History of African American Literature. The Harlem Renaissance.docx

History of African American Literature. The Harlem Renaissance

Post-slavery, African-American authors wrote about the conditions of African Americans in the

United States. African-American newspapers were popular venues for essays, poetry, fiction, and

journalism. Authors like W.E.B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey, and others

were known for their literary contribution during this time period. However, in the South, the

former slaves’ dreams of writing about their experiences as slaves using literature as an art form

was stifled by “Jim Crow Laws” which were meant to keep African Americans separate from

white Southerners. Hate groups, like the Ku Klux Klan, struck fear and terror in the lives of

African Americans through cross burnings, lynchings, and other intimidation methods to

suppress and terrorize the newly freed slaves.

The North and Midwest drew many African Americans out of the South with promises of

industrial jobs and a more racially tolerant environment. According to the article by the

Smithsonian, hundreds of thousands of African Americans relocated to cities like Chicago, Los

Angeles, Detroit, Philadelphia, and New York. The largest neighborhood of African Americans

became Harlem with over 175,000 African-Americans. Among the new neighborhoods of

African Americans in the North, there were feelings of a new identity as a free people, while also

remembering common experiences of slavery, bondage, racial oppression, and the hope for a

better life. While the former oppressed had hopes of a racially tolerant environment, feelings of

animosity were felt among Northerners that consisted of resentment over African Americans

taking away jobs and infiltrating the economy and neighborhoods.

The Harlem Renaissance, an intellectual, social, and artistic explosion of the 1920's, was

influenced by writers who migrated north in the Great Migration from the South and immigrants

from Jamaica and other Caribbean Islands. The Harlem Renaissance was mostly centered in

Harlem, Manhattan, and New York City. Also, with the Harlem Renaissance, came a sense of

acceptance for African-American writers into mainstream America. The Harlem Renaissance

focused on the arts, including poetry, prose, painting, sculpture, jazz, swing, opera, and dance.

Writer, Langston Hughes, called it an "expression of African Americans expressing themselves

as well as a chance to assert their civil and political rights that were stripped from them in the

South". Some notable figures of the Harlem Renaissance are Langston Hughes, W.E.B. Du Bois,

Marcus Garvey, Cyril Briggs, Walter Frances White, Josephine Baker, Paul Robeson, Aaron

Douglas, Augusta Savage, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Eubie Blake, Cab Calloway Duke

Ellington, Billie Holiday, Ivie Anderson, Fats Waller, Jelly Roll Morton, Zora Neale Hurston,

and Jean Toomer.

Harlem, the largest bustling epicenter of African Americans, became the center of the Harlem

Renaissance due to African American owned publishing houses, newspapers, music companies,

playhouses, nightclubs, and cabarets. The literature, music, and fashion in this period brought

attention to both black and white Americans, who were considered “cool” among those accepting

of the culture, and drew attention from other parts of the world. The Harlem Renaissance came to

a startling halt with the Stock Market Crash of 1929, and the subsequent Great Depression.

African American businesses and theatrical companies were forced to close for lack of financial

support.

Even though the Harlem Renaissance came to a halt, the voices of African Americans during

that time period left a lasting mark on history and encouraged future African American

generations to voice their literary expressions in various art medium. The Harlem Renaissance

was also noted for its strong impact on the spirit of self-determination, pride, social

consciousness, and political activism which provided the foundation for the Civil Rights

movements of the 1950's and 1960's.

On February 28, 2014, Humanities Texas held a one-day teacher professional development

workshop in Austin focusing on the history and literature of the Harlem Renaissance. Professor

Cary D. Wintz, Distinguished Professor of History at Texas Southern University, opened the

workshop with the following lecture titled "The Harlem Renaissance: What Was It, and Why

Does It Matter?" In his remarks, Wintz addresses the origins and nature of the movement—a

task, he says, that is far more complex than it may seem.

Wintz is a specialist in the Harlem Renaissance and in African American political thought.

Wintz is an author or editor of numerous books including Harlem Speaks; Black Culture and the

Harlem Renaissance; African American Political Thought, 1890–1930; African Americans and

the Presidency: The Road to the White House; and The Harlem Renaissance in the West. He

served as an editor of the Oxford University Press five-volume Encyclopedia of African

American History, 1896 to the Present, and the Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance

(Routledge). He has also written extensively on Texas history and is an author of one of the

standard Texas history texts, Texas: The Lone Star State. He is a native Houstonian and a

graduate of Rice University and Kansas State University.

What was the Harlem Renaissance and when did it begin?

This seemingly simple question reveals the complexities of the movement we know varyingly

as the New Negro Renaissance, the New Negro Movement, the Negro Renaissance, the Jazz

Age, or the Harlem Renaissance. To answer the question it is necessary to place the movement

within time and space, and then to define its nature. This task is much more complex than it

might seem.

Traditionally the Harlem Renaissance was viewed primarily as a literary movement centered in

Harlem and growing out of the black migration and the emergence of Harlem as the premier

black metropolis in the United States. Music and theater were mentioned briefly, more as

background and local color, as providing inspiration for poetry and local color for fiction.

However, there was no analysis of the developments in these fields. Likewise, art was discussed

mostly in terms of Aaron Douglas and his association with Langston Hughes and other young

writers who produced Fire!! in 1926, but there was little or no analysis of the work of African

American artists. And there was even less discussion or analysis of the work of women in the

fields of art, music, and theater.

Fortunately, this narrow view has changed. The Harlem Renaissance is increasingly viewed

through a broader lens that recognizes it as a national movement with connections to

international developments in art and culture that places increasing emphasis on the non-literary

aspects of the movement.

Time

First, to know when the Harlem Renaissance began, we must determine its origins.

Understanding the origins depends on how we perceive the nature of the Renaissance. For those

who view the Renaissance as primarily a literary movement, the Civic Club Dinner of March 21,

1924, signaled its emergence. This event did not occur in Harlem, but was held almost one

hundred blocks south in Manhattan at the Civic Club on Twelfth Street off Fifth Avenue. Charles

S. Johnson, the young editor of Opportunity, the National Urban League's monthly magazine,

conceived the event to honor writer Jessie Fauset on the occasion of the publication of her novel,

There Is Confusion. Johnson planned a small dinner party with about twenty guests—a mix of

white publishers, editors, and literary critics, black intellectuals, and young black writers. But,

when he asked Alain Locke to preside over the event, Locke agreed only if the dinner honored

African American writers in general rather than one novelist.

So the simple celebratory dinner morphed into a transformative event with over one hundred

attendees. African Americans were represented by W. E. B. Du Bois, James Weldon Johnson,

and others of the black intelligentsia, along with Fauset and a representative group of poets and

authors. White guests predominately were publishers and critics; Carl Van Doren, editor of

Century magazine, spoke for this group calling upon the young writers in the audience to make

their contribution to the "new literary age" emerging in America.1

The Civic Club dinner significantly accelerated the literary phase of the Harlem Renaissance.

Frederick Allen, editor of Harper's, approached Countee Cullen, securing his poems for his

magazine as soon as the poet finished reading them. As the dinner ended Paul Kellogg, editor of

Survey Graphic, hung around talking to Cullen, Fauset, and several other young writers, then

offered Charles S. Johnson a unique opportunity: an entire issue of Survey Graphic devoted to

the Harlem literary movement. Under the editorship of Alain Locke the "Harlem: Mecca of the

New Negro" number of Survey Graphic hit the newsstands March 1, 1925.2K It was an overnight

sensation. Later that year Locke published a book-length version of the "Harlem" edition,

expanded and re-titled The New Negro: An Interpretation.3K In the anthology Locke laid down

his vision of the aesthetic and the parameters for the emerging Harlem Renaissance; he also

included a collection of poetry, fiction, graphic arts, and critical essays on art, literature, and

music.

For those who viewed the Harlem Renaissance in terms of musical theater and entertainment,

the birth occurred three years earlier when Shuffle Along opened at the 63rd Street Musical Hall.

Shuffle Along was a musical play written by a pair of veteran Vaudeville acts—comedians

Flournoy Miller and Aubrey Lyles, and composers/singers Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle. Most

of its cast featured unknowns, but some, like Josephine Baker and Paul Robeson, who had only

minor roles in the production, were on their way to international fame. Eubie Blake recalled the

significance of the production, when he pointed out that he and Sissle and Lyles and Miller

accomplished something that the other great African American performers—Bob Cole and J.

Rosamund Johnson, Bert Williams and George Walker—had tried, but failed to achieve. "We

did it, that's the story," he exclaimed, "We put Negroes back on Broadway!"4

Poet Langston Hughes also saw Shuffle Along as a seminal event in the emergence of the

Harlem Renaissance. It introduced him to the creative world of New York, and it helped to

redefine and energize music and nightlife in Harlem. In the process, it introduced white New

Yorkers to black music, theater, and entertainment and helped generated the white fascination

with Harlem and the African American arts that was so much a part of the Harlem Renaissance.

For the young Hughes, just arrived in the city, the long-range impact of Shuffle Along was not on

his mind. In 1921, it was all about the show, and, as he wrote in his autobiography, it was "a

honey of a show:"

Swift, bright, funny, rollicking, and gay, with a dozen danceable, singable tunes. Besides, look

who were in it: The now famous choir director, Hall Johnson, and the composer, William Grant

Still, were a part of the orchestra. Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle wrote the music and played and

acted in the show. Miller and Lyles were the comics. Florence Mills skyrocketed to fame in the

second act. Trixie Smith sang "He May Be Your Man But He Comes to See Me Sometimes."

And Caterina Jarboro, now a European prima donna, and the internationally celebrated Josephine

Baker were merely in the chorus. Everybody was in the audience—including me. People came to

see it innumerable times. It was always packed.5

Shuffle Along also brought jazz to Broadway. It combined jazz music with very creatively

choreographed jazz dance to transform musical theater into something new, exciting, and daring.

And the show was a critical and financial success. It ran 474 performances on Broadway and

spawned three touring companies. It was a hit show written, performed, and produced by blacks,

and it generated a demand for more. Within three years, nine other African American shows

appeared on Broadway, and white writers and composers rushed to produce their versions of

black musical comedies.

Music was also a prominent feature of African American culture during the Harlem

Renaissance. The term "Jazz Age" was used by many who saw African American music,

especially the blues and jazz, as the defining features of the Renaissance. However, both jazz and

the blues were imports to Harlem. They emerged out of the African American experience around

the turn of the century in southern towns and cities, like New Orleans, Memphis, and St. Louis.

From these origins these musical forms spread across the country, north to Chicago before

arriving in New York a few years before World War I.

Blues and black blues performers such as musician W. C. Handy and vocalist Ma Rainey were

popular on the Vaudeville circuit in the late nineteenth century. The publication of W. C.

Handy's "Memphis Blues" in 1912 and the first recordings a few years later brought this genre

into the mainstream of American popular culture. Jazz reportedly originated among the

musicians who played in the bars and brothels of the infamous Storyville district of New

Orleans. Jelly Roll Morton claimed to have invented jazz there in 1902, but it is doubtful that any

one person holds that honor.

According to James Weldon Johnson, jazz reached New York in 1905 at Proctor's Twenty-

Third Street Theater. Johnson described the band there as "a playing-singing-dancing orchestra,

making dominant use of banjos, mandolins, guitars, saxophones, and drums in combination, and

[it] was called the Memphis Students—a very good name, overlooking the fact that the

performers were not students and were not from Memphis. There was also a violin, a couple of

brass instruments, and a double-bass."K Seven years later, composer and band leader James Reese

Europe, one of the "Memphis Students," took his Clef Club Orchestra to Carnegie Hall. During

World War I, while serving as an officer for a machine-gun company in the famed 369th U.S.

Infantry Division, James Europe, fellow officer Noble Sissel, and the regimental band introduced

the sounds of ragtime, jazz, and the blues to European audiences.

Following the war, black music, especially the blues and jazz, became increasingly popular with

both black and white audiences. Europe continued his career as a successful bandleader until his

untimely death in 1919. Ma Rainey and other jazz artists and blues singers began to sign

recording contracts, initially with African American record companies like Black Swan Records,

but very quickly with Paramount, Columbia, and other mainstream recording outlets. In Harlem,

one club opened after another, each featuring jazz orchestras or blues singers. Noble Sissle, of

course, was one of the team behind the production of Shuffle Along, which opened Broadway up

to Chocolate Dandies and a series of other black musical comedies, featuring these new musical

styles.

The visual arts, particularly painting, prints, and sculpture, emerged somewhat later in Harlem

than did music, musical theater, and literature. One of the most notable visual artists of the

Harlem Renaissance, Aaron Douglas, arrived in Harlem from Kansas City in 1925. Later that

year his first pieces appeared in Opportunity, and ten Douglas pieces appeared as "Ten

Decorative Designs" illustrating Locke's The New Negro. Early the next year W. E. B. Du Bois

published Douglas's first illustrations in The Crisis. Due to his personal association with

Langston Hughes, Wallace Thurman, and other African American writers, his collaboration with

them in the publication of their literary magazine Fire!! and his role designing book jackets and

illustrating literary works, Douglas was the most high-profile artist clearly connected to the

Harlem Renaissance in the mid- to late-1920s. And while these connections to the literary part of

the Renaissance were notable, they were not typical of the experience of other African American

artists of this period.

More significant in launching the art phase of the Harlem Renaissance were the exhibits of

African American art in Harlem and the funding and exhibits that the Harmon Foundation

provided. The early stirrings of the African American art movement in Harlem followed a 1919

exhibit on the work of Henry Ossawa Tanner at a midtown gallery in New York, and an exhibit

of African American artists two years later at the Harlem Branch of the New York Public

Library. Even more important to the nurturing and promotion of African American art were the

activities of the Harmon Foundation. Beginning in 1926 the Foundation awarded cash prizes for

outstanding achievement by African Americans in eight fields, including fine arts. Additionally,

from 1928 through 1933, the Harmon Foundation organized an annual exhibit of African

American art.

Place

Situating the Harlem Renaissance in space is almost as complex as defining its origins and time

span. Certainly Harlem is central to the Harlem Renaissance, but it serves more as an anchor for

the movement than as its sole location. In reality, the Harlem Renaissance both drew from and

spread its influence across the United States, the Caribbean, and the world. Only a handful of the

writers, artists, musicians, and other figures of the Harlem Renaissance were native to Harlem or

New York, and only a relatively small number lived in Harlem throughout the Renaissance

period. And yet, Harlem impacted the art, music, and writing of virtually all of the participants in

the Harlem Renaissance.

Harlem refers to that part of Manhattan Island north of Central Park and generally east of Eighth

Avenue or St. Nicholas Avenue. Originally established in the seventeenth century as a Dutch

village, it evolved over time. Following its annexation by the city in 1873, urban growth

commenced. The resulting Harlem real estate boom lasted about twenty years during which

developers erected most of the physical structures that defined Harlem as late as the mid-

twentieth century. They designed this new, urban Harlem primarily for the wealthy and the upper

middle class; it contained broad avenues, a rail connection to the city on Eighth Avenue, and

consisted of expensive homes and luxurious apartment buildings accompanied by commercial

and retail structures, along with stately churches and synagogues, clubs, social organizations, and

even the Harlem Philharmonic Orchestra.

By 1905, Harlem's boom turned into a bust. Desperate white developers began to sell or rent to

African Americans, often at greatly discounted prices, while black real estate firms provided the

customers. At this time, approximately sixty thousand blacks lived in New York, scattered

through the five boroughs, including a small community in Harlem. The largest concentration

inhabited the overcrowded and congested Tenderloin and San Juan Hill sections of the west side

of Manhattan. When New York's black population swelled in the twentieth century as

newcomers from the South moved north and as redevelopment destroyed existing black

neighborhoods, pressure for additional and hopefully better housing pushed blacks northward up

the west side of Manhattan into Harlem.

Harlem's transition, once it began, followed fairly traditional patterns. As soon as blacks started

moving onto a block, property values dropped further as whites began to leave. This process was

especially evident in the early 1920s. Both black and white realtors took advantage of declining

property values in Harlem—the panic selling that resulted when blacks moved in. Addressing the

demand for housing generated by the city's rapidly growing black population, they acquired,

subdivided, and leased Harlem property to black tenants.

Year by year, the boundaries of black Harlem expanded, as blacks streamed into Harlem as

quickly as they could find affordable housing. By 1910, they had become the majority group on

the west side of Harlem north of 130th Street; by 1914, the population of black Harlem was

estimated to be fifty thousand. By 1930 black Harlem had expanded north ten blocks to 155th

Street and south to 115th Street; it spread from the Harlem River to Amsterdam Avenue, and

housed approximately 164,000 blacks. The core of this community—bounded roughly by 126th

Street on the south, 159th Street on the north, the Harlem River and Park Avenue on the east, and

Eighth Avenue on the west—was more than 95 percent black.

By 1920, Harlem, by virtue of the sheer size of its black population, had emerged as the virtual

capital of black America; its name evoked a magic that lured all classes of blacks from all

sections of the country to its streets. Impoverished southern farmers and sharecroppers made

their way northward, where they were joined in Harlem by black intellectuals such as W. E. B.

Du Bois and James Weldon Johnson. Although the old black social elites of Washington, DC,

and Philadelphia were disdainful of Harlem's vulgar splendor, and while it housed no significant

black university as did Washington, Philadelphia, Atlanta, and Nashville, Harlem still became

the race's cultural center and a Mecca for its aspiring young. It housed the National Urban

League, A. Philip Randolph's Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and the black leadership of

the NAACP. Marcus Garvey launched his ill-fated black nationalist movement among its

masses, and Harlem became the geographical focal point of African American literature, art,

music, and theater. Its night clubs, music halls, and jazz joints became the center of New York

nightlife in the mid-1920s. Harlem, in short, was where the action was in black America during

the decade following World War I.

Harlem and New York City also contained the infrastructure to support and sustain the arts. In

the early twentieth century, New York had replaced Boston as the center of the book publishing

industry. Furthermore, new publishing houses in the city, such as Alfred A. Knopf, Harper

Brothers, and Harcourt Brace, were open to adding greater diversity to their book lists by

including works by African American writers. By the late nineteenth century, New York City

housed Tin Pan Alley, the center of the music publishing industry. In the 1920s, when recordings

and broadcasting emerged, New York was again in the forefront. Broadway was the epicenter of

American theater, and New York was the center of the American art world. In short, in the early

twentieth century no other American city possessed the businesses and institutions to support

literature and the arts that New York did.

In spite of its physical presence, size, and its literary and arts infrastructure, the nature of

Harlem and its relation to the Renaissance are very complex. The word "Harlem" evoked strong

and conflicting images among African Americans during the first half of the twentieth century.

Was it the Negro metropolis, black Manhattan, the political, cultural, and spiritual center of

African America, a land of plenty, a city of refuge, or a black ghetto and emerging slum? For

some, the image of Harlem was more personal. King Solomon Gillis, the main character in

Rudolph Fisher's "The City of Refuge," was one of these. Emerging out of the subway at 135th

and Lennox Avenue, Gillis was transfixed:

Clean air, blue sky, bright sunlight. Gillis set down his tan-cardboard extension-case and wiped

his black, shining brow. Then slowly, spreadingly, he grinned at what he saw: Negroes at every

turn; up and down Lenox Avenue, up and down One Hundred and Thirty-fifth Street; big, lanky

Negroes, short, squat Negroes; black ones, brown ones, yellow ones; men standing idle on the

curb, women, bundle-laden, trudging reluctantly homeward, children rattle-trapping about the

sidewalks; here and there a white face drifting along, but Negroes predominantly,

overwhelmingly everywhere. There was assuredly no doubt of his whereabouts. This was Negro

Harlem.7

Gillis then noticed the commotion in the street as trucks and autos crowded into the intersection

at the command of the traffic cop—an African American traffic cop:

The Southern Negro's eyes opened wide; his mouth opened wider. . . . For there stood a

handsome, brass-buttoned giant directing the heaviest traffic Gillis had ever seen; halting

unnumbered tons of automobiles and trucks and wagons and pushcarts and street-cars; holding

them at bay with one hand while he swept similar tons peremptorily on with the other; ruling the

wide crossing with supreme self-assurance; and he, too, was a Negro!

Yet most of the vehicles that leaped or crouched at his bidding carried white passengers. One of

these overdrove bounds a few feet and Gillis heard the officer's shrill whistle and gruff reproof,

saw the driver's face turn red and his car draw back like a threatened pup. It was beyond belief—

impossible. Black might be white, but it couldn't be that white!

"Done died an' woke up in Heaven," thought King Solomon, watching, fascinated; and after a

while, as if the wonder of it were too great to believe simply by seeing, "Cullud policemans!" he

said, half aloud; then repeated over and over, with greater and greater conviction, "Even got

cullud policemans…"8

Gillis was one of those who sought refuge in Harlem. He fled North Carolina after shooting a

white man. Now, in Harlem, the policeman was black. Not that this changed his fate. At the end

of the story, one of these black policemen dragged Gillis away in handcuffs. The reality of

Harlem often contradicted the myth.

For poet Langston Hughes, Harlem was also something of a refuge. Following a mostly

unhappy childhood living at one time or another with his mother or father, grandmother, or

neighbors, Hughes convinced his stern and foreboding father to finance his education at

Columbia University. He recalled his 1921 arrival:

"I went up the steps and out into the bright September sunlight. Harlem! I stood there, dropped

my bags, took a deep breath and felt happy again. I registered at the Y. When college opened, I

did not want to move into the dormitory at Columbia. I really did not want to go the college at

all. I didn't want to do anything but live in Harlem, get a job and work there."9

After a less than happy year at Columbia, Hughes did exactly that. He dropped out of school

and moved into Harlem. Hughes, though, never lost sight that poverty, overcrowded and

dilapidated housing, and racial prejudice were part of the daily experience of most Harlem

residents.

For Hughes, too, the desire to just "live in Harlem" was as much myth as reality. After dropping

out of Columbia and moving to Harlem he actually spent little time there. Until the late 1930s, he

was much more of a visitor or transient in Harlem than a resident. While Hughes spent many

weekends and vacations in Harlem during his years at Lincoln University, during the height of

the Renaissance, between 1923 and 1938 he was away from the city more than he was there,

more a visitor than a full-time resident.

James Weldon Johnson saw a still different Harlem. In his 1930 book, Black Manhattan, he

described the black metropolis in near utopian terms as the race's great hope and its grand social

experiment: "So here we have Harlem—not merely a colony or a community or a settlement . . .

but a black city, located in the heart of white Manhattan, and containing more Negroes to the

square mile than any other spot on earth. It strikes the uninformed observer as a phenomenon, a

miracle straight out of the skies."10K When Johnson looked at Harlem he did not see an emerging

slum or a ghetto, but a black neighborhood north of Central Park that was "one of the most

beautiful and healthful" in the city. "It is not a fringe, it is not a slum, nor is it a 'quarter'

consisting of dilapidated tenements. It is a section of new-law apartment houses and handsome

dwellings, with streets as well paved, as well lighted, and as well kept as in any other part of the

city."11

Without question Harlem was a rapidly growing black metropolis, but what kind of city was it

becoming? Harlem historian Gilbert Osofsky argued, "the most profound change that Harlem

experienced in the 1920's was its emergence as a slum. Largely within the space of a single

decade Harlem was transformed from a potentially ideal community to a neighborhood with

manifold social and economic problems called 'deplorable,' 'unspeakable,' 'incredible.'"12K As a

result, most of Harlem's residents lived in poor housing, either in poverty or on the verge of

poverty, in a neighborhood experiencing the typical results of poverty and discrimination:

growing vice, crime, juvenile delinquency, and drug addiction.

In short, the day-to-day realities that most Harlemites faced differed dramatically from the

image of Harlem life presented by James Weldon Johnson. Harlem was beset with

contradictions. While it reflected the self-confidence, militancy, and pride of the New Negro in

his or her demand for equality, and it reflected the aspirations and creative genius of the talented

young people of the Harlem Renaissance along with the economic aspirations of the black

migrants seeking a better life in the north, ultimately Harlem failed to resolve its problems and to

fulfill these dreams.

The 1935 Harlem Race Riot put to rest the conflicting images of Harlem. On March 19, 1935, a

young Puerto Rican boy was caught stealing a ten-cent pocketknife from the counter of a 135th

Street five-and-dime store. Following the arrest, rumors spread that police had beaten the youth

to death. A large crowd gathered, shouting "police brutality" and "racial discrimination." A

window was smashed, looting began, and the riot spread throughout the night. The violence

resulted in three blacks dead, two hundred stores trashed and burned, and more than two million

dollars worth of destroyed property. The Puerto Rican youth whose arrest precipitated the riot

had been released the previous evening when the merchant chose not to press charges. Shocked

by the uprising, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia established an interracial committee headed by E.

Franklin Frazier, a professor of sociology at Howard University, to investigate the riot. They

concluded the obvious: the riot resulted from a general frustration with racial discrimination and

poverty.

What the committee failed to report was that the riot shattered once and for all James Weldon

Johnson's image of Harlem as the African American urban utopia. In spite of the presence of

artists and writers, nightclubs, music, and entertainment, Harlem was a slum, a black ghetto

characterized by poverty and discrimination. Burned-out storefronts might be fertile ground for

political action, but not for art, literature, and culture. Harlem would see new black writers in the

years to come. Musicians, poets, and artists would continue to make their home there, but it

never again served as the focal point of a creative movement with the national and international

impact of the Harlem Renaissance.

Johnson did not personally witness the 1935 Riot. He had left the city in 1931, the year after he

published Black Manhattan, to take the Spence Chair in Creative Literature at Fisk University in

Nashville. He lived there until his death in 1938.

Renaissance

So, what was the Harlem Renaissance? The simple answer is that the Harlem Renaissance (or

the New Negro Movement, or whatever name is preferred) was the most important event in

twentieth-century African American intellectual and cultural life. While best known for its

literature, it touched every aspect of African American literary and artistic creativity from the

end of World War I through the Great Depression. Literature, critical writing, music, theater,

musical theater, and the visual arts were transformed by this movement; it also affected politics,

social development, and almost every aspect of the African American experience from the mid-

1920s through the mid-1930s.

But there was also something ephemeral about the Harlem Renaissance, something vague and

hard to define. The Harlem Renaissance, then, was an African American literary and artistic

movement anchored in Harlem, but drawing from, extending to, and influencing African

American communities across the country and beyond. As we have seen, it also had no precise

beginning; nor did it have a precise ending. Rather, it emerged out of the social and intellectual

upheaval in the African American community that followed World War I, blossomed in the

1920s, and then faded away in the mid-to-late 1930s and early 1940s.

Likewise the Harlem Renaissance has no single defined ideological or stylistic standard that

unified its participants and defined the movement. Instead, most participants in the movement

resisted black or white efforts to define or narrowly categorize their art. For example, in 1926, a

group of writers, spearheaded by writer Wallace Thurman and including Langston Hughes, Zora

Neale Hurston, and artist Aaron Douglas, among others, produced their own literary magazine,

Fire!! One purpose of this venture was the declaration of their intent to assume ownership of the

literary Renaissance. In the process, they turned their backs on Alain Locke and W. E. B. Du

Bois and others who sought to channel black creativity into what they considered to be the

proper aesthetic and political directions. Despite the efforts of Thurman and his young

colleagues, Fire!! fizzled out after only one issue and the movement remained ill defined. In fact,

this was its most distinguishing characteristic. There would be no common literary style or

political ideology associated with the Harlem Renaissance. It was far more an identity than an

ideology or a literary or artistic school. What united participants was their sense of taking part in

a common endeavor and their commitment to giving artistic expression to the African American

experience.

If there was a statement that defined the philosophy of the new literary movement it was

Langston Hughes's essay, "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain," published in The Nation,

June 16, 1926:

We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves

without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, it doesn't matter.

We know we are beautiful. And ugly too. The tom-tom cries and the tom-tom laughs. If colored

people are pleased we are glad. If they are not their displeasure doesn't matter either. We will

build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we will stand on top of the

mountain, free within ourselves.13

Like Fire!!, this essay was the movement's declaration of independence, both from the

stereotypes that whites held about African Americans and the expectations that they had for their

literary works, and from the expectations that black leaders and black critics had for black

writers, and the expectations that they placed on their work.

There was, not surprisingly, resistance to this independence, especially among those concerned

with the political costs that the realistic expressions of black life could engender—feeding white

prejudice by exposing the less savory elements of the black community. Du Bois responded to

Hughes a few weeks later in a Chicago speech that was later published in The Crisis as "The

Criteria of Negro Art" (October 1926): "Thus all Art is propaganda and ever must be, despite the

wailing of the purists. I stand in utter shamelessness and say that whatever art I have for writing

has been used always for propaganda for gaining the right of black folk to love and enjoy. I do

not care a damn for any art that is not used for propaganda. But I do care when propaganda is

confined to one side while the other is stripped and silent."

The determination of black writers to follow their own artistic vision led to the artistic diversity

that was the principal characteristic of the Harlem Renaissance. This diversity is clearly evident

in the poetry of the period where subject matter, style, and tone ranged from the traditional to the

more inventive. Langston Hughes, for example, captured the life and language of the working

class, and the rhythm and style of the blues in a number of his poems, none more so than "The

Weary Blues." In contrast to Hughes's appropriation of the form of black music, especially jazz

and the blues, and his use of the black vernacular, Claude McKay and Countee Cullen utilized

more traditional and classical forms for their poetry. McKay used sonnets for much of his protest

verse, while Cullen's poems relied both on classical literary allusions and symbols and standard

poetic forms.

This diversity and experimentation also characterized music. This was evidenced in the blues of

Bessie Smith and the range of jazz from the early rhythms of Jelly Roll Morton to the

instrumentation of Louis Armstrong or the sophisticated orchestration of Duke Ellington. In

painting, the soft colors and pastels that Aaron Douglas used to create a veiled view for the

African-inspired images in his paintings and murals contrast sharply with Jacob Lawrence's use

of bright colors and sharply defined images.

Within this diversity, several themes emerged which set the character of the Harlem

Renaissance. No black writer, musician, or artist expressed all of these themes, but each did

address one or more in his or her work. The first of these themes was the effort to recapture the

African American past—its rural southern roots, urban experience, and African heritage. Interest

in the African past corresponded with the rise of Pan-Africanism in African American politics,

which was at the center of Marcus Garvey's ideology and also a concern of W. E. B. Du Bois in

the 1920s.

It also reflected the general fascination with ancient African history that followed the discovery

of King Tut's tomb in 1922. Poets Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes addressed their African

heritage in their works, while artist Aaron Douglas used African motifs in his art. A number of

musicians, from the classical composer William Grant Still to jazz great Louis Armstrong,

introduced African inspired rhythms and themes in their compositions.

The exploration of black southern heritage was reflected in novels by Jean Toomer and Zora

Neale Hurston, as well as in Jacob Lawrence's art. Zora Neale Hurston used her experience as a

folklorist as the basis for her extensive study of rural southern black life in her 1937 novel, Their

Eyes Were Watching God. Jacob Lawrence turned to African American history for much of his

work including two of his multi-canvas series' of paintings, the Harriett Tubman series and the

one on the Black Migration.

Harlem Renaissance writers and artists also explored life in Harlem and other urban centers.

Both Hughes and McKay drew on Harlem images for their poetry, and McKay used the ghetto as

the setting for his first novel, Home to Harlem. Some black writers, including McKay and

Hughes, as well as Rudolph Fisher and Wallace Thurman, were accused of overemphasizing

crime, sexuality, and other less-savory aspects of ghetto life in order to feed the voyeuristic

desires of white readers and publishers, in imitation of white novelist Carl Van Vechten's

controversial Harlem novel, Nigger Heaven.

A third major theme addressed by the literature of the Harlem Renaissance was race. Virtually

every novel and play, and most of the poetry, explored race in America, especially the impact of

race and racism on African Americans. In their simplest form these works protested racial

injustice. Claude McKay's sonnet, "If We Must Die," was among the best of this genre. Langston

Hughes also wrote protest pieces, as did almost every black writer at one time or another.

Among the visual artists, Lawrence's historical series emphasized the racial struggle that

dominated African American history, while Romare Bearden's early illustrative work often

focused on racial politics. The struggle against lynching in the mid-1920s stimulated anti-

lynching poetry, as well as Walter White's carefully researched study of the subject, Rope and

Faggot. In the early 1930s, the Scottsboro incident stimulated considerable protest writing, as

well as a 1934 anthology, Negro, which addressed race in an international context. Most of the

literary efforts of the Harlem Renaissance avoided overt protest or propaganda, focusing instead

on the psychological and social impact of race. Among the best of these studies were Nella

Larsen's two novels, Quicksand in 1928 and, a year later, Passing. Both explored characters of

mixed racial heritage who struggled to define their racial identity in a world of prejudice and

racism. Langston Hughes addressed similar themes in his poem "Cross," and in his 1931 play,

Mulatto, as did Jessie Fauset in her 1929 novel, Plum Bun. That same year Wallace Thurman

made color discrimination within the urban black community the focus of his novel, The Blacker

the Berry.

Finally, the Harlem Renaissance incorporated all aspects of African American culture in its

creative work. This ranged from the use of black music as an inspiration for poetry or black

folklore as an inspiration for novels and short stories. Best known for this was Langston Hughes

who used the rhythms and styles of jazz and the blues in much of his early poetry. James Weldon

Johnson, who published two collections of black spirituals in 1927 and 1928, and Sterling

Brown, who used the blues and southern work songs in many of the poems in his 1932 book of

poetry, Southern Road, continued the practice that Hughes had initiated. Other writers exploited

black religion as a literary source. Johnson made the black preacher and his sermons the basis for

the poems in God's Trombones, while Hurston and Larsen used black religion and black

preachers in their novels. Hurston's first novel, Jonah's Gourd Vine (1934), described the

exploits of a southern black preacher, while in the last portion of Quicksand, Larsen's heroine

was ensnared by religion and a southern black preacher.

Through all of these themes, Harlem Renaissance writers, musicians, and artists were

determined to express the African American experience in all of its variety and complexity as

realistically as possible. This commitment to realism ranged from the ghetto realism that created

such controversy when writers exposed negative aspects of African American life, to beautifully

crafted and detailed portraits of black life in small towns such as in Hughes's novel, Not Without

Laughter, or the witty and biting depiction of Harlem's black literati in Wallace Thurman's

Infants of the Spring.

The Harlem Renaissance appealed to and relied on a mixed audience—the African American

middle class and white consumers of the arts. African American magazines such as The Crisis

(the NAACP monthly journal) and Opportunity (the monthly publication of the Urban League)

employed Harlem Renaissance writers on their editorial staff, published their poetry and short

stories, and promoted African American literature through articles, reviews, and annual literary

prizes. They also printed illustrations by black artists and used black artists in the layout design

of their periodicals. Also, blacks attempted to produce their own literary and artistic venues. In

addition to the short-lived Fire!!, Wallace Thurman spearheaded another single-issue literary

magazine, Harlem, in 1927, while poet Countee Cullen edited a "Negro Poets" issue of the

avant-garde poetry magazine Palms in 1926, and brought out an anthology of African American

poetry, Caroling Dusk, in 1927.

As important as these literary outlets were, they were not sufficient to support a literary

movement. Consequently, the Harlem Renaissance relied heavily on white-owned enterprises for

its creative works. Publishing houses, magazines, recording companies, theaters, and art galleries

were primarily white-owned, and financial support through grants, prizes, and awards generally

involved white money. In fact, one of the major accomplishments of the Renaissance was to

push open the door to mainstream periodicals, publishing houses, and funding sources. African

American music also played to mixed audiences. Harlem's cabarets attracted both Harlem

residents and white New Yorkers seeking out Harlem nightlife. The famous Cotton Club carried

this to a bizarre extreme by providing black entertainment for exclusively white audiences.

Ultimately, the more successful black musicians and entertainers moved their performances

downtown.

The relationship of the Harlem Renaissance to white venues and white audiences created

controversy. While most African American critics strongly supported the movement, others like

Benjamin Brawley and even W. E. B. Du Bois were sharply critical and accused Renaissance

writers of reinforcing negative African American stereotypes. Langston Hughes's assertion that

black artists intended to express themselves freely, no matter what the black public or white

public thought, accurately reflected the attitude of most writers and artists.

Slow fade to black

The end of the Harlem Renaissance is as difficult to define as its beginnings. It varies somewhat

from one artistic field to another. In musical theater, the popularity of black musical reviews died

out by the early 1930s, although there were occasional efforts, mostly unsuccessful, to revive the

genre. However, black performers and musicians continued to work, although not so often in all

black shows. Black music continued into the World War II era, although the popularity of blues

singers waned somewhat, and jazz changed as the big band style became popular. Literature also

changed, and a new generation of black writers like Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison emerged

with little interest in or connection with the Harlem Renaissance. In art, a number of artists who

had emerged in the 1930s continued to work, but again, with no connection to a broader African

American movement. Also, a number of Harlem Renaissance literary figures went silent, left

Harlem, or died. Some, including Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, continued to write

and publish into the 1940s and beyond, although there was no longer any sense that they were

connected to a literary movement. And Harlem lost some of its magic following the 1935 race

riot. In any case, few, if any, people were talking about a Harlem Renaissance by 1940.

The Harlem Renaissance flourished in the late 1920s and early 1930s, but its antecedents and

legacy spread many years before 1920 and after 1930. It had no universally recognized name, but

was known variously as the New Negro Movement, the New Negro Renaissance, and the Negro

Renaissance, as well as the Harlem Renaissance. It had no clearly defined beginning or end, but

emerged out of the social and intellectual upheaval in the African American community that

followed World War I, blossomed in the mid- to late-1920s, and then faded away in the mid-

1930s.

What was the Harlem Renaissance and why was it important?

While at its core it was primarily a literary movement, the Harlem Renaissance touched all of

the African American creative arts. While its participants were determined to truthfully represent

the African American experience and believed in racial pride and equality, they shared no

common political philosophy, social belief, artistic style, or aesthetic principle. This was a

movement of individuals free of any overriding manifesto. While central to African American

artistic and intellectual life, by no means did it enjoy the full support of the black or white

intelligentsia; it generated as much hostility and criticism as it did support and praise. From the

moment of its birth, its legitimacy was debated. Nevertheless, by at least one measure, its success

was clear: the Harlem Renaissance was the first time that a considerable number of mainstream

publishers and critics took African American literature seriously, and it was the first time that

African American literature and the arts attracted significant attention from the nation at large.