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In Vogue: Josephine Baker and Black Culture and Identity in the Jazz Age Author(S): Bettye J In Vogue: Josephine Baker and Black Culture and Identity in the Jazz Age Author(s): Bettye J. Gardner and Niani Kilkenny Source: The Journal of African American History, Vol. 93, No. 1 (Winter, 2008), pp. 88-93 Published by: Association for the Study of African American Life and History Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20064259 Accessed: 18-01-2017 01:47 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms Association for the Study of African American Life and History is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of African American History This content downloaded from 172.88.86.10 on Wed, 18 Jan 2017 01:47:48 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms SPECIAL REPORT II IN VOGUE: JOSEPHINE BAKER AND BLACK CULTURE AND IDENTITY IN THE JAZZ AGE Bettye J. Gardner and Niani Kilkenny* In commemoration of the centennial anniversary of the birth of Josephine Baker, the Humanities Council of Washington, DC, in partnership with the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture and the Embassy of France, presented on 18 November 2006 at the National Museum of Natural History IN VOGUE: Black Culture and Identity in the Jazz Age?A Symposium on the African American Presence in American Public Life. Donald Murray, chair of the Board of Directors of the District of Columbia Humanities Council, set the tone for the symposium when he stated, "There is a timelessness and personal nature to the African American struggle for. .. humanity in America and in the world." Using Josephine Baker as a metaphor for the African American experience in Paris, the symposium explored the social and cultural history of 20th century African Americans from the vantage point of the 21st century and examined the impact of three key intellectual and cultural centers of the Jazz Age: Washington, DC, Paris, and New Orleans. "In these cities," Murray declared, "African Americans individually and collectively used culture and identity to be remembered, acknowledged, and renewed." As Joy Austin, the Humanities Council's executive director, also commented, "African Americans provided immeasurable intellectual capital and creativity" in these cities "and defined the landscape that shaped their identity." Novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald defined the 1920s as "the Jazz Age," marking the first time that an African American contribution to the national culture had defined an era. It was the cultural outpouring of the 1920s that laid the groundwork for the momentous changes that lay ahead for African Americans. By 1920 African Americans had experienced the Reconstruction and post Reconstruction eras, World War I, an epidemic of lynchings and race riots, and the beginning of the Great Migration from the rural South to the urban North. A *Bettye J. Gardner, Program Chair for IN VOGUE, is Professor of History at Coppin State University in Baltimore, MD; Niani Kilkenny, Program Consultant for the IN VOGUE symposium, lives in Washington, DC. 88 This content downloaded from 172.88.86.10 on Wed, 18 Jan 2017 01:47:48 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Special Report II?In Vogue: Josephine Baker and Black Culture and Identity 89 long list of militant intellectual, religious, and cultural "race leaders" arose demanding immediate full civil liberties, equal rights, and an end to legal segregation. Old patterns were crumbling, and a new self-confident, self assertive, self-reliant generation was coming of age. This generation of leaders, activists, and intellectuals was characterized as the "New Negro" and their artistic expression became the New Negro Renaissance. This Renaissance led to a growth of interest in America and Europe of all things Negro.1 The District of Columbia had been considered the intellectual capital of African America since the late 19th century and was one of the key centers of the New Negro Renaissance. Distinguished Howard University Professor Alain Locke was one of the guiding forces and leading mentors of this new cultural aesthetic and in 1925 he published the groundbreaking anthology The New Negro2 Central to Locke's thinking was the mandate that the "New Negro had to smash" all of the racial, social, and psychological impediments that had long obstructed black achievement. The New Negro was a highly contested concept among African Americans promoting sharp debate about race, class, politics, and the future of the black community. Although Harlem emerged as the cultural headquarters of the New Negro Renaissance, sixteen of the twenty-five contributors to Locke's New Negro anthology were born, raised, educated, or worked in Washington, DC, or had studied at Howard University. New Orleans, home to a musically sophisticated African American community and a vibrant black Creole culture, had access to rural Mississippi blues traditions via rail yards and waterfronts. These elements combined to make New Orleans a fertile breeding ground for a new music called Jazz. Coronet player Charles "Buddy" Bolden, one of the best known of the early Jazz musicians, and Ferdinand "Jelly Roll" Morton, an accomplished pianist composer, played key roles in developing Jazz. Recordings made by Morton and his ensemble "The Red Hot Peppers" in 1926 and 1927 are generally thought to be the best recordings from that era of New Orleans Jazz.3 Paris, the "City of Lights," became a key destination for African Americans who sought a more liberal and racially integrated environment and greater intellectual and cultural freedom. The legendary Josephine Baker and New Orleans Jazz great Sidney Bechet were among the most celebrated African Americans in Paris. Bechet was one of the first Jazz musicians to spend extensive time in Paris and achieved the status of a cultural hero in France. By the time Josephine Baker made her spectacular debut in Paris in 1925, a community of several hundred African American expatriates had already made the city their home. Baker became one of the most photographed women in entertainment and, by the late 1920s, was the highest paid entertainer in Europe.4 In the symposium's first session, "Josephine and the Jazz Age," Lonnie Bunch provided in his speech the historical context for "Black America at the This content downloaded from 172.88.86.10 on Wed, 18 Jan 2017 01:47:48 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 90 The Journal of African American History Dawn of the 20th Century." Shaped by the experiences of slavery in the years before the Civil War and by Jim Crow segregation in the last decades of the 19th century, African Americans responded by building enduring communities and a dynamic leadership group that included Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Ida Wells-Barnett, Mary Church Terrell, and others. By World War I the ferment engendered by the emerging strategies of these leaders had created a more militant black population and was helping dislodge the racial and cultural stereotypes presented in minstrel shows, films such as Birth of a Nation (1915), and other popular entertainment venues.5 Literary scholar Farah Jasmine Griffin's discussion of Josephine Baker was a fascinating account of the world that Baker entered when she arrived in Paris in the 1920s. Griffin pointed out that the tradition of "black vernacular dance" was not new. When Baker reached Paris, she encountered African-descended women from the French colonies who had created an environment in which black exotic dancers were accepted and lauded. In many ways the French were excited by Baker because she fit into their stereotype of "the primitive" and "the exotic." "La Revue Negre" (1925) proved to be the turning point of her career and led to Baker's tremendous success from that point on. Josephine Baker's celebrity status even exceeded that of the leading white film actresses Mary Pickford and Gloria Swanson. Griffin's assessment of Baker's success in Europe acknowledged that in many ways it played into the French ideal of exotic beauty and over time laid the foundation for later generations of Black women entertainers such as Eartha Kitt, Tina Turner, Diana Ross, and Beyonce Knowles, who have used talent and beauty to elicit adulation from broad audiences. Griffin concluded that for generations of French people, Josephine Baker allowed them to see themselves as "liberal" in racial matters. Both Donna Wells in the first session and Deborah Macanic in the session titled "The New Negro in the New Century: The 1920s Revisited" built on Bunch's statements by providing visual insights on the Jazz Age. Explaining that the Jazz Age was not only about Jazz music (although it was at the core), Wells presented images of the period which documented particular personalities and locales and offered wonderful visuals of African Americans before and after World War I. The audience was exposed to the transformative sights, sounds, and styles that stood in stark contrast to those of the Victorian era that preceded it. Reflecting on the long expatriate history of African Americans in France dating to the 1840s, Deborah Macanic showed that the positive experiences of African American soldiers fighting with the French in World War I motivated many black veterans to remain in Europe. By the end of World War I, they were influenced by a cultural and musical style they had largely helped create such as in the case of James Reese Europe, the well-known musician from New York City whose band introduced the new Jazz sounds to Paris.
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