History
HARLEM RENAISSANCE by William R. Nash
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The term ‘‘Harlem Renaissance’’ refers to the efflorescence of African-American cultural production that occurred in New York City in the 1920s and early 1930s. One sometimes sees Harlem Renaissance used interchangeably with ‘‘New Negro Renaissance,’’ a term that includes all African Americans, regardless of their location, who participated in this cultural revolution. Followers of the New Negro dicta, which emphasized blacks’ inclusion in and empowerment by American society, were undeniably spread throughout the nation, and most major cities had pockets of the African-American elite that W. E. B. Du Bois dubbed the ‘‘Talented Tenth.’’ Nevertheless, New York City was, arguably, the most crucial site of this movement’s development and Harlem was its nexus. The early years of the Harlem Renaissance coincided with the heyday of the Great Migration, the mass movement of African Americans from southern rural homes into major northern cities during and immediately following World War I. Blacks left the South in record numbers to escape oppression and to take advantage of urban economic opportunities. In places like Detroit and Chicago, this meant jobs in automobile manufacturing, steel, and meatpacking. In Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s (1995), Ann Douglas argues that in New York City, which lacked heavy industry, the main capital that migrants could accrue was cultural. This era did see a marked increase in output by AfricanAmerican writers, visual artists, and musicians in New York City; this sparked interest in black culture, especially among upper-middle-class white New Yorkers, who came uptown to ‘‘experience’’ black life. Their cultural tourism led to significant relationships between black artists and whites like Carl Van Vechten, who sought to promote their work. It also sustained nightclubs like the Cotton Club, a whites-only club where blacks were the staff and the entertainment. The Cotton Club,
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The term ‘‘Harlem Renaissance’’ refers to the efflorescence of African-American cultural production that occurred in New York City in the 1920s and early 1930s. One sometimes sees Harlem Renaissance used interchangeably with ‘‘New Negro Renaissance,’’ a term that includes all African Americans, regardless of their location, who participated in this cultural revolution. Followers of the New Negro dicta, which emphasized blacks’ inclusion in and empowerment by American society, were undeniably spread throughout the nation, and most major cities had pockets of the African-American elite that W. E. B. Du Bois dubbed the ‘‘Talented Tenth.’’ Nevertheless, New York City was, arguably, the most crucial site of this movement’s development and Harlem was its nexus. The early years of the Harlem Renaissance coincided with the heyday of the Great Migration, the mass movement of African Americans from southern rural homes into major northern cities during and immediately following World War I. Blacks left the South in record numbers to escape oppression and to take advantage of urban economic opportunities. In places like Detroit and Chicago, this meant jobs in automobile manufacturing, steel, and meatpacking. In Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s (1995), Ann Douglas argues that in New York City, which lacked heavy industry, the main capital that migrants could accrue was cultural. This era did see a marked increase in output by AfricanAmerican writers, visual artists, and musicians in New York City; this sparked interest in black culture, especially among upper-middle-class white New Yorkers, who came uptown to ‘‘experience’’ black life. Their cultural tourism led to significant relationships between black artists and whites like Carl Van Vechten, who sought to promote their work. It also sustained nightclubs like the Cotton Club, a whites-only club where blacks were the staff and the entertainment. The Cotton Club,
Bibliography: Davis, Thadious. Nella Larsen, Novelist of the Harlem Renaissance: A Woman’s Life Unveiled. Baton Rouge, La., 1994. Douglas, Ann. Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s. New York, 1995. An excellent study of the relationship between black and white cultural production during the Harlem Renaissance. Part 3 is dedicated entirely to the Renaissance. Huggins, Nathan Irvin. Harlem Renaissance. New York, 1973. The first full-length, detailed study of the Harlem Renaissance, Huggins’s book set the standard for understanding the period until David Levering Lewis’s When Harlem Was in Vogue appeared. Read together, the two books present the most balanced and compelling possible view of the period. Lewis, David Levering. When Harlem Was in Vogue. 2d ed. New York, 1997. A thorough treatment of the Harlem Renaissance that illuminates the tension between the middle-class origins of most Harlem Renaissance authors and their fascination with folk culture; this is considered a standard work on the period. Locke, Alain, ed. The New Negro: Voices of the Harlem Renaissance. 1925. Reprint, New York, 1997. This is the anthology of the movement; it includes representative samples of the best fiction, poetry, and essays of the Renaissance, along with visual art by Winold Reiss and Aaron Douglass. Absolutely essential to understanding the period. Lowe, John. Jump at the Sun: Zora Neale Hurston’s Cosmic Comedy. Urbana, Ill., 1994. Chapter 3 provides an excellent reading of Their Eyes Were Watching God. Rampersad, Arnold. The Life of Langston Hughes. 2 vols. New York, 1986, 1988. The best biography of one of the major figures of the Renaissance. Chapters 5 through 8 of the first volume provide an insightful account of the Renaissance and discuss Hughes’s relationship to other major figures of the period. 159