DOCSLIB.ORG

Harlem Renaissance

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Harlem Renaissance Harlem Renaissance By: Singh, Amritjit Known also as the Negro Renaissance or the New Negro movement, this artistic and sociocultural awakening among African-Americans was a national phenomenon, reverberating through many urban centers. Viewed by some scholars as a distinctly African-American experiment in modernism and/or cultural pluralism, it found many outlets, from literature, painting, and sculpture to jazz, dance, and Broadway shows. Though it peaked in 1923–1929, the movement can be dated from the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909, the outbreak of World War I in 1914, or the publication of Claude McKay's poem Harlem Dancer in 1917 to as late as 1937, when Zora Neale Hurston published Their Eyes Were Watching God, or 1940, when Richard Wright's Native Son introduced a harsh new realism into black writing. Politically, it was part of a continuing response—which included the 1905 Niagara Movement and the NAACP—to the failure of Booker T. Washington's accommodationism to reverse the black disfranchisement that began after Reconstruction and extended through the Supreme Court's 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision and beyond. The issues the renaissance addressed had been confronted by earlier writers such as Frederick Douglass, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and Charles W. Chesnutt. But Jazz Age Harlem, the capital of black America and “the greatest Negro city in the world” (Alain Locke), came to epitomize the larger changes transforming African-American life and art. blacks from throughout the United States, the West Indies, and even Africa interacted to produce a race-conscious community of unprecedented sophistication in this northern Manhattan neighborhood. Harlem-based civil rights organizations included the NAACP; the National Urban League; A. Philip Randolph's all-black Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and Maids; and, perhaps most important, Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). While UNIA's celebration of blackness and of Africa stirred race pride and self-assertion among the demoralized urban black masses, the Harlem Renaissance represented the educated, middle-class blacks' response to the same realities that drew the poor to Garvey. Extending the racial, cultural, and political thinking of the New Negro movement to art, music, and literature, the renaissance found outlets in such periodicals as the NAACP's Crisis, the Urban League's Opportunity, and Randolph's Messenger, as well as such general-circulation magazines as the Nation, New Republic, and Saturday Review. It gained great visibility through the New Negro (1925), an anthology edited by the Howard University philosophy professor Alain Locke (1886–1954), who also helped young writers secure contracts and in general acted as “midwife” to the movement. W.E.B. Du Bois, James Weldon Johnson, Walter White of the NAACP, and the Marxist editor Victor F. Calverton provided mentoring and support. Jessie Redmon Fauset, literary editor of the Crisis, modulated and broadened Du Bois's genteel and propagandistic approach to the arts. The urban sociologist Charles S. Johnson, editor of Opportunity, stressed the importance of the great migration from rural South to urban North and encouraged black writing “which shakes itself free of deliberate propaganda and protest.” A'Lelia Walker's elegant Dark Towers;—satirized as Niggerati Manor in Wallace Thurman's Infants of the Spring (1935)—proved a popular meeting place. The white writer and photographer Carl Van Vechten (1880–1964) helped young black writers find publishers, but the success of his novel about Harlem, Nigger Heaven (1926), demonstrating the commercial possibilities of the primitivistic formula, arguably made it harder for some black writers to find their distinctive voice. Wealthy and well-meaning white patrons could prove stifling as well, as Langston Hughes recalled in his memoir The Big Sea (1940). But writers as diverse as McKay, Hughes, Hurston, Rudolph Fisher, Nella Larsen, Georgia Douglas Johnson, George Schuyler, Arna Bontemps, Gwendolyn Bennett, and Dorothy West did achieve a measure of artistic freedom. Inspired by little magazines such as Fire!! and by works like Jean Toomer's Cane (1923), Marita Bonner's On Being Young—a Woman—and Colored (1925), Hughes's Weary Blues and The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain (both 1926), and McKay's Home to Harlem (1928), these and other writers helped define the Harlem Renaissance. So, too, did musicians, artists, and performers such as the actor Paul Robeson, the sculptor Aaron Douglas, the tenor Roland Hayes, the jazz artist Duke Ellington, the blues singer Bessie Smith (1894–1937), and scores of others. The Harlem Renaissance stimulated fruitful controversy over basic aesthetic issues, the racial matrix of artistic expression, and such latter-day concepts as “Black Aesthetic” and cultural nationalism. Even if its participants felt ambivalent about their endeavors, and conflicted in their feelings about race and art, the movement they created remains a vitally important landmark in African American—and American— cultural history. Citation: Singh, Amritjit. "Harlem Renaissance." The Oxford Companion to United States History, edited by Paul S.Boyer. Oxford African American Studies Center, http://www.oxfordaasc.com/article/opr/t119/e0670 (accessed Mon Nov 30 19:22:09 EST 2009). .
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Georgia Douglas Johnson and Eulalie Spence As Figures Who Fostered Community in the Midst of Debate
    Art versus Propaganda?: Georgia Douglas Johnson and Eulalie Spence as Figures who Fostered Community in the Midst of Debate Thesis Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Caroline Roberta Hill, B.A. Graduate Program in Theatre The Ohio State University 2019 Thesis Committee: Jennifer Schlueter, Adviser Beth Kattelman Copyright by Caroline Roberta Hill 2019 Abstract The Harlem Renaissance and New Negro Movement is a well-documented period in which artistic output by the black community in Harlem, New York, and beyond, surged. On the heels of Reconstruction, a generation of black artists and intellectuals—often the first in their families born after the thirteenth amendment—spearheaded the movement. Using art as a means by which to comprehend and to reclaim aspects of their identity which had been stolen during the Middle Passage, these artists were also living in a time marked by the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan and segregation. It stands to reason, then, that the work that has survived from this period is often rife with political and personal motivations. Male figureheads of the movement are often remembered for their divisive debate as to whether or not black art should be politically charged. The public debates between men like W. E. B. Du Bois and Alain Locke often overshadow the actual artistic outputs, many of which are relegated to relative obscurity. Black female artists in particular are overshadowed by their male peers despite their significant interventions. Two pioneers of this period, Georgia Douglas Johnson (1880-1966) and Eulalie Spence (1894-1981), will be the subject of my thesis.
    [Show full text]
  • The Thesis Committee for Rachel Leigh
    To the University Council: The Thesis Committee for Rachel Leigh Smith certifies that this is the final approved version of the following electronic thesis: ―‗The Young Blood Hungers‘: Mapping Young Black Manhood in Marita Bonner‘s Frye Street Fiction.‖ _________________________________ Verner Mitchell, Ph.D. Major Professor We have read this thesis and recommend its acceptance: ________________________________ Shelby Crosby, Ph.D. ________________________________ Ladrica Menson-Furr, Ph.D. Accepted for the Graduate Council: _________________________________ Karen D. Weddle-West, Ph.D. Vice Provost for Graduate Programs ―THE YOUNG BLOOD HUNGERS‖: MAPPING YOUNG BLACK MANHOOD IN MARITA BONNER‘S FRYE STREET FICTION by Rachel Leigh Smith A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts Women‘s and Gender Studies The University of Memphis December 2010 Copyright © 2010 Rachel Leigh Smith All rights reserved ii Dedication To my parents, Mallory and Wesley, for their incredible and unwavering support iii ABSTRACT Smith, Rachel Leigh. MA. The University of Memphis. December 2010. 'The Young Blood Hungers': Mapping Young Black Manhood in Marita Bonner's Frye Street Fiction. Major Professor Verner Mitchell. Marita O. Bonner, early twentieth century African American public intellectual and creative writer, wrote particularly about the experiences of blacks in Chicago. Though most Bonner scholarship focuses primarily on her working class female characters, this study provides close readings of the young male figures in the short stories in ―One Boy‘s Story,‖ ―The Makin‘s,‖ ―The Whipping,‖ ―There Were Three,‖ ―Tin Can,‖ and ―Nothing New.‖ I analyze how these texts confront notions of family, personal identity, and violence, and how Bonner configures young life as a volatile liminal space of human development.
    [Show full text]
  • Alain Locke and the New Negro Movement Eugene C. Holmes
    Alain Locke and the New Negro Movement Eugene C. Holmes Negro American Literature Forum, Vol. 2, No. 3, Protest and Propaganda Literature. (Autumn, 1968), pp. 60-68. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0028-2480%28196823%292%3A3%3C60%3AALATNN%3E2.0.CO%3B2-8 Negro American Literature Forum is currently published by St. Louis University. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/journals/slu.html. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academic journals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers, and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community take advantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. http://www.jstor.org Wed Oct 10 14:40:29 2007 ALAlN LOCKE AND THE NEW NEGRO MOVEMENT of the new Negro middle class.
    [Show full text]
  • Dorothy West: the Last Writer of the Harlem Renaissance
    Dorothy West: The Last Writer of the Harlem Renaissance Dorothy West's first long book was published when she was more than forty years old. Her second book was published when she was in her late eighties. Yet African-American poet Langston Hughes called her "The Kid." This means a child. Dorothy West had been one of the youngest members of the group of writers and artists of the Harlem Renaissance. This was a creative period for African-Americans during the 1920s and 1930s. During and after World War I, thousands of southern blacks moved to northern cities in the United States. They were seeking jobs and better lives. Many settled in an area of New York City known as Harlem. Many were musicians, writers, artists and performers. Harlem became the largest Dorothy West African-American community in the United States. The mass movement from South to North led African-Americans to examine their lives: Who were they? What were their rights as Americans? The artistic expression of this collective examination became known as the Harlem Renaissance. Renaissance means rebirth. The Harlem Renaissance represented a rebirth of black people as an effective part of American life. Dorothy West helped influence the direction and form of African-American writing during this time. Dorothy West was born in 1907 in the city of Boston, Massachusetts. Both her parents were born in the southern United States, and moved north. Her father was a former slave. He became the first African-American to own a food-selling company in Boston. The family became part of the black upper middle class social group of Boston.
    [Show full text]
  • Harlem Renaissance Special Points of Interest
    Harlem Renaissance Special points of interest: The Harlem Renaissance was also know as the New Negro Movement. Plainfield Public Library Pathfinder September 2010 This captivating period of African American history began after Harlem Renaissance WWI and lasted until about 1935, in the mid- Do you have a special project for Black History dle of the Great involving ? Per- Depression. Month The Harlem Renaissance haps you are working on a college paper and are This great out flux of currently studying this very interesting and creative creativity, artistic period of American arts and letters. If you are start- expression, and ing a book club at home, and would like to begin it intellectualism repre- investing some time in this period of African Ameri- sented a marked can writing, can help concentration of pro- The Plainfield Public Library test, ideological you find the materials you need to form an outline advancement, and the for a discussion group. Or perhaps you saw a film furthering of civil rights or documentary on a title or author in this time peri- for African Americans. od, and you would like to simply find the printed ver- sion for your reading enjoyment. The goal of the move- ment was to create a Romare Bearden doubled disconnect between The Reference Department staff can help you find throughout his life as a social peoples’ perception of printed and electronic resources/items to enlighten worker by day and a visual African Americans and you about this time in American history, and the per- artist by night and weekends. those perpetuated by sonalities and talents that contributed to the flower- The prolific artist was a part mainstream American of the Harlem Artists Guild culture and its ing of African American arts and literature in the after studying art in NYC and institutions.
    [Show full text]
  • Pan African Agency and the Cultural Political Economy of the Black City: the Case of the African World Festival in Detroit
    PAN AFRICAN AGENCY AND THE CULTURAL POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE BLACK CITY: THE CASE OF THE AFRICAN WORLD FESTIVAL IN DETROIT By El-Ra Adair Radney A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree African American and African Studies - Doctor of Philosophy 2019 ABSTRACT PAN AFRICAN AGENCY AND THE CULTURAL POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE BLACK CITY: THE CASE OF THE AFRICAN WORLD FESTIVAL IN DETROIT By El-Ra Adair Radney Pan African Agency and the Cultural Political Economy of the Black City is a dissertation study of Detroit that characterizes the city as a ‘Pan African Metropolis’ within the combined histories of Black Metropolis theory and theories of Pan African cultural nationalism. The dissertation attempts to reconfigure Saint Clair Drake and Horace Cayton’s Jr’s theorization on the Black Metropolis to understand the intersectional dynamics of culture, politics, and economy as they exist in a Pan African value system for the contemporary Black city. Differently from the classic Black Metropolis study, the current study incorporates African heritage celebration as a major Black life axes in the maintenance of the Black city’s identity. Using Detroit as a case study, the study contends that through their sustained allegiance to African/Afrocentric identity, Black Americans have enhanced the Black city through their creation of a distinctive cultural political economy, which manifests in what I refer to throughout the study as a Pan African Metropolis. I argue that the Pan African Metropolis emerged more visibly and solidified itself during Detroit’s Black Arts Movement in the 1970s of my youth (Thompson, 1999).
    [Show full text]
  • John Lowe Louisiana State University
    University of Bucharest Review Vol. XI, no. 1, 2009 John Lowe Louisiana State University Calypso Magnolia: Transience and Durability in the Global South1 Keywords: circumCaribbean literature; Haitian revolution; Southern literary canon; slavery; U.S. South Abstract: The transnational turn in U.S. literary and cultural studies has led to a new consideration of the Atlantic world, particularly of the circumCaribbean, which has been the theatre for some of the most dramatic events of Atlantic history. Haiti, as a nexus for revolution, racial turmoil, and colonial and postcolonial struggle, has always been a lodestar for Southern and circumCaribbean writers. This paper briefly considers links between the U.S. South and the Caribbean, and then examines many examples of the ways in which the Haitian Revolution was reflected in both well-known and more obscure works of U.S. Southern and Caribbean literature, focusing on writers such as Séjour, Cable, Bontemps, Faulkner, Carpentier, Glissant, and James. The concluding section demonstrates how the contemporary Southern writer Madison Smartt Bell drew on this rich literary vein to create his magnificent trilogy on the Haitian Revolution, which begins with the text considered here, All Souls Rising. I also argue that this new configuration of region and cultural history has had and will have future consequences for the status of “durable” and “transient” notions of literary canons. One of the salutary effects of transnationalism/globalization has been the rethinking of nation and national boundaries. The rise of multi-national entities of all kinds and the advent of transnational markets has shaken us into an awareness that cultural configurations have always ignored real and imaginary sovereign boundaries.
    [Show full text]
  • African-American Psychology and the Works of Gayl Jones
    AFRICAN-AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGY AND THE WORKS OF GAYL JONES ABDUL QUADIR Research Scholar Department of English Jai Prakash University, Chapra (BH) INDIA Jones’ work has frequently been challenged on account of her questionable subjects just as news inclusion of her own life, her work keeps on awing peruses with its unpredictable style and profundity of feeling. She attracts a significant number of the subjects her accounts from her African-American legacy just as her very own life and battles. Maybe generally significant all through the mental advancements in the characters are their voices which yell from the pages of her work their story, their melody, and their fact. Her peruses can't hold back to hear what will come next from this calm lady who works so anyone can hear. Keywords: Gayl Jones, Slavery, Brutality, Racism, Classic Blues, Diaspora, Black INTRODUCTION A profoundly respected and inventive voice of African-American women author, Gayl Jones is a Black American Poet, Novelist, Play Wright, Short Story Writer, Professor and scholarly critic and was destined to Franklin and Lucille Jones on November 23, 1949 in Lexington, Kentucky, Jones early associations with the south are reflected unequivocally in her own life just as in her composition, which frequently rejuvenates Kentucky culture and characters for the peruses. As a striking novelistic voice apparently at progress with her tranquil, baffling persona, Gayl Jones shocked the abstract world during the 1970s with various books of African Americans battling to adapt to the tradition of Race, Violence, Slavery and Female Subjectivity. Both the structure and topic of her work are drawn from the dark oral custom.
    [Show full text]
  • Intraracial Conflict in Harlem in the Fiction of Rudolph Fisher Grant Burns Jr
    Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and Retrospective Theses and Dissertations Dissertations 1985 Intraracial conflict in Harlem in the fiction of Rudolph Fisher Grant Burns Jr. Iowa State University Follow this and additional works at: https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/rtd Part of the African American Studies Commons, American Literature Commons, Literature in English, North America Commons, and the Literature in English, North America, Ethnic and Cultural Minority Commons Recommended Citation Burns, Grant Jr., "Intraracial conflict in Harlem in the fiction of Rudolph Fisher" (1985). Retrospective Theses and Dissertations. 109. https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/rtd/109 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and Dissertations at Iowa State University Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Retrospective Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Iowa State University Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Intraracial conflict in Harlem in the fiction of Rudolph Fisher by Grant Burns Jr. A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS ~1ajor: English Iowa State University Ames, Iowa 1985 i i TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION 1 RUDOLPH FISHER--HIS LIFE AND CONTRIBUTIONS 5 INTRARACIAL THEMES IN FISHER•s SHORT FICTION 9 INTRARACIAL CONFLICT IN THE WALLS OF JERICHO 27 CONCLUSION 35 ENDNOTES 39 BIBLIOGRAPHY 42 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 45 1 INTRODUCTION Harlem--The Black Mecca During the 1920s and 1930s the consciousness of black America was raised to newer and higher levels of self-worth and social importance.
    [Show full text]
  • 47 Free Films Dealing with Racism That Are Just a Click Away (With Links)
    47 Free Films Dealing with Racism that Are Just a Click Away (with links) Ida B. Wells : a Passion For Justice [1989] [San Francisco, California, USA] : Kanopy Streaming, 2015. Video — 1 online resource (1 video file, approximately 53 min.) : digital, .flv file, sound Sound: digital. Digital: video file; MPEG-4; Flash. Summary Documents the dramatic life and turbulent times of the pioneering African American journalist, activist, suffragist and anti-lynching crusader of the post-Reconstruction period. Though virtually forgotten today, Ida B. Wells-Barnett was a household name in Black America during much of her lifetime (1863-1931) and was considered the equal of her well-known African American contemporaries such as Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois. Ida B. Wells: A Passion for Justice documents the dramatic life and turbulent times of the pioneering African American journalist, activist, suffragist and anti-lynching crusader of the post-Reconstruction period. Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison reads selections from Wells' memoirs and other writings in this winner of more than 20 film festival awards. "One had better die fighting against injustice than die like a dog or a rat in a trap." - Ida B. Wells "Tells of the brave life and works of the 19th century journalist, known among Black reporters as 'the princess of the press, ' who led the nation's first anti-lynching campaign." - New York Times "A powerful account of the life of one of the earliest heroes in the Civil Rights Movement...The historical record of her achievements remains relatively modest. This documentary goes a long way towards rectifying that egregious oversight." - Chicago Sun-Times "A keenly realized profile of Ida B.
    [Show full text]
  • The Works and Critical Reception of Dorothy West
    University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Masters Theses Graduate School 8-2005 Renaissance Woman: The Works and Critical Reception of Dorothy West Tamara Jenelle Williamson University of Tennessee - Knoxville Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_gradthes Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Williamson, Tamara Jenelle, "Renaissance Woman: The Works and Critical Reception of Dorothy West. " Master's Thesis, University of Tennessee, 2005. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_gradthes/2538 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Masters Theses by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a thesis written by Tamara Jenelle Williamson entitled "Renaissance Woman: The Works and Critical Reception of Dorothy West." I have examined the final electronic copy of this thesis for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts, with a major in English. Miriam Thaggert, Major Professor We have read this thesis and recommend its acceptance: Mary E. Papke, Nancy Goslee Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R. Hodges Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a thesis written by Tamara Jenelle Williamson entitled “Renaissance Woman: The Works and Critical Reception of Dorothy West.” I have examined the final electronic copy of this thesis for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts, with a major in English.
    [Show full text]
  • A Performance Analysis of Dorothy Rudd Moore's Sonnets on Love, Rosebuds, and Death
    UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones December 2016 A Performance Analysis of Dorothy Rudd Moore's Sonnets on Love, Rosebuds, and Death Cordelia Elizabeth Anderson University of Nevada, Las Vegas Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/thesesdissertations Part of the African American Studies Commons, American Studies Commons, Music Commons, and the Race and Ethnicity Commons Repository Citation Anderson, Cordelia Elizabeth, "A Performance Analysis of Dorothy Rudd Moore's Sonnets on Love, Rosebuds, and Death" (2016). UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones. 2848. http://dx.doi.org/10.34917/10083122 This Dissertation is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by Digital Scholarship@UNLV with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this Dissertation in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/or on the work itself. This Dissertation has been accepted for inclusion in UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones by an authorized administrator of Digital Scholarship@UNLV. For more information, please contact [email protected]. A PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF DOROTHY RUDD MOORE’S SONNETS ON LOVE, ROSEBUDS, AND DEATH By Cordelia Elizabeth Anderson Bachelor of Arts Alabama State University 2007 Master of Music Southern Illinois University at Carbondale 2010 A document submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirments for the Doctor of Musical Arts School of Music College of Fine Arts The Graduate College University of Nevada, Las Vegas December 2016 Copyright by Cordelia E.
    [Show full text]