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The New Negro Arts and Letters Movement Among Black University Students in the Midwest, 1914~1940

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The New Negro Arts and Letters Movement Among Black University Students in the Midwest, 1914~1940 University of Nebraska at Omaha DigitalCommons@UNO Black Studies Faculty Publications Department of Black Studies 2004 The ewN Negro Arts and Letters Movement Among Black University Students in the Midwest, 1914-1940 Richard M. Breaux University of Nebraska at Omaha, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/blackstudfacpub Part of the African American Studies Commons Recommended Citation Breaux, Richard M., "The eN w Negro Arts and Letters Movement Among Black University Students in the Midwest, 1914-1940" (2004). Black Studies Faculty Publications. 1. https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/blackstudfacpub/1 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of Black Studies at DigitalCommons@UNO. It has been accepted for inclusion in Black Studies Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@UNO. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE NEW NEGRO ARTS AND LETTERS MOVEMENT AMONG BLACK UNIVERSITY STUDENTS IN THE MIDWEST, 1914~1940 RICHARD M. BREAUX The 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s were an excit~ and underexplored. 1 This article explores the ing time for black artists and writers in the influence of the New Negro arts and letters United States. Much of the historical litera~ movement on black students at four mid~ ture highlights the so~called Harlem Renais~ western state universities from 1914 to 1940. sance or its successor, the Black Chicago Black students on white midwestern cam~ Renaissance. Few studies, however, document puses like the University of Kansas (KU), Uni~ the influence of these artistic movements out~ versity of Iowa (UI), University of Nebraska side major urban cities such as New York, (UNL), and University of Minnesota (UMN) Chicago, or Washington, DC. In his 1988 es~ aligned themselves with various New Negro say on black education, historian Ronald philosophies that marked the onset of the New Butchart argued that the educational effects Negro arts and letters movement, or the of black social movements such as the Harlem Harlem Renaissance. The New Negro arts and Renaissance on black schooling are unclear letters movement had a profound influence on black college students. Black students ex~ pressed a New Negro consciousness in at least KEY WORDS: African American college students, two ways: (1) they indirectly engaged in the dis~ Aaron Douglas, education, Harlem Renaissance, courses that surrounded the New Negro move~ Midwest, New Negro Movement ment through black scholarly and popular publications, and (2) they engaged in racial vin~ Richard M. Breaux is Assistant Professor of Black dication through classroom assignments, re~ Studies and History at the University of Nebraska at search, and other intellectual products that Omaha. He is currently working on a book manuscript challenged prevailing myths of blacks' intel~ titled, 'These Institutions Belong to the People': lectual and cultural inferiority to whites. In~ New Negro College Students in America's Heartland, 1900~ 1940. terestingly, black students at KU, UI, UNL, and UMN seemed less interested in who fi~ nanced the arts movement than in casting their [GPQ 24 (Summer 2004): 147-62] creative works into the growing sea of black 147 148 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 2004 FIG. 1. Black University of Kansas students perform "The Emperor Jones" in October 1939. Reproduced by permission of the publisher from Robert Taft, The Years on Mount Oread: A revision and extension of Across the Years on Mount Oread (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1955), 155. literature and art. Newspapers such as the sities left their distinct mark on the New Ne, Topeka Plaindealer, the Iowa Bystander, and the gro arts and letters movement. Omaha Monitor, along with Opportunity and As scores of black men returned from World Crisis magazines, artistically and politically War I, they and many other blacks began to inspired black students at KU, UMN, UI, and articulate a new militancy. Ifwhites in the United UNL to behave, dress, and research issues rel, States thought that they would continue to ig, evant to black people like never before. Na, nore blacks' political, social, cultural, and eco, tional black fraternity and sorority publications nomic concerns and contributions, they were such as Alpha Kappa Alpha's Ivy Leaf pro' wrong. An editorial in the Messenger, a black vided young people the opportunity to pub, socialist magazine, said it best when it an, lish their creative works. literary scholars and nounced, "As among other peoples, the New historians largely ignore such publications, yet Crowd [Negro] must be composed of young these sources offer a different view of the work men who are educated, radical, and fearless .... produced by those associated with various New The New Crowd would have no armistice with Negro arts and letters movements outside lynch law; no truce with Jim,Crowism, and Harlem. In fact, black students and alumni disfranchisement; no peace until the Negro did not simply follow the lead of black per, receives his complete social, economic, and forming and visual artists in Harlem. These political justice."z This and other New Negro students created their own movement replete philosophies permeated the minds of black with its own poetry, music, and means of ex, students at UI, UMN, KU, UNL, and other pression. Black students from all four univer, universities. To a small degree, the very pres, BLACK UNIVERSITY STUDENTS IN THE MIDWEST, 1914-1940 149 ence of these black students on predominantly movement came to a "sputtering end." Still white college and university campuses signaled others, such as Cheryl Wall, argue for a more their endorsement of one of the basic tenets of generously broad periodization, especially if New Negroism-to demonstrate, consciously historians take into account the works of or unconsciously, that they were whites' intel~ Harlem Renaissance women.6 A recent addi~ lectual equals. ' tion to the literature, an examination of the When Alain Locke's anthology, The New NAACP in the 1920s, seeks to completely Negro: An Interpretation, appeared in 1925, reconceptualize the New Negro movement as those blacks who subscribed to the black the civil rights movement of the Jazz Age, intelligentsia's New Negro philosophies finally ranging roughly from 1919to 1930. While such had their printed manifesto. Of course, in ear~ a classification is a bit of a stretch, it does lier decades Booker T. Washington, William capture the idea that blacks have continually Pickens, and a growing number of Black N a~ sought to live on their own social, political, tionalist and black socialist magazines had used religious, economic, and artistic terms. Harlem the term "New Negro," but this term took on may have very well been the "Cultural Capi~ new meaning for blacks during and after World tal" for a number of black ethnic groups, but War I. "In the last decade," opened Locke's historian Mark R. Schneider reminds us that essay in the first section, "something beyond "to understand African Americans in the the watch and guard of statistics has happened 1920s, we must get off the A train to Harlem in the life of the American Negro."3 Locke and head out of Manhattan to points west and asserted that the "Old Negro" and the so~called south."7 Negro problem had largely been a charge of For historians who conceptualize the New the "sociologist, philanthropist, and race Negro arts and letters movement by the cre~ leader." Indeed, the Old Negro was a myth, "a ative arts and literature produced at the time, creature of moral debate, historical contro~ or the move of many black intellectuals or versy" and a perpetuation of historical fiction.4 working people to the political left, the Chi~ "The day of 'aunties,' 'uncles,' and 'mammies'" cago arts and letters movement deserves as was gone, and now many blacks demanded much attention as Harlem's literary and po~ self~respect, self~dependence, self~expression, li tical exp losion. By 1935 Chicago emerged as and self~determination.5 The major point a black cultural hub in its own right. Although stressed by this collection of essays was that Harlem receives, and has received, the major~ black contributions to fiction, poetry, history, ity of historians' attention, some scholars have philosophy, and the dramatic, performing, and also suggested that Chicago became just as visual arts had existed for centuries. The mi~ important in producing black writers, artists, gration of southern blacks to the urban North sociologists, dancers, and Marxists.8 While just made such contributions more evident. these scholars may agree to disagree about the Despite numerous literary and historical extent to which the Chicago black arts and studies on the Harlem Renaissance, scholars letters movement was a continuation of the continue to disagree about the precise begin~ arts and letters movement in Harlem, at least ning and end of this historical period. The two points are not debatable: (1) the Chicago period that spanned from World War I to the arts and letters movement, of which a few UI Great Depression marks the Harlem Renais~ alumni were a part, lasted at least into the sance for Nathan I. Huggins. Historians David 1940s; and (2) most of Chicago's black artists Levering Lewis and Bruce Kellner, on the other engaged in dialog with those black artists as~ hand, mark the return of the 369th Infantry sociated with Harlem. Regiment in 1919 as the beginning of the The history of the New Negro arts and let~ Harlem Renaissance and the year 1934 as the ters movement, like the history of black edu~ year when the New Negro arts and letters cation in the United States, presses scholars 150 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 2004 to think about white philanthropy and the continued after Washington's death in 1915. black arts. While scholars like Nathan I.
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