Harlem Renaissance
DOCUMENT #1 Harlem Renaissance
Was this time period a celebration or a revolt?
A. Black Migration
Black Population Trends
| |1890s |1960s |
|Southern |90.3% |10% |
|Rural |90% |5% |
|Northern |9.7% |90% |
|Urban |10% |95% |
B. Harlem Renaissance and Migration
“The Harlem Renaissance – a complex set of political,
cultural, and artistic movements involving a variety of blacks…and black organizations…that centered mostly
in New York in the 1920s and early 1920s – was built
not only on the fact, but the significance, of black
migration in the United States. So important had this
migration become that it changed the way black people
saw themselves and their future as Americans. The
significance of this migration had even penetrated
white popular culture; In 1926, Freeman Gosden and
Charles Correll, two white men, started a radio program A southern family arriving in Chicago during World War I.
called Sam N Henry about two black men who had left (Chicago Commission on Race Relations,
the rural South to seek a better life in a northern city. The Negro in Chicago [Chicago, 1922])
By 1929, the show became Amos N Andy, one of the
most popular radio programs of all time.”
- Gerald Early, Professor of English and Afro-American Studies at Washington University in
St. Louis, Missouri
Posing in blackface for a Chicago Daily News feature in 1929, Freeman Gosden and Richard Correll were the voices behind Amos ‘n’ Andy, the most popular program on radio. The nightly radio skits helped change understandings of American racial geography while disseminating (spreading) powerful images of black southerners in the big cities of the North. (Chicago Historical Society)
C. Music…Jazz!
(1) Louis Armstrong, considered the most important improviser in
jazz, and he taught the world to swing with his songs. His 1929
recording of Ain’t Misbehavin’ introduced the use of a pop song as
material for jazz interpretation, helping set the stage for the
popular acceptance of jazz that would follow.
(2) You must take the “A” train
To go to Sugar Hill way up in Harlem
If you miss the “A” train
You’ll find you missed the quickest way to Harlem
Hurry, get on, now it’s coming
Listen to those rails a-thrumming
All aboard, get on the “A” train
Soon you will be on Sugar Hill in Harlem
- Duke Ellington, Rolling Stone
(3) “Out of the sounds of New Orleans, and the mixed heritage of its people, a new music arose. It was American music unlike – unlike anything heard in the world before. It combined the rhythm and drum beat of Africa with the instruments and heritage of Europe. It added a dash of spirituals of the black Protestant churches, and much from the talents of some black musical geniuses who could be heard din the street bands and nightclubs. It was called “Jazz.” It was truly unique. It was not African music, or European music. It was uniquely American.” - Joy Hakim, author and historian
(above, rt.) Bessie Smith, a famous jazz singer who sang with all of the great jazz musicians of her time.
D. Writers of the Harlem Renaissance
(1) “We younger Negro artists now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they aren’t, it doesn’t matter. We know we
are beautiful. And ugly too…If colored people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, their displeasure doesn’t matter either. We build our temples for tomorrow, as strong as we know how and we stand on the top of the mountain, free within ourselves.”
Langston Hughes, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” published 1926.
(2) Their Eyes Were Watching God published in 1937, is widely considered to be the first novel structured by the rich tradition of black folk forms (rather than Western texts). Zora Neale Hurston's
tale of self-realization and autonomy is composed with poetry and dialect (regional language). Many of her male critics disliked the use
of dialect but her intentions were to celebration of black female selfhood and indigenous African-American culture. Janie, the Langston Hughes
protagonist, lives through three husbands, only the last of whom
is able to understand her as a complicated human rather than property. This book not only addresses race but the women’s rights movement, as Janie's sense of womanhood is not defined by a successful marriage.
(3) Poetry by Langston Hughes
I, too, sing America. “Harlem”
I am the darker brother. What happens to a dream
They send me to eat in the deferred?
kitchen Does it dry up
When company comes, like a raisin in the sun?
But I laugh, Or fester like a sore -
And eat well, And then run?
And grow strong. Does it stink like rotten meat?
Tomorrow, Or crust and sugar over -
I’ll be at the table like a syrupy sweet?
When company comes. Maybe it just sags
Nobody’ll dare like a heavy load.
Say to me, Or does it explode?
“Eat in the kitchen,” - L.H., 1951
Then.
Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed –
I, too, am American. - L.H., 1925
E. The Dance!
The most impressive dance of the time was the Lindy Hop, it was so spectacular because it was created in Harlem by the jazz loving dancers of that time. Frankie Manning is a prime example of the ingenuity of the Lindy Hop and the fact that it became the most popular dance of its time. Frankie Manning
is a legendary, Tony-award winning dancer and choreographer who pioneered this unique American art-form. Frankie Manning is still dancing today at 94!
The Savoy was opened in 1926 by Moe Gale (M. Galewski), C. Galewski, and a Harlem real estate businessman called C. Buchanan - the ballroom's manager. The Savoy was billed as the world's most beautiful ballroom; it occupied the second floor of a building that extended along the whole block between 140th and 141st streets, and featured a large dance floor (200 feet by 50 feet), two bandstands, and a retractable stage. It swiftly became the most popular dance venue in Harlem, and many of the jazz dance crazes of the 1920s and 1930s originated there; it enjoyed a long and glittering career that lasted well into the 1950s, before a decline in its fortunes set in. This ballroom stands today…waiting for someone to bring it back to its former glory…
W.E.B. DuBois vs. Booker T. Washington
Du Bois' experience in the South caused him to reject the accommodationist methods of Booker T. Washington, and to press for public protest against racial violence and discrimination. He advocated the development of an intellectual elite, which he called the "talented tenth," of African Americans to provide leadership for the race, and argued for an aggressive strategy toward black integration into American political and economic life. As the editor of the NAACP's publication, The Crisis, for twenty-four years, Du Bois published the work of Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and other Harlem Renaissance writers as well as his own increasingly radical opinions.
W.E.B. DuBois vs. Marcus Garvey
The ideological differences between the two men are often characterized as integration vs. separatism and the merits of elite vs. working class leadership (although the latter is somewhat obscured by Garvey's pro-capitalist outlook and Du Bois' Marxism); but both in their lifetimes supported the ideas of economic nationalism, pan-Africanism, and the preservation of a black cultural heritage.
Garvey would take surprised note, when he visited The Crisis office, of the absence of visible black staff. In fact, The Crisis was largely white; as director of publications and research, Du Bois was the only African American among its early officers. This fact would soon become a weapon in the hands of a propagandist as skillful as Garvey.
At first, W.E.B. Du Bois gave tepid support to Garvey's ideas for black independence and to the idea of Garvey's Black Star Line. But by 1920 Du Bois had become deeply suspicious of Garvey's methods, ideas, and motives, and published his own damning expose of Black Star Line finances in The Crisis. The animosity between the two men became personal.
Du Bois shared Garvey's reverence for Africa, and was himself committed to the cause of African freedom. Visiting Africa in the 1920s, Du Bois wrote that his chief question was whether "Negroes are to lead in the rise of Africa or whether they must always and everywhere follow the guidance of white folk?" He organized the first Pan-African Congress in Paris in 1919 and helped coordinate other congresses in 1921, 1923, and 1927. Du Bois moved increasingly to the left in his political thinking, embracing a Marxist analysis of black labor in the United States and eventually advocating a "nation within a nation" form of black economic separatism or cooperation during the Great Depression. In 1944, in his mid-seventies, Du Bois declared that he would spend "the remaining years of [his] active life" in the fight against imperialism. He helped organize the 1945 Pan-African Congress in Manchester, England, which elected him its international president. He was dismissed from the NAACP in 1948 and became the vice chair of the Council on African Affairs, which monitored political events in Africa and supported nascent African liberation movements.
Because of his growing radicalism, Du Bois was subjected to increasing governmental restrictions and harassment, just as Garvey had been before him. In 1951, at the height of the Cold War, he was indicted under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938. Though he was acquitted, the United States government refused to issue Du Bois a passport, barring him from foreign travel until 1958. In 1960 Du Bois attended his friend Kwame Nkrumah's inauguration as the first president of Ghana; and the next year, Du Bois moved there. He became a Ghanaian citizen and died in Accra in 1963, on the eve of the March on Washington, the seminal event organized by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders.
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