry, like jazz, is one of those dazzling diamonds of the creative industry that helps human beings make sense of the comedies and tragedies that contextualize our lives. » This was said by Aberjhani in the book Journey Through the Power of the Rainbow: Quote from a Life of Poetry. Poetry during the Harlem Renaissance was African Americans' way of making sense of everything, good or bad, that "contextualized" their lives. The Harlem Renaissance, also known as the Black Renaissance or New Negro Movement, was a cultural movement among African Americans. It began shortly after the end of World War I, in 1918. Black people were considered second-class citizens and treated as such. Frustrated, African Americans moved north to escape Jim Crow laws and for more opportunities. This was called the Great Migration. They migrated to East St. Louis, Illinois, South Chicago, and Washington, D.C., but another place they migrated to and the main place they focused on in the renaissance was Harlem. The Harlem Renaissance created two goals. “The first was that black authors were trying to highlight the injustices of racism in American life. The second was to promote a more unified and positive culture among African Americans" (Charles Scribner's Sons). The Harlem Renaissance is a period. That's when I began to appreciate the Harlem Renaissance , a time when African Americans rose to prominence in For the first time, they were taken seriously as artists, musicians, writers, athletes, and political thinkers” (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Afro Writers (Americans at that time were capturing the beauty of black life). People began to write the way they wanted, rather than the way white people wanted..