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ChicRenPowerpointTheChicagoRenaissance2.pptThe Chicago Renaissance: turn of 20th c.-1960s(ish)
“a gathering of writers, a flowering of institutions that supported and guided them, and the outpouring of writing they produced”
http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/257.html
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Chicago in the 1890s—Setting the Stage for the Renaissance
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Historical significance of the World's Columbian Exposition
The second half of the 19th century was an age of fairs and expositions held in London, Paris, and other great cities throughout the world. The World's Columbian Exposition, held in Chicago in 1893, was the first critically and economically successful U.S. world's fair. Conceived as a celebration of the 400th anniversary of Columbus' landing in the new world, the Exposition held a near-mythological appeal for people of the time.
The Columbian Exposition showcased a city just 60 years old, a city magnificently reborn just 22 years after the Chicago Fire. It also placed before the world the genius of Chicago architects Daniel Burnham, Frederick Law Olmsted, and Louis Sullivan. In effect, the Columbian Exposition was Chicago's debut on a world stage as a locus of great architecture and burgeoning economic power.
http://columbus.gl.iit.edu/index.html
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"The exterior of the gigantic bubble of glass and iron that rises over the central pavilion of Horticultural Hall has already been shown in these plates, and here we are admitted into the luxurious tropical garden that flourishes in the interior. Here in a great space of light and air may be seen a miniature mountain covered with strange foliage and with a little stream dashing down its sides, great tubs of palms and tree ferns, bamboos, century plants, "elk horns," a miniature Japanese garden, bridges and all, and shady, inviting nooks, in which the tourisht may find picturesque rest - much as the painter has here shown." Art & Architecture (the White City Edition)
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The Chicago Defender, 1905
The Chicago Defender, which was founded by Robert S. Abbott on May 5, 1905, once heralded itself as "The World's Greatest Weekly." The newspaper was the nation's most influential black weekly newspaper by the advent of World War I, with more than two thirds of its readership base located outside of Chicago.
As a northern paper, The Defender had more freedom to denounce issues outright, and its editorial position was very militant, attacking racial inequities head-on. The Defender did not use the words "Negro" or "black" in its pages. Instead, African Americans were referred to as "the Race" and black men and women as "Race men and Race women.“
During World War I The Chicago Defender waged its most aggressive (and successful) campaign in support of "The Great Migration" movement. This movement resulted in over one and a half million southern blacks migrating to the North between 1915-1925.
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Richard Wright, born 1908
Native Son, 1940
Black Boy, 1945
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Harriet Monroe and Poetry, 1912
The word "Imagiste" appeared for the first time in the U.S. in January 1913 with the publication of poems by H.D. in Harriet Monroe's Poetry. "Most important of all," claimed Monroe, as she sought in 1917 to define the single component that encapsulated the newness of this modernist verse,"these poets have bowed to winds from the East."
Ezra Pound
Amy Lowell
Katherine Ann Porter
Wallace Stevens
Eugene O’Neill
William Carlos Williams
e.e. cummings
Gertrude Stein
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Gwendolyn Brooks , born 1917
First work of poetry published in the Defender, 1934
A Street in Bronzeville, 1945; Annie Allen, 1949—Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; Maud Martha, 1953; The Bean Eaters, 1960
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The Savoy Ballroom, 4733 South Parkway (now Martin Luther King Drive), opened in November 1927. Throughout its existence, the ballroom served the predominately African-American neighborhoods between 23rd and 63rd Streets and helped anchor the 47th and South Parkway bright-light district, or what was sometimes referred to as the "Harlem of Chicago." The Savoy secured its reputation as one of the city's top night spots by showcasing the nation's hottest jazz bands in a refined setting that appealed to upwardly mobile black Chicagoans.
http://chicago.urban-history.org/sites/ballroom/savoy.htm
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The Great Depression: October 29th, 1929—Black Tuesday
Dorothea Lange’s “Migrant Mother” depicts destitute pea pickers in California. The picture features 32 year-old Florence Owen Thompson and three of her seven children.
--Nipomo, CA: March 1936.
This picture is also called “Dustbowl Madonna”
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Lorraine Hansberry Lorraine Hansberry born, 1930
A Raisin in the Sun first produced on Broadway, 1959
Film adaptations—1961/Sidney Poitier; 1989/Danny Glover; 2008/Sean Combs
Musical adaptation—1973; Tony Award for Best Musical in 1974
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Assassination of John F. Kennedy: November 22th, 1963
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“The cruel disease of discrimination knows no sectional or state boundaries. The continuing attack on this problem must be equally broad. It must be both private and public -- it must be conducted at national, state and local levels -- and it must include both legislative and executive action.
[…] In addition, it is my hope that this message will lend encouragement to those state and local governments -- and to private organizations, corporations and individuals -- who share my concern over the gap between our precepts and our practices. This is an effort in which every individual who asks what he can do for his country should be able and willing to take part. It is important, for example, for private citizens and local governments to support the State Department's effort to end the discriminatory treatment suffered by too many foreign diplomats, students and visitors to this country. But it is not enough to treat those from other lands with equality and dignity -- the same treatment must be afforded to every American citizen.”
-JFK, Feb. 28, 1963: Letter to Congress
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President Lyndon B. Johnson signs Voting Rights Act of 1965
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