Jul 19, 2020

Article #11 of Multi-Article Series >>>>> A Short Course in African American History


The Harlem Renaissance

 

In 1925, Howard University Professor Alain Locke published The New Negro, a book that captured the spirit and that great culture awakening among the African American people that came to be known as the Harlem Renaissance.  Teeming with racial pride, this collection of poetry, essays, short stories, and art conveyed the genius of an African America determined not just to survive but to inspirt people of all races with an astounding surge of cultural creativity.  Locke’s book appeared in the midst of a especially significant time for the creative arts in African America, a period during which black musicians, poets, and visual artists of New York City’s Harlem area gave to the United States a rich outpouring of creative expression that would forever influence both the African American and the general cultural life of the United States.

 

During the 1920s, artists of African descent poured into Harlem, the community of Manhattan in New York City that had become a major destination not only for southern and northern migrants within the United States but also for immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean.  As the 1920s opened, World War I had just come to a conclusion;  significant portions of the population of the United States were tired of war, weary of old patterns and attitudes perceived as stultifying, and ready to invest their energies in activities that diverged from accepted norms.  This was the Jazz Age, the Roaring Twenties, and the Harlem Renaissance imbibed and contributed to the spirit of the times.   The Great Northern Migration had begun.  In the inner cities of the North, African American enterprises, journals, newspapers, and associations flourished.  A sense of self-awareness pervaded the black communities of America, sending many African Americans on a quest for deeper knowledge of their history, cultural origins, and ethnic identity.  There was an effort on the one hand to master skills needed to access the mainstream institutions of the United States , and on the other to assert and develop what was uniquely African American in the history of the country that black labor and talent had done so much to build.

 

There was a declining interest among black people in the United States in copying the ways of the white world, and a growing fascination in the mores of the “Negro”;  conversely, a white America that often seemed exclusively interested in controlling, dominating, and dictating the terms of cultural interaction in the United States demonstrated a lively interest in the exciting works created and showcased in Harlem.  Among whites, there was a keen interest in blues, jazz, folk tales, vernacular, and fashion evident in African America.  Among blacks, there was a surging pride in the accomplishments of their people against seemingly insurmountable odds.  New Audiences and new contributors magnified the interest in African American culture and encouraged its development in exciting new directions.

 

Works of major Harlem Renaissance figures gained publication in the publications of the National Urban League (Opportunity ) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (Crisis ).  But major mainstream publishing houses also sent forth works of African American authors to the book stores of the United States, tapping an interest among the general public in these innovations upon various literary forms.  In the course of time multiple venues gave literary life to bevy of African American poets:  Georgia Johnson Douglass, Jean Toomer, Jessie Faucet, Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and many others.  Novels and works of other works of prose poured forth from the teeming brains of artists such as Rudolf Fischer, Wallace Thurman, and Zora Neal Thurston.   Composers, musicians, and dancers such as Noble Sussie, Eubie Blake, Florence Mills, Josephine Baker, Paul Robeson, Roland Hayes, Bill (“Bojangles”) Robinson, Helmsley Winfield, Katherine Dunham , Harry T. Burleigh, and James Weldon Johnson and John Rosamond Johnson pioneered with their presentation of musical gifts to the American public.  The composition of the Johnson brothers, “Life Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” in time became the “African American National Anthem.”

 

Blues artists exploded with great force onto the American scene during the period encompassing the Harlem Renaissance;  among the most seminal were Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Clara Smith.  Jazz greats such as Ferdinand (“Jelly Roll”) Morton, Joseph (“King”) Oliver, Louis (“Satchmo”) Armstrong, Edward (“Duke”) Ellington, and Billie Holiday integrated African American work songs and blues into this vibrant new form that sent an already great gift from African America to people throughout the United States soaring to new heights.  Visual artists such as Henry Ossawa Tanner, Louis Mallou Jones, Meta Vaux Warrick, William Henry Johnson, Augusta Savage also gave creative force to art in the United States during the early to middle decades of the 20th century.

 

The Great Depression of the 1930s was not conducive to the torrid pace at which works of the Harlem Renaissance emanated during the 1920s.  But specifically African American literature, music, dance, and the visual arts would never be the same again.  And the creativity of those who rose to prominence during the Harlem Renaissance opened a pathway through which other African Americans traveled with their won creations, and inspirited all of those of any race who worked in the artistic realms where African Americans took center stage.

No comments:

Post a Comment