The Harlem Renaissance: The History and Legacy of Early 20th Century America’s Most Influential Cultural Movement

\*Includes pictures \*Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading \*Includes a table of contents “Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It's beyond me.” - Zora Neale Hurston The Great Migration was the name coined for the mass movement of African-Americans north of the Mason-Dixon line in the years following the Civil War and the abolition of slavery. The enormous promise of emancipation proved to be illusory for the majority of Southern blacks, whether free or formerly enslaved, and as a result, hundreds of thousand made use of their fundamental freedom to leave. This resulted in a “push” away from the South, caused by ongoing discrimination, entrenched Jim Crow laws, and increasing violence directed at blacks by whites. This was largely a movement driven by unreconciled whites who were apt to remind blacks that while slavery might have ended, equality should not be expected in its place. At the same time, another aspect was the “pull” towards seemingly greater opportunities available in the North. There were many reasons for this, but mainly it had to do with the massive industrial stimulus brought about by World War I. While the United States may not have been directly engaged in the war, the nation’s industrial resources certainly were. Initially, the jobs created by this surge in industrialization were not available to blacks because of union restrictions intended to protect white labor, but when the war broke out in Europe in 1914, this changed dramatically. European immigration to the United States evaporated almost overnight, creating an immediate labor vacuum in the United States, and although this did not mollify restive white labor unions, it nonetheless created a surge in opportunities for blacks. Generally, the Great Migration is defined as having occurred between 1916 and 1970, during which time some 6 million African-Americans left the South for various northern states, not only primarily in the Northeast, but also in large numbers to the Midwest and the West. The First Great Migration, which took place mainly between 1916 and 1930, would bring about the Harlem Renaissance. The Second Great Migration, of course, occurred due to a similar industrialization that took place between 1940 and 1970. The figure typically cited for the First Great Migration is 1.6 million, and the phenomenon was ended temporarily mainly by the Great Depression, which reduced opportunities in the North considerably and made rural lifestyles more preferable for a time. The main centers of black migration during the first wave were not only the industrial cities in the Northeast, mainly New York and Philadelphia, but also Detroit, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Cleveland and Chicago, among others. Indeed, the African-American population in New York in particular exploded during this period, from about 140,000 in 1910 to upwards of 650,000 by 1940. In Philadelphia, during the same period, the black population increased by almost 230,000, and Chicago had an even bigger increase. This migration, multi-faceted and multi-directional, found its principal cultural focus in New York City, most notably in Harlem. While many of these opportunities were made possible thanks to the work of Philip Payton, Jr., a prominent black businessman and real estate developer, no two historians will agree on the exact origins of the Harlem Renaissance, and there are few that are able to categorically agree on what the phenomenon actually represented. What is inescapable, however, is that a black cultural movement coalesced spontaneously in that area of uptown Manhattan. The Harlem Renaissance: The History and Legacy of Early 20th Century America’s Most Influential Cultural Movement examines the events and works that occurred in and around Harlem, and how they affected the world at large.

It was W.E.B. DuBois who paved the way with his essays and his magazine The Crisis, but the Harlem Renaissance was mostly a literary and intellectual movement whose best known figures include Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, and Jean Toomer.  Their work ranged from sonnets to modernist verse to jazz aesthetics and folklore, and their mission was race propaganda and pure art.  Adding to their visibility were famous jazz musicians, producers of all-black revues, and bootleggers.

Now available in paperback, this richly-illustrated book contains more than 70 black-and-white photographs and drawings.  Steven Watson clearly traces the rise and flowering of this movement, evoking its main figures as well as setting the scene—describing Harlem from the Cotton Club to its literary salons, from its white patrons like Carl van Vechten to its most famous entertainers such as Duke Ellington, Josephine Baker, Ethel Waters, Alberta Hunter, Fats Waller, Bessie Smith, and Louis Armstrong among many others.  He depicts the social life of working-class speakeasies, rent parties, gay and lesbian nightlife, as well as the celebrated parties at the twin limestone houses owned by hostess A'Lelia Walker.  This is an important history of one of America's most influential cultural phenomenons.

Publishers Weekly

This engaging portrait of the ``first self-conscious black literary constellation in American history'' mixes text with photos and artwork; a side column on each page offers quotes, poetry and pungent Harlem slang. Watson (Strange Bedfellows: The First American Avant Garde) explains the forces behind the Renaissance, from economic changes to the public advocacy of figures like W.E.B. Du Bois and Alain Locke, then offers sketches of writers prominent in this flowering. While the "New Negro'' movement was initially aimed at blacks, by the mid-1920s, ``Harlem became a commodity as driven by its audience as... by its participants. Harlemania set in.'' The role of white patrons (``Negrotarians,'' to writer and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston) prompted black writers to debate what image they should project. Watson also examines the Harlem music and club world, including the thriving gay scene. Although the crash of 1929 devastated Harlem and dispersed its luminaries, the author observes, the Renaissance was also rent by internal contradictions over questions of art, politics and racial unity. A most inviting blend of text and art. (Mar.)

Tremendous Optimism Filled The Streets Of Harlem During The Decade And A Half Following World War I. Langston Hughes, Eubie Blake, Marcus Garvey, Zora Neale Hurston, Paul Robeson, And Countless Others Began Their Careers; Afro-america Made Its First Appearance On Broadway; Musicians Found New Audiences In The Chic Who Sought Out The Exotic In Harlem's Whites-only Nightclubs; Riotous Rent Parties Kept Economic Realities At Bay; And A'lelia Walker And Carl Van Vechten Outdid Each Other With Glittering Integrated Soirees. When Harlem Was In Vogue Recaptures The Excitement Of Those Times, Displaying The Intoxicating Hope That Black Americans Could Create Important Art And Compel The Nation To Recognize Their Equality. In This Critically-acclaimed Study Of Race Assimilation, David Levering Lewis Focuses On The Creation And Manipulation Of An Arts And Belles-lettres Culture By A Tiny Afro-american Elite, Striving To Enhance Race Relations In America, And Ultimately, The Upward Mobility Of The Afro-american Masses. He Demonstrates How Black Intellectuals Developed A Systematic Program To Bring Artists To Harlem, Conducting Nation-wide Searches For Black Talent And Urging Wasp And Jewish Philanthropists (termed Negrotarians By Zora Neale Hurston) To Help Support Writers. This Extensively-researched, Fascinating Volume Reveals The Major Significance Of The Renaissance As A Movement Which Sprang Up In Harlem But Lent Its Mood To The Entire Era, And As A Culturally-vital Period Whose After-effects Continue To Add Immeasurably To The Richness And Character Of American Life.--publisher's Description. 1. We Return Fighting -- 2. City Of Refuge -- 3. Stars -- 4. Enter The New Negro -- 5. The Six -- 6. Nigger Heaven -- 7. A Jam Of A Party -- 8. The Fall Of The Manor -- 9. It's Dead Now -- Notes. David Levering Lewis. Originally Published: New York : Knopf, 1981. With New Preface. Includes Bibliographical References (p. [309]-363) And Index. It wasn't all black or white. It wasn't a vogue. It wasn't a failure. By restoring interracial dimensions left out of accounts of the Harlem Renaissance--or blamed for corrupting it--George Hutchinson transforms our understanding of black (and white) literary modernism, interracial literary relations, and twentieth-century cultural nationalism in the United States. What has been missing from literary histories of the time is a broader sense of the intellectual context of the Harlem Renaissance, and Hutchinson supplies that here: Boas's anthropology, Park's sociology, various strands of pragmatism and cultural nationalism--ideas that shaped the New Negro movement and the literary field, where the movement flourished. Hutchinson tracks the resulting transformation of literary institutions and organizations in the 1920s, offering a detailed account of the journals and presses, black and white, that published the work of the "New Negroes." This cultural excavation discredits bedrock assumptions about the motives of white interest in the renaissance, and about black relationships to white intellectuals of the period. It also allows a more careful investigation than ever before of the tensions among black intellectuals of the 1920s. Hutchinson's analysis shows that the general expansion of literature and the vogue of writing cannot be divorced from the explosion of black literature often attributed to the vogue of the New Negro--any more than the growing sense of "Negro" national consciousness can be divorced from expanding articulations and permutations of American nationality. The book concludes with the first full-scale interpretation of the landmark anthology The New Negro. A courageous work that exposes the oversimplifications and misrepresentations of popular readings of the Harlem Renaissance, this book reveals the truly composite nature of American literary culture A finalist for the 1972 National Book Award, hailed by The New York Times Book Review as'brilliant'and'provocative,'Nathan Huggins'Harlem Renaissance was a milestone in the study of African-American life and culture. Now this classic history is being reissued, with a new foreword by acclaimed biographer Arnold Rampersad. As Rampersad notes,'Harlem Renaissance remains an indispensable guide to the facts and features, the puzzles and mysteries, of one of the most provocative episodes in African-American and American history.'Indeed, Huggins offers a brilliant account of the creative explosion in Harlem during these pivotal years. Blending the fields of history, literature, music, psychology, and folklore, he illuminates the thought and writing of such key figures as Alain Locke, James Weldon Johnson, and W.E.B. DuBois and provides sharp-eyed analyses of the poetry of Claude McKay, Countee Cullen, and Langston Hughes. But the main objective for Huggins, throughout the book, is always to achieve a better understanding of America as a whole. As Huggins himself noted, he didn't want Harlem in the 1920s to be the focus of the book so much as a lens through which readers might see how this one moment in time sheds light on the American character and culture, not just in Harlem but across the nation. He strives throughout to link the work of poets and novelists not only to artists working in other genres and media but also to economic, historical, and cultural forces in the culture at large. This superb reissue of Harlem Renaissance brings to a new generation of readers one of the great works in African-American history and indeed a landmark work in the field of American Studies. It was W.E.B. DuBois who paved the way with his essays and his magazine The Crisis, but the Harlem Renaissance was mostly a literary and intellectual movement whose best known figures include Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, and Jean Toomer. Their work ranged from sonnets to modernist verse to jazz aesthetics and folklore, and their mission was race propaganda and pure art. Adding to their visibility were famous jazz musicians, producers of all-black revues, and bootleggers. Now available in paperback, this richly-illustrated book contains more than 70 black-and-white photographs and drawings. Steven Watson clearly traces the rise and flowering of this movement, evoking its main figures as well as setting the scene--describing Harlem from the Cotton Club to its literary salons, from its white patrons like Carl van Vechten to its most famous entertainers such as Duke Ellington, Josephine Baker, Ethel Waters, Alberta Hunter, Fats Waller, Bessie Smith, and Louis Armstrong, among many others. He depicts the social life of working-class speakeasies, rent parties, gay and lesbian nightlife, as well as the celebrated parties at the twin limestone houses owned by hostess A'Lelia Walker. This is an important history of one of America's most influential cultural phenomenons The decade and a half that followed World War I was a time of tremendous optimism in Harlem. It was a time when Langston Hughes, Eubie Blake, Marcus Garvey, Zora Neale Hurston, Paul Robeson, and countless others made their indelible mark on the landscape of American culture: African Americans made their first appearances on Broadway; chic supper clubs opened on Harlem streets, their whites-only audiences in search of the ultimate 'primitive' experience; riotous rent parties kept economic realties at the bay while the rich and famous of both races outdid each other with elegant, integrated soirees. David Levering Lewis makes us feel the excitement of the times as he recaptures the intoxicating hope that black Americans could now create important art--and so at last compel the nation to recognize their equality. In his new preface, the author reconsiders the Harlem Renaissance in light of criticism surrounding the exploitation of the black community. For, as he point out, 'speculations about molded the Harlem Renaissance and who found it most beneficial, as well as what it symbolized and what it actually achieved, raise questions about race relations, class hegemony, cultural assimilation, generation-gender-lifestyle tensions, and art propaganda.

From its beginnings in 1919, with soldiers returning from the Great War, to its sputtering end in 1934, with the Great Depression, the New Negro Movement in arts and letters ...

Library Journal

Editor Lewis is a noted author of several books, e.g., When Harlem Was in Vogue ( LJ 3/15/81) and, most recently, W.E.B. DuBois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919 ( LJ 8/93). This hefty tome features many significant essays, poems, and stories not readily available to all scholars that are drawn from African American journals of the period, including Opportunity, Crisis, and Fire! In his introduction, Lewis carefully explores tension within this arts and letters movement. The collected excerpts of writers like Cullen, Hurston, Hughes, McKay, DuBois, and Wright represent a balance between those Renaissance supporters and writers who ``saw the small cracks in the wall of racism that could, they anticipated, be widened through the production of exemplary racial images'' and those who ``saw art not as politics by other means--civil rights between covers or from a stage or an easel.'' This anthology will balance and enhance any modern American literature collection.-- Faye A. Chadwell, Univ. of South Carolina Lib., Columbia

The Harlem Renaissance documents the lives and interactions of the first self-conscious African-American literary constellation and chronicles the brilliant outpouring of such writers as Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, and Countee Cullen, as well as the work of artists Aaron Douglas and Richard Bruce Nugent. Steven Watson also brings to life the world that supported these figures: the forefathers of the New Negro movement, W.E.B. DuBois and Alain Locke: the flamboyant hostess of Harlem, A'Lelia Walker; such white Negrotarians as Carl Van Vechten and Muriel Draper, who headed Uptown to witness every thing from provocative nightclub revues to extravagant drag balls. The vogue for Harlem was also reflected in the golden age of jazz - one could hear Ethel Waters, Louis Armstrong, or Duke Ellington in glittering nightspots. . Street maps, sociograms, and sidebars presenting little-known details, Harlem slang, poems, and song lyrics further evoke this short-lived era. Bringing together these fascinating lives and this legendary neighborhood. The decade and a half that followed World War I was a time of tremendous optimism in Harlem. It was a time when Langston Hughes, Eubie Blake, Marcus Garvey, Zora Neale Hurston, Paul Robeson, and countless others made their indelible mark on the landscape of American culture. David Levering Lewis makes us feel the excitment of the times as he recaptures the intoxicating hope that black Americans could now create important art - and so at last compel the nation to recognize their equality. In his new preface, the author reconsiders the Harlem Renaissance in light of criticism surrounding the exploitation of the black community. From its beginnings in 1919, with soldiers returning from the Great War, to its sputtering end in 1934, with the Great Depression, the New Negro Movement in arts and letters proclaimed the experience of African American men and women in reverberating manifestos, poems of exhilerating energy and candor, and in novels, short stories, essays, and plays. This magnificent volume features a wealth of fiction and nonfiction works by 45 writers from the voices of that exuberant era. -- Publisher description "Gathering a representative sampling of the New Negro Movement's most important figures, and providing substantial introductory essays, headnotes, and brief biographical notes, Lewis' volume—organized chronologically—includes the poetry and prose of Sterling Brown, Countee Cullen, W. E. B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, James Weldon Johnson, and others."--Google Books viewed Jan. 19, 2022 A convincing historical assessment of the period, roughly the 1920's, when a considerable flowering of literary and other arts occurred among black Americans. It does not shy away from encompassing and attempting to explain the often contradictory aspects of the Black psyche and behavior. HARLEM SNAPSHOTS 1928. Harlem occupied less than two square miles of northern Manhattan, composed of a rough triangle bounded to the west by St. Nicholas Avenue, running from 114th Street to 156th Street, and to the east by the East River. An analysis of the black American cultural renaissance of the 1920's. Covers political figures, painters and sculptors, jazzmen and musical comedy What made Harlem special was not that it was bawdy and tended to epitomize the most sordid aspects of the Jazz Age.