Harlem Renaissance
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Harlem Renaissance, also known as The New Negro Movement, was a time of outstanding creative activity and flowering of African American art, literature, music and culture in the United States. It was led primarily by the African American community based in Harlem, New York City, after World War I. The ‘spiritual coming of age’ best described the Harlem Renaissance because African Americans could now express their heritage and stand up for what they believed.
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Era's Timeline
Literary historians and academics have yet to reach a consensus as to when the period known as the Harlem Renaissance began and ended. It is unofficially recognized to have begun in 1919 and ended during the early or mid 1930s, however its ideas lived on much longer. The zenith of this “flowering of Negro literature,” as James Weldon Johnson instead preferred to call the Harlem Renaissance, is placed between 1924 when Opportunity magazine hosted a party for black writers where many white publishers were in attendance and 1929, the year of the stock market crash and the resulting economic Great Depression.
Most of the participants in this African American literary movement were descendants from a generation whose parents or grandparents had witnessed the injustices of slavery and the gains and losses that would come with Reconstruction after the American Civil War as the nation moved forward into the gradual entrenchment of Jim Crow in the Southern states and in its non-codified forms in many other parts of the country. Many of these people were part of the Great Migration out of the South and other racially stratified communities who sought relief from the worst of prejudices against them for a better standard of living in the North and Midwest regions of the United States. Others were Africans and people of African descent from the Caribbean who had come to the United States hoping for a better life. Uniting most of them was their convergence in Harlem, New York. They would make Harlem the most famous center of African American life in the United States at that time and one that would have far reaching influence on people of Africa and people of African descent across the world as well as American culture in general.
Characterizing the Harlem Renaissance was an overt racial pride that came to be represented in the idea of the New Negro who through intellect, the production of literature, art, and music could challenge the pervading racism and stereotypes from the larger white community of that era to promote progressive or socialist politics and racial integration and social integration. The creation of art and literature would serve to “uplift” the race. This became known as racial political propaganda. There would be no set style or uniting form singularly characterizing the various forms of art coming out of the Harlem Renaissance. Rather, there would be a mix of celebrating a Pan-Africanist perspective, “high-culture” and the “low-culture or low-life,” the traditional form of music to the blues and jazz, traditional and new experimental forms in literature like modernism and in poetry, for example, the new form of jazz poetry. This duality would eventually result in a number of African American artists of the Harlem Renaissance coming into conflict with conservatives in the black intelligentsia who would take issue with certain depictions of black life in whatever medium of the arts.
The Harlem Renaissance was one of primarily African American involvement and an interpersonal support system of black patrons, black owned businesses and publications, and so on. But, on the periphery it was supported by a number of white Americans who through genuine altruistic generosity, paternalism, and perhaps a degree of liberal guilt provided various forms of assistance to these black artists and opened doors for them which otherwise would have remained closed to the publicizing of their work to a larger audience outside of the black American community. This support often took the form of being a patron, a publisher, or another artist of some variety. Then, there were those whites interested in so-called “primitive” cultures, as many whites viewed black American culture at that time and wanted to see this “primitivism” in the work coming out of the Harlem Renaissance. Other interpersonal dealings between whites and blacks can be categorized as exploitive because of the desire to capitalize on the “fad,” and “fascination” of the African American being in “vogue.” This vogue of the African American would extend to Broadway, as in Porgy and Bess, and into music where in many instances white band leaders would defy racist attitude to include the best and the brightest African American stars of music and song. For blacks, their art was a way to prove their humanity and demand for equality. For a number of whites, preconceived prejudices were challenged and overcome. In the early 20th century the Harlem Renaissance emerged social and intellectual changes in the African American community. An increase of education and employment opportunities had developed by the turn of the century and later followed the Civil War.
Contributions that lead to the rise of the Harlem Renaissance included the great migration of African Americans to the northern cities, World War I, and the Great Depression.
Also, this point in time marked the beginning of mainstream publishing. Many authors began to publish novels, magazines and newspapers during this time. Publishers began to attract a great amount of attention from the nation at large. Some famous authors during this time included Jean Toomer, Jessie Fauset, Claude McKay, Zora Neale Hurston, James Weldon Johnson and Alain Locke.
The Harlem Renaissance would help lay the foundation of the Civil Rights Movement. Moreover, many black artists coming into their own creativity after this literary movement would take inspiration from it.
Forerunners of the Harlem Renaissance
Patrons
- Arthur Schomburg
- Carl Van Vechten
- A'Lelia Walker
- Max Eastman
- Charlotte Osgood Mason
Activists, intellectuals, and writers
- James Weldon Johnson, diplomat, songwriter, attorney, journalist, writer, and educator
- Marcus Garvey, activist, publisher
- Zora Neale Hurston, novelist, anthropologist
- Nella Larsen, novelist
- Langston Hughes, poet, playwright
- Jessie Fauset, editor, poet, essayist and novelist
- Countee Cullen, poet
- Claude McKay, poet, novelist
- Arna Bontemps, poet
- Richard Bruce Nugent, essayist, artist
- Jean Toomer, writer, poet
- Gwendolyn Bennett, writer
- Rudolph Fisher, writer
- Angelina Weld Grimke, poet, writer
- Ann Lane Petry, writer
- Dorothy West, writer
- Walter White, writer, activist
- Eric Walrond, writer
- Sterling Brown, writer, poet, teacher
- Richard Wright, writer
- Anne Spencer, poet
- Wallace Thurman, novelist
Artists, photographers, and sculptors
- James Latimer Allen
- Henry Bannarn
- Richmond Barthé
- Romare Bearden
- John T. Biggers
- Edward Burra
- Beauford Delaney
- Aaron Douglas
- Palmer Hayden
- Sargent Claude Johnson
- William H. Johnson
- Lois Mailou Jones
- Jacob Lawrence
- Archibald Motley
- Horace Pippin
- Nancy Elizabeth Prophet
- Augusta Savage
- Ellis Wilson
- Hale Woodruff
- James Van Der Zee
- Carl Van Vechten
- Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller
- Roy DeCarava
- Henry Ossawa Tanner
Entertainers
- Louis Armstrong
- Duke Ellington
- Pops Foster
- Fletcher Henderson
- Luis Russell
- Ethel Waters
- Paul Robeson
- Charles S. Gilpin
- Bessie Smith
- James P. Johnson
- Bill "Bojangles" Robinson
- W.C. Handy
- Eubie Blake
- Florence Mills
- Rose McClendon
- Ma Rainey
- Fats Waller
- Jelly Roll Morton
- James Reese Europe
- Josephine Baker
- Gladys Bentley
- Noble Sissle
- Oscar Michaux
- Tim Moore
- Adelaide Hall
Personalities
- Harold Jackman
- Hubert Julian
- Father Divine
- Adam Clayton Powell, Sr.
Popular entertainment
- Cotton Club
- Apollo Theater
- Small's Paradise
- Connie's Inn
- Speakeasies
- Rent party
Publications
- The Crisis
- Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life
- Amsterdam News
- Chicago Defender
- Fire!!
- Brownies's Book
By-products of the Harlem Renaissance
References
- Lewis, David Levering, ed. The portable Harlem Renaissance Reader. New York: Viking Penguin, 1995 ISBN 0-14-017036-7
- Lewis, David Levering. When Harlem Was in Vogue. New York: Penguin, 1997 ISBN 0-14-026334-9
- Hutchinson,George. The Harlem Renaisance in Black and White. New York: Belknap Press, 1997 ISBN 0-674-37263-8
- Huggins, Nathan. Harlem Renaissance. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973 ISBN 0-19-501665-3
- Watson, Steven. The Harlem Renaissance: Hub of African-American Culture, 1920-1930. New York: Pantheon Books, 1995 ISBN 0-679-75889-5
- Andrews, William L.; Foster, Frances S.; Harris, Trudier eds. The Concise Oxford Companion To African American Literature. New York: Oxford Press,2001 ISBN 1-4028-9296-9
www.africanamericans.com/HarlemRenaissance.htm www.infoplease.com/spot/bhmharlem1.html encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761566483/Harlem_Renaissance.html
- From These Roots the award-winning documentary on the Harlem Renaissance by William Greaves
External links
- A Guide to Harlem Renaissance Materials from the Library of Congress
- The Harlem Renaissance
- PAL: Harlem Renaissance: A Brief Introduction
- Drop Me Off in Harlem
- When the Negro was in Vogue
- Rhapsodies in Black
- Encyclopedia Smithsonian: Harlem Renaissance reading list
