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How did Harlem Renaissance writers influence the Negritude movement in France?

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Phillis Wheatley's first book of poetry — African American literature Frontispiece and title page of *Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral* (1773) by Phillis Wheatley, the first Black woman to become a poet of note in the United States. The portrait on which the frontispiece's engraving is based is often attributed to Scipio Moorhead, an Black artist and writer who, like Wheatley, was enslaved and living in Boston.

The Harlem Renaissance served as a vital inspiration for the Negritude movement, which emerged among French-speaking Black intellectuals in Paris during the 1930s.12

Harlem Renaissance writers, particularly Claude McKay and Langston Hughes, influenced these leaders through their literature and personal presence in France. McKay’s novel Banjo, which portrayed Black life without inhibition or prejudice, deeply affected Léopold Sédar Senghor, who later called McKay the true inventor of the values of Negritude. Additionally, works by McKay and Hughes were published in the Revue du Monde Noir, a journal read by the movement's founders, including Aimé Césaire.12

By asserting Black pride and rejecting the constraints of European assimilation, Harlem Renaissance authors provided a model for Negritude writers to critically examine Western values and celebrate African cultural heritage. This cross-cultural exchange helped establish the authority of Black writers to define their own experiences and dignity on an international stage.12