African-American Research Library and Cultural Center, Special Collections Resources
The Harlem Renaissance
circa 1920-1930
Beginning in the early 1900s, (particularly during the post-war period, 1920-1930) a cultural movement developed within the African American community. This movement consisted of African American social commentary, literature, art, music and dance. Contemporaries during this period referred to this movement as the "Negro Renaissance" or "The New Negro Movement". A mass movement of African-Americans into urban areas (historically known as the "Great Migration") and the rise of African American intellectuals became the two primary factors contributing to this movement's development. Harlem, a section of New York City, quickly became the central location. In time, this movement would be recognized as the Harlem Renaissance.
In 1925, one of America's most noted African American scholars, W.E.B. Du Bois acknowledged the rise and development of the Harlem Renaissance while pledging support to the writing of "all Beauty, but especially the beauty of Negro life and character; its music, its dancing, its drawing and painting, and the new birth of its literature". 1 Literary artists began to draw more upon themes related to their own cultural experiences rather than rely on older forms of traditional writings developed from another culture. Black life began to be celebrated while racial biasness was under constant attack. Negative stereotypes that belittled Blacks were challenged by a plethora of African American scholars. The embracing of African American culture instituted a school of thought among African Americans that included a sense of connectedness to their African heritage while also extending its appeal throughout the Caribbean. Caribbean writers would migrate to Harlem and enjoin the movement.
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1 Crisis, 30 (May, 1925): 8.
The Harlem Renaissance then became a universal movement of Blacks imbedded in Pan-African thought. The sentiment of the universal improvement of all African descendents was fostered out of the embracement of African culture and the celebratory praise of African American and Afro-Caribbean culture. Perhaps the Pan-African theories of black unity were best described by the Caribbean writers of the movement. Writers such as Claude Mc Kay and Marcus Garvey quickly became the primary proponents of Pan-African thought.
The effects of the Harlem Renaissance expanded far beyond the borders of the United States and the Caribbean Islands. Indeed the Harlem Renaissance reversed some of the negative ideas associated with Africa. It would also resonate into developing a universal pride of African heritage within the continent of Africa. Ideas of racial solidarity resonated throughout Africa as more countries began to rid themselves of colonial rule. These ideas would manifest themselves into a separate movement within the continent of Africa known as Negritude. Negritude moved quickly throughout Africa instilling pride in Africans of their heritage and culture. This in turn encouraged Africans to challenge both the dominance of European culture as well as colonial powers. Negritude then quickly embraced and incorporated the concept of the Universal Negro.
The Harlem Renaissance began as a movement to celebrate the African American experience in the United States while confronting the social ills of society created by racial biasness. Writers within the movement began to seek out more expressive forms of communication through thought provoking literature. The context in which these writings were based extended itself first into the Caribbean. Caribbean writers then expanded these ideas into Pan African thought which recognized universal black culture as well as the struggle for improvement by all African descendants. From these concepts, the continent of Africa would go on to develop their own movement. Negritude would
By Dr. Anthony Dixon
Curator
Virginia Key Beach Park
Miami, FL
Historic Villa Lewaro: An Architectural & Cultural Legacy of the Harlem Renaissance Era
Jazz, big bands, the blues, big automobiles and streetcars, the old Victrola, silk dresses and tuxedos, ermine and sable muffs, talented black folks recognized for the first time in American history for their beauty, their intellect, and their bravado. The Cotton Clubs, the Apollo, champagne, happy times and the saddest, gays and lesbians and a provocative air filled the night Harlem light. These are but a few images that come to mind when one thinks about the Harlem Renaissance. And, according to Alain Locke the Negro was in vogue - at least, for a while until white patrons of the arts decided that Black was no longer in vogue. There were however, two black patrons of the arts, Madam C. J. Walker (1867-1919) and her daughter, A'Lelia Walker (1885-1931) who provided an important venue for the emerging Black cultural artists of the Harlem Renaissance era.
"Villa Lewaro" in Irvington-on-the-Hudson an all-black suburb filled with doctors, teachers, entrepreneurs, musicians, elected officials and attorneys, was Madam C. J. Walker's "dream house" and was one of the most significant, exciting, and prolific icons of the Harlem Renaissance era. Designed in the Italian Renaissance Revival style this luxurious 34-room mansion was regarded as the "finest home ever owned by an American Negro 2." At a cost of $250,000, which was considerable for that time, it was an imposing structure. This two-story palatial palace was symmetrical in design with equal wings on each side of the main entrance. The stately circular entrance porch featured eight slim, two-story columns, each topped with classical volute, Ionic capitals. A huge chandelier hung at the entrance and greeted the guest with the elegance of an Italian "palacio". At the roof level above the entrance was a balustrade typical to the Italian Renaissance Rival style. The roof of the mansion was shaped like a low pyramid covered in tile with a deep overhang supported by ornamental brackets.Attached and off to one side was a "porte cochere", a large covered entrance porch through which Madam Walker could park her vehicles or continue to the garage in the rear. On the second level above the "porte cochere" were a veranda and an enclosed sunroom probably off the master suite. Each window of this room had an attached balustrade. The front windows of the private, second level were tall and elegant with decorative iron railed balconies supported on decorative brackets. On the first level windows and openings were all arched.
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2 "Hall of Fame," Ebony Magazine, Feb. 1956, 25
Villa "Lewaro", Carson Anderson
The interiors of this cream colored mansion matched the elegance of the exterior and were furnished with Hepplewhite furniture, an Estey pipe organ and a twenty-four-carat gold-plated piano. A tall Queen Anne-style desk trimmed in green and gold and embellished with chinoiserie graced the Walker mansion. Handed down through the generations of the Walker family it is one of the few remaining pieces existing today 3. One can only imagine the opulence and grandeur bestowed upon Madam Walker's family and guests.
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3 New York Times, May 8, 2003, "Unpacking Harlem History", by Peter Hellman
Madam C.J. Walker was one of the earliest Black entrepreneurs in the country. She made her fortune in hair growth and care products for African American women. She was born Sarah Breedlove in 1867 on a former plantation in Delta, Louisiana to two sharecroppers and former slaves. In A'Lelia Bundles book, On Her Own Ground, she said of her great-great-grandmother, Madam Walker was "a pioneer of the modern cosmetics industry and the founder of the Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company, Madam Walker created marketing schemes, training opportunities and distribution strategies as innovative as those of any entrepreneur of her time.
As an early advocate of women's economic independence, she provided lucrative incomes for thousands of African American women who otherwise would have been consigned to jobs as farm laborers, washerwomen and maids. As a philanthropist, she reconfigured the philosophy of charitable giving in the black community with her unprecedented contributions to the YMCA and the NAACP. As a political activist, she dreamed of organizing her sales agents to use their economic clout to protest lynching and racial injustice. As much as any woman of the twentieth century, Madam Walker paved the way for the profound social changes that altered women's place in American society 4." Madam Walker and her daughter, A'Lelia Walker also had a profound interest in the Harlem cultural life and together they became icons in the development of the Harlem Renaissance.
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4 Bundles, A' Lelia, "On Her Own Ground"
Madam Walker was very civic-minded; business oriented and donated thousands of dollars to charity. She as did her daughter A'Lelia Walker hosted lavish weekend parties at Villa Lewaro and at their Manhattan dwelling on 136th Street. A'Lelia named the townhouse "The Dark Tower" after Countee Cullen's column by that name in Opportunity. Her parties however had a distinctly gay ambience, which was fun, intellectually stimulating and classy, but at the same time a point of contention for some in the Harlem African American community. The "salon" became a showcase or stage for Black performing artists, painters, sculptors, and musicians. Writer Zora Neale Hurston, Alain Locke, Wallace Thurman, writer and artist Richard Bruce Nugent and other Black intellectuals of the Harlem Renaissance cultural world came to discuss their work among each other. It was a place to network with white beneficiaries, intellectuals and other creative minds of the era such as Carl Van Vechten American writer, photographer and a patron of the Harlem Renaissance. Painter Aaron Douglas, W. E. B. DuBois, and Langston Hughes were also frequent guests at the Walker salons. To demonstrate her love and appreciation of their work A'Lelia had the words of Countee Cullen's poems and Langston Hughes' "The Weary Blues" inscribed on the salon walls. Blues singer Alberta Hunter was said to have visited Villa Lewaro.
In 1916, Madam Walker turned to Vertner Woodson Tandy, (1885-1949) to design Villa Lewaro. Tandy had in the previous year redesigned her former residence and business center housed in two adjacent Federal Regency Revival-style row houses in Harlem into one. Tandy was probably the foremost African American architect practicing in New York City during the first half of the twentieth century and is believe to be the first registered African American architect in the state of New York 5. He began his professional training at Tuskegee Institute in 1902 where he studied under Booker T. Washington. Later, as a student at Cornell University, Tandy championed African American literary and intellectual achievement. In 1906, he among six other Black students became founding members of the Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, the first African American fraternity in the country.
In his New York City architectural practice he brought several other note worthy Black architects into his firm such as George Washington Foster Jr. (1866-1923). Foster later became a partner establishing the firm of Tandy & Foster. In 1908, Foster became the second African American licensed to practice architecture in the state of New Jersey 6. Tandy cultivated important patrons at an early point in his career, securing high profile commissions such as the Saint Philip's Protestant Episcopal Church on West 134th Street, in 1911. This English Gothic Revival-style church signaled, symbolically the transformation of Harlem from a predominately white to a predominately Black community. It had the reputation of being the "wealthiest Negro church in the country
Today, in an era of a second Harlem Renaissance where African Americans are attempting to landmark Harlem's historic buildings there are only a few buildings remaining that are important African American sites significant to the period. Madam Walker's townhouse "Dark Tower" probably one of the most significant icons representing the contributions of African American icons Vertner Woodson Tandy, A'Lelia and the "Madam" no longer exist. Villa Lewaro in Irvington-on-the-Hudson is restored and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.
By Dr. Ralph B. Johnson
Professor in the School of Architecture
Director of the Center for Urban Redevelopment and Education (CURE) and the Center for the Conservation of Architectural and Cultural Heritage (CCACH)
Florida Atlantic University
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5 "African American Architects", A Biographical Dictionary 1865-1945, Dreck Spurlock Wilson, Editor, p. 389
6 "African American Architects", p. 156
The Harlem Renaissance: Fulfilling the Potentials of Significance
"A people's unconscious, massed for action, becomes aware
of a light in its collective darkness; a luminous phosphorescence
flitting, hovering over swampy ground caused by the spontaneous
combustion of hopes unrealized and dreams deferred."
From the poem, Emmett Till: The Shaping of a People's Dream,
By Joseph McNair, 2006
The quoted passage that introduces this essay refers to a "luminous phosphorescence" or light shining in the reservoir of the shared history and experiences amassed by a people and described by Carl Jung as their collective unconscious. What people? In this case, Africans in America who, by virtue of their forced transplantation, the development of close relationship/kinship bonds and, perhaps most importantly, the sharing of a common oppressive history, have cohered into a loosely confederated cultural group.
The imagery likens the collective unconscious of Africans in America to a wet, marshy space, prolific with certain types of growth, but resistant to cultivation; where stagnant feeling, like water full of iron-bearing clays floats the decaying detritus of personal hopes, wishes and dreams and produces the inevitable ignis fatuus of rebellion.
This flitting phosphorescent light born of the peat bogs, mud flats, marshes and swamps of the African American objective psyche, born of the suppressed rage and thwarted creativity of a subjugated people spontaneously combusts and makes itself known periodically, episodically, on the stages of the American consciousness, sometimes in cacophonous compositions of violence and upheaval (slave revolts, urban riots and protest marches), sometimes in the sweet solos, soliloquies and startling plastic and simplistic expressions (of sacred and secular art, oratory and literature).
The Harlem Renaissance was one such spontaneous combustion. The literature, art, music, dance, and social commentary of Africans in America exploded into the cultural movement that became known as "The New Negro Movement" and later as the Harlem Renaissance (1919 - 1948). Although literature, music and the plastic arts were the primary media of expression, all aspects of African American life were touched and shaped by this movement.
Harlem, as described by modern tourist guides, is a neighborhood in New York City's Manhattan borough and "… stretches from the East River to the Hudson River between 155th Street-where it meets Washington Heights-to a ragged border along the south. Central Harlem begins at 110th Street, at the northern boundary of Central Park; Spanish Harlem extends east Harlem's boundaries south to 96th Street, while in the west it begins north of Morningside Heights, which gives an irregular border west of Morningside Avenue."
It is a predominantly black neighborhood created at the turn of the 20th century when New York's black population started moving uptown into the apartment buildings and town houses abandoned by the descendents of Hendrick de Forest and the Dutch settlers of 1637. But when Ralph Ellison drolly remarked, "[w]herever Negroes live … is considered Harlem…" he was speaking to a larger truth - that Harlem was a metaphor for Black America.
Several factors may be cited as contributing to the development of the Harlem Renaissance. The first was African-American urban migration. Howard Dodson and Sylviane A. Diouf in their book, In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience, recount thirteen defining migrations that formed and transformed African America. Two of these migrations, the transatlantic slave trade and the domestic slave trades were coerced. The eleven other migrations, defined as:
Runaway Journeys, Colonization and Emigration, Haitian Immigration: Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, The Western Migration, The Northern Migration, The Great Migration, The Second Great Migration, Caribbean Migration, Return Migration to the South, Haitian Immigration and African Immigration
were in their words:
" …voluntary movements of resourceful and creative men and women, risk-takers in an exploitative and hostile environment. Their survival skills, efficient networks, and dynamic culture enabled them to thrive and spread, and to be at the very core of the settlement and development of the Americas."
John Baskerville speaks to the dramatic shift of the Africans in America between 1910 and 1920 from the rural, underdeveloped South to the big cities and industrial centers in the North and the West:
"It has been estimated that nearly 500,000 to a million African American men, women and children 'left the South before, during, and shortly after the first World War, settling in urban areas such as New York, Chicago, Detroit and other areas in the North and Midwest."
Small groups of black people as early as 1880 lived in Harlem, especially in the "Negro tenements" on West 130th Street and the area around 125th Street. In 1904, black real estate entrepreneur Phillip Payton, Jr. and his Afro-American Realty Company, almost single-handedly caused the migration of Africans from New York neighborhoods known as the Tenderloin, San Juan Hill (now the site of Lincoln Center), and Hell's Kitchen, buying up foreclosures and renting or selling them to black folk.
In 1907, St. Philip's Episcopal Church, one of several black churches to move uptown, purchased a block of buildings on West 135th Street to rent to members of its congregation.
During World War I, black laborers were actively recruited to leave the southern United States and work in thinly staffed northern factories, whose labor forces were depleted because of the war. Many came to Harlem. By 1920, central Harlem was predominantly black.
But it was a disparate "blackness" that teemed inside of Harlem's boundaries. There were the northern-born Africans who lived in fear of white racial violence and who struggled to claim privileges and elite status due to their heritage as native New Yorkers. There were the Afro-Caribbeans who because of their family connections stabilized by extended island kinship networks transplanted to New York City sought to maintain a separate identity from other black Americans. And there were the black southerners who bought their "countrified" customs to the big city to the chagrin of blacks already there.
But few black New Yorkers fared that well in Harlem. At the turn of the twentieth century, most held unskilled jobs, and many languished in poverty. As a group they paid the highest rents in the city but had the smallest number of social and benevolent organizations to serve them. Harlem was primed for an explosion.
The second factor, trends toward reform and experimentation throughout the country and across the Atlantic, fueled the development of the "New Negro Movement/Harlem Renaissance. America at the turn of the century was awash with progressivism. The Progressive Movement was a response to the growing awareness of the many ills of American society and sought to redress the grievances created during the rapid industrial growth in the last quarter of the 19th century. America had tamed its frontier, had built great cities and mega-businesses and established an overseas empire, but not all of its citizens benefited from the new wealth, prestige, and optimism.
Progressivism was rooted in the belief that man was capable of improving the lives of all society's members. As such, it was a rejection of Herbert Spencer's Social Darwinism -the notion that the "survival of the fittest," applied to races as well as species and that a white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant triumph over all competing social groups was inevitable. During this period, America saw such social reforms as the Interstate Commerce Act (1887) and the Sherman Antitrust Act (1890). Other Progressive reforms followed in the form of a conservation movement, railroad legislation, and food and drug laws. The Progressive spirit also was evident in new amendments added to the Constitution, which provided for a new means to elect senators, protect society through prohibition and extend suffrage to women. The inability to place limitations on child labor and to address the needs of African Americans and Native Americans were conspicuous failures of the American Progressive Movement.
Across the "pond," artistic Europe in the throes of a "modernist" revolt experienced trends in thought and creativity that re-affirmed the power of human beings to create, improve, and reshape their lives and environment through science, technology and practical experimentation. And in this quest, major European artists discovered Africa and the African. Henry Louis Gates comments:
First, in the early 1890s, [Czech composer…Antonín Leopold] Dvorák declared the [Negro] spirituals to be America's first authentic contribution to world culture and urged classical composers to draw upon them to create sui generis symphonies […literally meaning of its own kind/genus or unique in its characteristics]. A decade later Pablo Picasso stumbled onto 'dusky Manikins' at an ethnographic museum and forever transformed European art, as well as Europe's official appreciation of the art from the African continent. Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon - the signature painting in the creation of Cubism - stands as a testament to the shaping influence of African sculpture and to the central role that African art played in the creation of modernism…"
While Picasso was uncharacteristically reticent about admitting the effects of this exposure on his art, his subsequent work as well as the work of Henri Matisse, Andre Derain, Amedeo Modigliani and Maurice Utrillo, among others, speaks volumes. White America's obsession with black-faced minstrelsy as a popular mode of debased theatre and dance (which ironically morphed into vaudeville and "the great white way") illustrates the carnival mirror effects of American racism reflecting trends in modernist Europe.
The third factor accounting for the explosion of black creativity that came to be known as the New Negro Movement/Harlem Renaissance was the emergence of the African American intellectual. Seminal influences in this sub-movement were historian and social scientist William Edward Burghardt Dubois, philosopher and art historian/critic, Alain Locke, black nationalist Marcus Garvey and writer/anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston.
Dubois (1868 - 1963), the first African American to graduate from Harvard College with a PhD urged African-American artists in the 1920s to create from the experiences of African-American folk life and to celebrate their ancient African cultural heritage. His book, The Souls of Black Folk, which influenced many Harlem Renaissance artists, detailed "the strange meaning of being black here in the dawning of the Twentieth Century."
Alain Leroy Locke, (1886 -1954) a Harvard graduate (graduating magna cum laude in 1907) and the first African American to be named a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, advanced the theory of "cultural pluralism," which values the uniqueness of different styles and values available within a democratic society. In his book, The New Negro: An Interpretation (1925), he championed and delineated steps toward achieving a sophisticated African American race consciousness, characterized by assertive self-confidence, poise and urbanity. Locke asserted, in the book's foreword, that African American life was "… finding a new soul."
Marcus Mosiah Garvey (1887-1940) is impressed upon African American consciousness as an important proponent of the movement that encouraged people of African descent to return to Africa. These sentiments and the impact of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and the Black Star Line infected much of the enhanced racial consciousness of the period.
Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) became the most successful and most significant black woman writer of the first half of the 20th century. Over a career that spanned more than 30 years, she published four novels, two books of folklore, an autobiography, numerous short stories, and several essays, articles and plays. A student of the "father of American Anthropology, Franz Boas, she is said to have "helped to remind the Renaissance--especially its more bourgeois members--of the richness in the racial heritage."
Sterling A. Brown, an influential writer of period, suggests that the black intelligentsia consisted of African-America n writers, poets, philosophers, historians, and artists whose expertise conveyed five central themes:
1. Africa as a source of race pride,
2. Black American heroes
3. Racial political propaganda,
4. The "Black folk" tradition, and
5. Candid self-revelation and disclosure
In a context created by the Harlem Hell fighters aka The Black Rattlers or 369th regiment, the first African-American Regiment in World War I marching up Fifth Avenue to Harlem on February 17, 1919, the organization of the first Pan African Congress by W.E.B. Du Bois, in Paris in the same month, the race riots in Washington, D.C., Chicago, Charleston, Knoxville, Omaha, and elsewhere from June to September, the founding of Marcus Garvey's Black Star Shipping Line and the first publication of Benjamin Brawley's "The Negro in Literature and Art in the United States," the Harlem Renaissance exploded into existence.
African American history, culture, identity and expression were all refined and redefined in this creative outpouring and in the process, American culture was transformed. For the first time in the nation's history, white Americans were exposed to the writing and the creative products of African-Americans.
The most famous of exponents of this movement included the forerunners, poets William Stanley Braithwaite, Paul Laurence Dunbar, the novelists Pauline Hopkins, Charles Chesnutt, James Weldon Johnson and the essayist W.E.B. Du Bois, followed by the period's brightest stars, Jean Toomer, Jessie Redman Fauset, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Paul Robeson, Countee Cullen, Marcus Garvey, Walter White, Alain Locke, Charles H. Johnson, Zora Neale Hurston, Wallace Thurman, Nella Larsen, Rudolph Fisher, Dorothy West, and Aaron Douglass.
Other writers and poets included:
Gwendolyn Bennett, Otto Leland Bohannon, Marita Bonner, Arna Bontemps, William Brathwaite, Charlotte Hawkins Brown, Sterling A. Brown, Countee Cullen, Carrie Williams Clifford, Anita Scott Coleman, James D. Corrothers, Waring Cuney, Marion Vera Cuthbert, Clarissa M. Scott Delany, Wilfrid A. Domingo, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Aloise Barbour Epperson, Rudolph Fisher, Arthur Huff Fauset, Jessie Redmon Fauset, Angelina Weld Grimke, Florence Marion Harmon, Langston Hughes, Charles S. Johnson, Helene Johnson, James Weldon Johnson, Nella Larsen, Vernon Loggins, Richard Bruce Nugent, Mary White Ovington, Esther Popel, Florence Ruffin Ridley, Anne Spencer, Gertrude Schalk, George Samuel Schuyler, Mary Church Terrell, Wallace Thurman, Eloise Bibb Thompson, Jean Toomer, Eric Walrond, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Dorothy West, Walter White, Lucian B. Watkins and Carter G. Woodson
Important playwrights, dramatists and actors of the period included:
Eulalie Spence, Randolph Edmonds, Charles Gilpin, Florence Mills, Paul Robeson, Willis Richardson, Jessie Fauset, Langston Hughes, Angelina W. Grimke, Alain Locke, Alvira Hazzard, Regina Anderson (Ursula or Ursala Trelling)
Star musicians/dancers and entertainers included:
Josephine Baker, Marion Anderson, Bennie Carter, Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong, Ferdinand "Jellyroll Morton" Lamothe, William Henry "Chick" Webb, Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington, William "Count" Basie, Noble Sissle , Eubie Blake, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Thomas Andrew Dorsey, James Reese Europe, W. C. Handy, James Fletcher Henderson, Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Paul Robeson, Cab Calloway, Hall Johnson and Bessie Smith, Alberta Hunter and Ethel Waters, Flournoy "F.E." Miller, Aubry Lyle, Adelaide Hall, Ada Ward, Lester Young, Arthur "Happy" Rhones
Outstanding visual artists of the period included:
William H. Johnson, Lois Mailou Jones, Palmer Hayden. Aaron Douglas, Malvin Gray Johnson, Laura Wheeler Waring, Richmond Barthé, Sargent Claude Johnson, Augusta Savage, James Lesesne Wells, Albert Alexander Smith, James Van Der Zee, Archibald J. Motley, Hale Woodruff and Jacob Lawrence.
The Harlem Renaissance was much more than a will-o-the-wisp phenomenon confined to artists of color on and around 125th street and 7th Avenue. It was a potent historical period of global significance where the African's stagnating affect combined with his putrid pain and suffering and self-ignited, exploded and burnt away the assumptions and misconceptions binding and stifling black aspiration and achievement. Its concussive effects were felt all over the globe.
Like the murder of Emmett Till and the weary but steadfast civil disobedience of Rosa Parks more than thirty-five years later -- events that galvanized American Africans to think and act as one people -- the Harlem Renaissance gave us much more to think about and assimilate than compositions, renderings and performances by artists planned and designed for artistic or informational effects - it gave us the power to control our potential significance!
The Harlem Renaissance served up constellations of archetypal images that speak through us, then and now; that gave our lives as a people presence and to each of us the possibility of significance. It gave us an indirect political strategy -- to use culture to press for civil rights, equality and personal freedom and created an opening in mainstream culture to absorb our good works.
By Dr. Joseph McNair
Miami Dade College
Performing and Visual Arts
The Harlem Renaissance was a time of experimentation which flourished in the performing and visual arts. It was a time when Black culture was consciously recognized in American society. Dancers, actors, painters, photographers and sculptors brought their unique talents, ideas and techniques to the artistic collective of African American culture and universal art culture of present and future generations. In a continuous atmosphere of racial prejudice, following the Civil War and Reconstruction; performing and visual artists played a key role in creating depictions of the New Negro.
The Harlem Renaissance brought African American performers to mixed audiences and Harlem's cabarets, the Cotton Club and the Savoy Ballroom attracted both Harlem residents and white New Yorkers seeking out Harlem nightlife. Josephine Baker set stages a blaze with her "Revue Negre"; while Katherine Dunham brought Caribbean, African and Latin dances to American audiences. Actors such as Paul Robeson brought depth and an African presence to "Othello", the American stage and as well as standing up for civil rights. Artist Lois Mailou Jones combined African and Haitian esthetics with her life experiences to create her own style on canvas. Aaron Douglas adopted a deliberately "primitive" style and incorporated African images in his paintings and illustrations. Sculptor Augusta Savage started with the red clay of her native Florida to creating busts of the likes of W.E.B. DuBois, Marcus Garvey and W.C. Handy.
The Harlem Renaissance also saw the foray of blacks in the movies, Black-owned film companies were the only outlet for films representing Blacks in a positive light and tackling controversial subjects and daily struggles of African Americans in America. Nevertheless they provided an outlet for Blacks to express themselves on their own terms and to provide opportunities to aspiring and established black actors, actresses, producers and screenwriters to practice their crafts. A visual history and feel of the times was immortalized through the lenses of photographers such as James Van Der Zee capturing the heart of Harlem and its inhabitants, whereas his counterpart, Carl Van Vechten focused on the famous Harlemites.
Alpert, Hollis. The Life and Times of Porgy and Bess. New York: Knopf, 1990.
Based on the novel by DuBose Heyward, the story of Porgy and Bess and life in the 1920s black ghettos, became a legendary stage production, opening on Broadway in 1935, launched countless reproductions, cla ssic songs and film productions worldwide. This edition explores the controversies, music and themes which surround this American classic.
[DMJ R 782.1 GE]
Baker, Jean-Claude. Josephine. New York: Random House, 1993.
Narrative of the life of the internationally famous performer and humanitarian, through the first-person accounts of her adopted son, stage colleagues, lovers and friends, family, servants and enemies. This edition is inscribed by the author. [DMJ R 792.7028092 BA]
Brown, Lloyd L. Lift Every Voice for Paul Robeson. New York: Freedom Associates, 1951.
Pocket-sized booklet telling of the Robeson's struggles as a blacklisted second-class citizen due to his political views, in 1950s United States. This edition is inscribed by the author.
[DMJ R B ROBESON]
Bogle, Donald. Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, & Bucks: an Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films. New York: The Viking Press, 1973.
African-Americans in the world of American films, this edition explores the different typecasts and stereotypical roles that African-American actors and actresses were limited to. The book features photographs of early actors and actresses and scenes from various movies. [DMJ R 791.43652 BO]
Charters, Ann. Nobody, the Story of Bert Williams. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1970.
Biography of the famous Harlem Renaissance comedian, singer and dancer; Bert Williams was one of the most popular comedians of his time. Documentary photographs and reproductions of his most fa mous songs are included. [DMJ R 792.0280 WI]
Du Bois, Shirley G. Paul Robeson, Citizen of the World. New York: J. Messner, 1971.
A biography of the actor and singer recognized the world over for his interpretations of various operatic roles. [DMJ R Robeson]
Dunham, Katherine. Island Possessed. Garden City: Doubleday, 1969.
Katherine Dunham's personal account of her passion for the island of Haiti: its people, culture and customs. [DMJ R 917.294 DU]
Fox, Ted. Showtime at the Apollo. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1983.
The story of the world-famous African-American theater located on Lennox Avenue in Harlem, New York. The theater propelled the careers of countless artists and has provided some of the best entertainment for over 50 years. [DMJ R 792.197471 FO]
Hammond, Bryan. Josephine Baker. London: Cape, 1988
Biography of the first Black Superstar as told through text, pictures, and ephemera supplement to narrative of this legendary performer, humanitarian, fighter, and French Medaille de la Resistance recipient. [DMJ R B BAKER]
Harlem Renaissance: Art of Black America. New York: The Studio Museum in Harlem: Harry N. Abrams, 1987.
Evolution of the Harlem Renaissance through its painters, sculptors and photographers; includes images and a chronology of the move ment. [R 704.039607 HA]
Haskins, James. Katherine Dunham. New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1982.
Biography of the world famous dancer; chronicling from her earlier days in St. Louis, Illinois, her dance company and school, to her worldwide research of dances from other cultures. This edition is signed by Dunham. [DMJ R B DUNHAM]
Horne, Lena. In Person, Lena Horne; as Told to Helen Arstein and Carlton Moss. New York: Greenberg, 1950.
Autobiography of the famous screen and stage actress/signer, Lena Horne was the first African-American woman to be signed to a term contract by the motion picture industry. This edition is inscribed by the author. [DMJ R B HORNE]
Hoyt, Edwin P. Paul Robeson: the American Othello. New York: World Publishing Company, 1967.
Biography of the college football hero who became an international star of the classical stage, as a singer and actor, primarily in Europe in the 1920s and returning to his homeland in the 1930s but still encountering the racial inequality "his people" faced on a daily basis.
[DMJ R B ROBESON]
Isaacs, Edith J.R. The Negro in the American Theatre. New York: Theatre Arts, 1947.
Chronicle of African-Americans' participation in the world of theatre, including actors, comedians, dancers and playwrights, musicians and producers have all contributed greatly to American theatre. [DMJ R 792.07 IS]
Jackson, Carlton. Hattie: The Life of Hattie McDaniel. Lanham: Madison Books, 1990.
The life of first Oscar-winning African-American actress Hattie MacDaniel, in 1939; one of many firsts MacDaniel was also the first Black woman to sing on American radio. She was also the first to appear regularly on both radio and television through the hit "Beulah." [DMJ R B MCDANIEL]
Johnson, William H. William H. Johnson, 1901-1970. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1971.
Catalog supplement to a William H. Johnson exhibit. A biography and chronology of the artist's life are included. [DPW R 759.13 JO]
Jones, Lois M. The World of Lois Mailou Jones: Meridian House International, Washington D.C., January 28-March 18, 1990. Washington D.C.: Meridian House International, 1990.
Life and work of internationally acclaimed Harlem Renaissance artist, exhibit catalog with images of her work, personal pictures and a chronology. [DMJ R 759.13 JO]
Kaiso!: Writings by and About Katherine Dunham. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005.
Scholarly articles and essays by and about Katherine Dunham: legendary dancer, choreographer, anthropologist and social activist. [AVN R B DUNHAM]
Kirschke, Amy H. Aaron Douglas: Art, Race, and the Harlem Renaissance. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1995.
A biography and images of the leading visual artists of the Harlem Renaissance, his art was used on many magazines such as The Crisis and Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life covers. [DMJ R 741.6092 DO]
Kisch, John. A Separate Cinema: Fifty Years of Black Cast Posters. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1992.
The history of African-Americans on the screen and the roles they were relegated to play as told through Black cast movie posters. [DMJ R 791.43028 KI]
Miller, Norma. Swingin' at the Savoy, the Memoir of a Jazz Dancer. Philadelphia: Temple University, 1996.
Memoir of a Norma Miller, a Savoy Ballroom Lindy Hop Champion, set in the backdrop of "the world's most beautiful ballroom" during the Harlem Renaissance. [DMJ R 792.8 MI]
Noble, Peter. The Negro in Films. London: S. Robinson, 1948.
"Examination of race relations in films particularly Hollywood's unjust treatment of the Negro." The book evaluates the evolution of the stereotypes and prejudices applied to African American on film from the days of the silent reels to the talkies and beyond. [DMJ R 791.43028 NO]
Powell, Richard J. Homecoming: the Art and Life of William H. Johnson. Washington D.C.: National Museum of Art, Smithsonian, 1991.
The tale of the life and art of William H. Johnson; starting life in South Carolina to New York's Harlem and around the world, to his tragic mental illness; includes images of the artist's works and pictures. [DMJ R 759.13 JO]
Powell, Richard J. Jacob Lawrence. New York: Rizzoli, 1992
Jacob Lawrence exhibit catalog; features an index and large images of Lawrence's color prints and a biographical essay. [DMJ R 759.13 LA]
Porter, James A. James A. Porter, Artist and Art Historian: the Memory of the Legacy. Washington D.C.: Howard University Gallery of Art, 1992.
A collective memory of the internationally exhibited artist, art collector and historian, through his works, a chronological timeline of the Porter's milestones and reflection essays by those who knew him. [DPW R 759.13 PO]
S. Hurok presents Katherine Dunham and her Company in Tropical Revue: with Bobby Capo and Dowdy Quartet. New York: Hurok Attractions, 1 945.
Theater program of the Tropical Revue by Katherine Dunham and her Company, the program includes images Dunham and drawings. [DMJ R 792.8 DU]
Waller, Thomas. Honeysuckle Rose. New York: Santly-Joy, Inc, 1938.
Music sheet featured in the MGM motion picture "Thousands Cheer," performed by Lena
Horne. [R 780.263 BINDER 17:39 ]
Willis, Deborah. Van Der Zee, Photographer, 1886-1983. New York: H.N. Abrams, 1993
The biography and work, of legendary Harlem Renaissance photographer: James Van Der Zee. [DMJ R 779.2092 WI]
Music and Musicians
Jazz and blues was considered the black music of the South. At the end of the Civil War, the majority of African Americans lived in the southern part of the United States. Because life for African Americans became increasingly difficult, they moved to the northern part of the United States, into cities such as Chicago, Cleveland, Philadelphia, and New York City. Jazz and blues were played in the nightclubs and hot spots of Harlem. White people were becoming increasingly fascinated by the black culture. Characterizing the Harlem Renaissance through music provided African Americans the opportunity to challenge the racism and stereotypes of that time period, and to promote progressive or communal politics, and racial and social integration.
African American musicians such as Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, and Ethel Waters performed at the Cotton Club. It was a famous night club in New York City that operated from 1923 to 1940. The Cotton Club generally refused to grant admission to black people. The Cotton Club helped launch the careers of Fletcher Henderson and Duke Ellington. Fletcher Henderson led the first band that played there in 1923. Duke Ellington's orchestra was the house band there from 1927 to 1931. Mr. Ellington received national exposure through radio broadcasts originating there. He recorded over 100 compositions during that era, while building the group he led for almost fifty years. In deference to Duke Ellington's request, the Cotton Club loosened up on its policy of excluding black customers. Other black musicians of the Harlem Renaissance include Louis Armstrong, Josephine Baker, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and Billie Holiday.
Abe, K., comp. Jazz Giants: A Visual Retrospective. New York: Billboard Publications, 1988.
In this book K. Abe, a graphic designer, photographer, and jazz authority assemble from archives and individual collections 350 photographs of displaying the progress and essence of jazz. Included in these photographs are Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, and Duke Ellington who performed during the Harlem Renaissance. [DMJ R 779.9784165 JA]
Calloway, Cab and Bryant Rollins. Of Minnie the Moocher & Me. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1976.
In this book Cab Calloway reveals what it is like to work with and be considered one of the geniuses of jazz. He gives insight on his experiences behind the Broadway openings and closings, and anecdotes of a jazz band on tour here and abroad. This is the story of a man who knew how to make people happy and succeeded in such places as the jazz clubs in Chicago and the Cotton Club. [DMJ R B CALLOWAY]
Cole, Maria. Nat King Cole: An Intimate Biography. New York: William Morrow & Company, Inc., 1971.
This is a story about Nat King Cole by his wife Maria Cole. She shares how Nat King Cole succeeded in spite of the odds stacked against him, such as not finding a national sponsor for his television show, yet he became the first black star to have national radio and television shows. [DMJ R B COLE]
Collier, James Lincoln. Louis Armstrong: An American Success Story. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1985.
This is a biography about Louis Armstrong as a black artist and as the greatest jazz artist of all time. He was a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance. [DMJ R B ARMSTRONG]
De Veaux, Alexis. Don't Explain: A Song of Billie Holiday. New York: Harper & Row, 1980.
Alexis De Veaux tells the story about Billie Holiday's performing experiences and her fight against a heroine addiction. She contributed to the Harlem Renaissance.
[DPW R B HOLIDAY]
Foner, Eric, ed. America's Black Past: A Reader in Afro-American History. Harper & Row, 1970.
In this selection of readings, the editor presents the facts of black history and the changing nature of black leadership and the methods of black protest. Also included in this book is a chapter on the Harlem Renaissance. [DMJ R 973.097496 FO]
Haney, Lynn. Naked at the Feast: A Biography of Josephine Baker. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1981.
Lynn Haney presents the story of Josephine Baker and how she got started and became a huge success. She performed during the Harlem Renaissance. [DMJ R B BAKER]
Hasse, John Edward. Beyond Category: The Life and Genius of Duke Ellington. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993.
Beyond Category presents new insights into Duke Ellington's personality and his business affairs. The book also contains more than 100 pictures of Mr. Ellington and his musicians. Duke Ellington was also a musician who performed during the Harlem Renaissance.
[DMJ R B ELLINGTON]
Horricks, Raymond. Count Basie and His Orchestra: Its Music and its Musicians. London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1957.
Raymond Horricks informs the reader about Count Basie and his influence on the large band of players he initiated. He starts out focusing on Count Basie and the difficulties he overcame. [DMJ R 785.42 HO]
Kirkeby, Ed. Ain't Misbehavin': The Story of Fats Waller. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1966.
Ed Kirkeby, who was Mr. Waller's manager and friend, recounts his experience with Fats Waller, who made Harlem the hub of a cultural renaissance and represents an important chapter in the history of American music. In this book is a discography of recordings by Fats Waller. [DMJ R B WALLER]
Lewis, David Levering. When Harlem Was in Vogue. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981.
This book is considered to be the first book to cover all aspects of the Harlem Renaissance, including the musical aspect. [DMJ R 700.89 LE]
Miller, Marc H, ed. Louis Armstrong: A Cultural Legacy. Seattle: Queens Museum of Art, New York in association with University of Washington Press, 1994.
More than 350 illustrations that document Louis Armstrong's life and the history of jazz are included in this book. The illustrations include drawings, paintings, photographs, posters, musical instruments, handwritten letters and manuscripts, and other memorabilia associated with the Harlem Renaissance musician. [DMJ R 781.65092 AR]
O'Meally, Robert. Lady Day: The Many Faces of Billie Holiday. New York: Arcade Publishing, 1991.
This is a pictorial biography of Billie Holiday, which presents the many looks, attitudes, and moods of Billie Holiday. [DMJ R B HOLIDAY]
Reed, Ishmael. Cab Calloway Stands In For the Moon. Flint, MI: Bamberger Books, 1986.
In this novel (37 pages) are stories about Noxon D Awful (MC of the USA) being married to Minnie D Moocher, bullying the planet Mars, and taking a septic tank to work. Somebody named Papa La Bas and his Newfoundland HooDoo 3 Cent makes the decisions. [DMJ R FIC REED]
Robeson, Paul, Jr. The Undiscovered Paul Robeson. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2001.
Paul Robeson, Jr. reveals a private side to Paul Robeson. An intimate story of how Mr. Robeson became a force of magnifice nt courage, principle, and compassion. Paul Robeson performed during the Harlem Renaissance. [SP COL R B ROBESON]
Rose, Phyllis. Jazz Cleopatra: Josephine Baker in Her Time. New York: Doubleday,1989.
Phyllis Rose portrays the glitter of Paris in the 1920s, where Josephine Baker lived and the last thirty-five years of Ms. Baker's life when she became a civil rights activist and adopted twelve children from around the world. [DMJ R B BAKER]
Russell, Ross. Bird Lives: The High Life and Hard Times of Charlie (Yardbird) Parker. New York: Charterhouse, 1973.
This is a biography of Charlie Parker, who is considered to be the first angry black man in music and the first to direct blow at the white establishment. He is known for his originality with a saxophone and is regarded as a "kinetic force in the history of blues". Charlie Parker was a musical performer during the Harlem Renaissance. [DMJ R B PARKER]
Tucker, Mark, ed. The Duke Ellington Reader. New York: Oxford University Press,1993. Duke Ellington performed during the Harlem Renaissance in glitzy nightspots. In this book Mr. Tucker documents Duke Ellington's extraordinary achievements as songwriter, composer, bandleader, and pianist. [DMJ R 781.65092 DU]
Vance, Joel. Fats Waller: His Life and Times. Chicago: Contemporary Books, Inc., 1977.
This is a story about Fats Waller, the man and the musician. After interviewing people who knew Mr. Waller, Author Joel Vance provides an inside look on Thomas "Fats" Waller's success and pleasures. Mr. Waller wrote the music for these songs: "Ain't Misbehavin", "Black and Blue", "Honeysuckle Rose", and "Squeeze Me." [DMJ R B WALLER]
Waller, Maurice and Anthony Calabrese. Fats Waller. New York: Schirmer Books, 1977.
This is a story about Fats Waller from his son's point of view. He shows how Thomas "Fats" Waller began his jazz career early as a child prodigy who was playing a piano at the age of six and how he was admired and loved in jazz groups everywhere. In this book are buzzes about "his infectious good spirits, his crazy antics as a performer, the derby hat cocked to one side, his spoofing of sappy lyrics, his ability to consume massive quantities of food and liquor, and his songs". [DMJ R B WALLER]
Watson, Steven. The Harlem Renaissance: Hub of African-American Culture, 1920-1930. New York: Pantheon Books, 1995.
In this concise and illustrative book, the author documents the lives and interactions of musicians, writers, and the work of artists during the Harlem Renaissance period. [DMJ R 700.899607 WA]
Wintz, Cary D. and Paul Finkelman. Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance, Volume 1 and Volume 2. New York: Routledge, 2004.
The Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance is a compilation of various topics and subjects that relate to the Harlem Renaissance, including music, musical theater, musicians, and singers. [SP COL R 700.899607 EN]
Literature
The Harlem Renaissance period also came to be known as the Black Literary Renaissance. One of the most recognizable attributes of the period was the flourishing publication of literary pieces by and about African Americans. It was during this time that mainstream publishers eagerly sought and published the writings. Plays, poetry, fiction and essays were published by well-known authors such as Zora Neale Hurston, Jessie Fauset, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay and Nella Larson, just to name a small few.
During this period writing became and escape for African Americans who were facing and fighting discrimination and maltreatment on a daily basis. The literature also served to promote the "New Negro" movement which aimed to increase and awareness and acknowledgement of the African connection and contributions to African American culture. The following selection of literary pieces provides an overall impression of the contributions of African American writers during the period.
Baker, Houston A., Jr. Afro-American Poetics: Revisions of Harlem and the Black Aesthetic. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988.
The author, as one of the country's foremost literary critics, examined the works of Countee Cullen, Jean Toomer, Amiri Baraka and Larry Neal in this collection of essays. [DMJ R 810.9896073 BA]
Bontemps, Arna, ed. The Harlem Renaissance Remembered. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1972.
In-depth study of the Harlem Renaissance with eyewitness accounts written by Arna Bontemp, Jean Toomer, Jessie Fauset, Nella Larsen, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and others. [DMJ R 810.989607 BO]
Brown, Sterling A. Negro in American Fiction. Washington, D.C.: The Associates in Negro Folk Education, 1937.
Brown examines the use of Negro subjects in fiction writing as well as the perspective of Negro authors writing fiction. [DPW R 813.09 BR]
Cullen, Countee. Caroling Dusk. An Anthology of Verse by Negro Poets. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1927.
This selection from the work of 38 poets including, Paul Laurence Dunbar, James Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes, Arna Bontemps, Sterling A. Brown, Jessie Faucet, Alice Dunbar Nelson, Jean Toomer, Claude McKay, W.E.B. Du Bois, and other poets of the twenties.
[DMJ R 811.508 CU]
Davis, Thadious M. Nella Larsen Novelist of the Harlem Renaissance. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1994.
An exhaustive biography of the rise and fall of this well-known Harlem Renaissance writer. [DMJ R B LARSEN]
Fauset, Jessie Redmon. The Chinaberry Tree. A Novel of American Life. New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1931.
In this third novel by Fauset the lives and loves of two generations of African-American women are explored. [DPW R 813.52 FA]
Fauset, Jessie Redmon. Comedy, American Style. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1933.
This is a tragic story of how color prejudice and racial self-hatred result in the destruction of a family. [DMJ R FIC FAUSET]
Hatch, James V. and Leo Hamalian, eds. Lost Plays of the Harlem Renaissance, 1920-1940. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1996.
This collection presents previously out-of-print and unpublished plays written during the Harlem Renaissance. [R 812.520808 LO]
Holcomb, Gary Edward. Claude McKay, Code Name Sasha: Queer Black Marxism and the Harlem Renaissance. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2007.
McKay's dedication to Communism and his nomadic transnationalism is examined in this text. [R B MCKAY]
Honey, Maureen, ed. Shadowed Dreams: Women's Poetry of the Harlem Renaissance. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1989.
An anthology of 148 poems written by thirty-four women writers including Mae V. Cowdery, Angelina Weld Grimke, and Alice Dunbar-Nelson. [DMJ R 811.520809287 SH]
Huggins, Nathan Irvin. Harlem Renaissance. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971.
This study by Professor Huggins is considered the first full assessment of Black artists and their intellectual and cultural contributions following the First World War.
[DMJ R 700.97471 HU]
Hughes, Langston. The Dream Keeper and Other Poems. New York: Knopf, 1945.
A collection of sixty poems embellished with exquisite black and white illustrations by Helen Sewell. This edition includes and inscription by Hughes. [DMJ R 811.52 HU]
Hughes, Langston. One-Way Ticket. New York: Knopf, 1949.
This collection of poems on Negro subjects earned Hughes the title of "Negro Poet Laureate." [DMJ R 811.52 HU]
Hurston, Zora Neale. Dust Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1942.
Hurston a novelist, folklorist and anthropologist writes her larger-than-life autobiography spanning from her childhood in rural Florida to international fame. [DMJ R B HURSTON]
Hurston, Zora Neale. Mules and Men. Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 1978.
In the 1930's, Zora Neale Hurston returned to her "native village" of Eatonville, Florida to record the oral histories, sermons and songs, dating back to the time of slavery, which she remembered hearing as a child. [DPW R 398.209759 HU]
Knopf, Marcy, ed. The Sleeper Wakes. Harlem Renaissance Stories by Women. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1993.
A collection of fiction written by women during the Harlem Renaissance period.
[DMJ R FIC SLEEPER]
Lewis, David Levering, ed. The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader. New York: Viking, 1994.
A collection of poems, short stories and novel excerpts from forty-five of Harlem Renaissance writers such as Jean Toomer, Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes and Jessie Redman Fauset. [DMJ R 810.80896 PO]
Martin, Tony, ed. The Poetical Works of Marcus Garvey. Dover, Mass: The Majority Press, 1983.
This text presents Garvey as more than a leader, journalist, orator and ideologist. A collection of poetic works by the great leader is presented here. [DMJ R 811.52 GA]
McKay, Claude. A Long Way from Home. New York: L. Furman, Inc., 1937.
The author's travels from Jamaica to Harlem, Europe, North Africa, Russia, and back to America is presented in this autobiography; considered one of the most militant of the writers to emerge from the New Negro movement. [DMJ R B MCKAY]
McKay, Claude. Home to Harlem. New York: Harper & Bros., 1928.
Novel of a soldier on AWOL and experiencing life in Harlem. [DMJ R FIC MCKAY]
Russell, Mariann. Melvin B. Tolson's Harlem Gallery. A Literary Analysis. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1980.
In this text the author examines Tolson's work as it relates to the Harlem. [DMJ R 811. 52 RU]
Tolson, Melvin Beaunorus. A Gallery of Harlem Portraits. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1979.
Edited by Robert M. Farnsworth this collection of poetry by Tolson interprets the characteristics of Harlem residents during the 1930s. [DMJ R 811.52 TO]
Toomer, Jean. Cane. New York: University Place Press, 1951.
The author reflects on his own life in this novel about racial tensions in the south during the 1920s. [SUD R FIC TOOMER]
Social and Political
Two figures stand out politically during the Harlem Renaissance: W.E.B. DuBois and Marcus Mosiah Garvey. The legendary feud between the two is discussed in John Henrik Clarke's book Marcus Garvey and the Vision of Africa and in Amy Jacques Garvey's book Garvey and Garveyism. Elton Fax's biography of Garvey discusses him in depth. Three books either discuss the scholar and political activist, W.E.B. DuBois, or are written by him. One of these is his third autobiography which wa s largely written in Ghana while he was there at the invitation of Kwame Nkrumah. World and Africa and Africa Its Place in Modern History both eloquently cover Africa's history and contributions to the world.
The political influence of the Caribbean within the Harlem Renaissance is represented in the works of Arthur Schomburg and George Padmore. It was the Trinidadian George Padmore and the future and first president of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, who organized the Fifth Pan-African Congress in Manchester, England in 1945. Colonial and Coloured Unity: A Programme of Action is the reprint of this congress. And, of course, the Black Puerto Rican Arthur Schomburg gained the reputation as the "Sherlock Holmes" of Black history and is best remembered as a black bibliophile, collector, and archivist of African people's history and culture. As early as 1913 in the pamphlet Racial Integrity: a Plea for the Establishment of a Chair of Negro History in our Schools and Colleges, Schomburg advocated for the establishment of a chair of Negro (Black) history at African American schools and colleges.
Other prominent political themes within the Harlem Renaissance include communism versus socialism versus capitalism versus Pan-Africanism as well as integration versus separatism. These themes can be readily seen in Hookers work on Padmore and DuBois' pamphlet to Gus Hall. Integration and separatism are discussed in works on or by Garvey, DuBois, Padmore, and A. Philip Randolph. It was Randolph, Richard Moore, and DuBois who adamantly opposed Garvey and called for his deportation. Other works within the bibliography which have strong political overtones include the poem Heritage in the book Color by Countee Cullen and Not Sacco and Vanzetti in the beautifully illustrated volume The Black Christ & Other Poems also by Cullen.
Anderson, Jervis. A Philip Randolph: A Biographical Portrait. New York: New York:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1972.
Known as the Father of the modern Civil Rights Movement, Randolph is often called Mr. Black Labor. Randolph was co-founder of the magazine The Messenger, founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, key figure in the organizing of the March on Washington and one greatest civil rights activist of the twentieth century. [ DMJ R 323.40924 RA]
Clarke, John Henrik. Marcus Garvey and the Vision of Africa. New York: Vintage Books, 1974.
Signed by the great African Centered historian John Henrik Clarke, this reader uses the extensive files of Amy Jacques Garvey and the research assistance of Robert Hill who examined government files and court records relating to Garvey. The reader begins with Garvey's life in colonial Jamaica continues through deportation and revival of his movement. [DMJ R B GARVEY]
Cullen, Countee. The Black Christ & Other Poems. New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1929.
Signed by Cullen this volume is copy number seventeen out of one hundred and twenty-eight copies printed on handmade paper. Illustrated by Charles Cullen this volume contains such poems such as Not Sacco and Vanzetti, Black Majesty and Black Christ. [DMJ R 811.52 CU]
Cullen, Countee. Color. New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1925.
This was the poet Cullen's first and cri tics say his best book. Even though Cullen did not want to be known solely as a "black poet" book contains poems like " A Brown Boy to Brown Girl", "To A Brown Girl" "To A Brown Boy" "Heritage" all of which deal with race. [DMJ R 811.52 CU]
Dubois, W.E.B. Autobiography of W.E.B. DuBois. New York: International Publishers,
1968.
Written when the author was 90 years old, Dubois took this manuscript with him to Ghana. This is his third autobiography and covers the last two decades of his life. Totally autobiographical this book is frank and offers an unique, personal commentary on the life of one the 20th century greatest minds. [DPW R 370.92 DU]
Dubois, W.E.B. On This First Day of October: Dr. W.E.B. DuBois' Application to Join the Communist Party and Gus Hall's Reply. New York: Communist Party, 196?.
In pamphlet form this letter from Dubois to Gus Hall covers his departure from the United States and his enrollment as a member of the American Communist Party. [DMJ R 335 DU]
DuBois, W.E.B. Africa-Its Place in Modern History. Girard, Kansas: Haldeman-Julius Publications, 1930.
This booklet examines the people and history of Africa and the role imperialism and colonialism played on the continent. [DMJ R 960 DU]
Dubois, W.E.B. The World and Africa. New York: Viking Press, 1947.
This book covers the contributions that Africa has made to world civilization much of which Dr. DuBois says has been deliberately withheld. In this volume he documents the important role African people have made to the world from prehistoric to modern times. [DMJ R 960 DU]
Fax, Elton. Garvey: The Story of a Pioneer Black Nationalist. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1972.
Fax an artist and illustrator devoted his life to the study of the history and culture of African peoples. With a foreword by John Henrik Clarke, "this powerful biography explores and explains a dimension of the life, mission and legacy of Garvey's life that has been neglected." [DMJ R B GARVEY]
Garvey, A. Jacques. Garvey and Garveyism. Kingston, Jamaica,: United Printers, Ltd,, 1963. Signed and edited, with an introduction and commentary by John Henrik Clarke, this biography by Amy Jacques Garvey, Garvey's second wife and mother of his two sons Julian Garvey and Marcus Garvey Jr., shows Garvey in all his dimensions. Contributors to the volume include Garvey himself, DuBois, Richard B. Moore, Kelly Miller, Henry McNeal Turner and Tony Martin. [DMJ R B GARVEY]
Hooker, James R. Black Revolutionary: George Padmore's Path from Communism to
Pan-Africanism. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1967.
This is the first major work on the great Pan-Africanist George Padmore's life. The book includes previously unpublished information on Padmore and traces his life from his birth in Trinidad, to his rise in the Communist Party, to his disenchantment with Communism finally to his embracing Pan-Africanism. [DMJ R B PADMORE]
Johnson, James Weldon. God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse. New York: The Viking Press,1927.
This fifty-six pages long book consist of an opening prayer and seven sermons from both the Old and New Testaments. Each poem is accompanied by an illustration by Aaron Douglas with the title page lettered by the calligrapher C.B. Falls. [DPW R 811.52 JO]
Johnson, James Weldon. The Books of American Negro Spirituals: including The book of American Negro spirituals and The second book of Negro spirituals. New York: Viking Press, 1940.
In these volumes Johnson discusses the origins and history of over 120 well known African American Spirituals. They include Roll Jordan, Roll, Gimme Dat Ol'-Time Religion, Swing Low Sweet Chariot, God's A-Gwinter Trouble De Water, Nobody knows De trouble I See, and Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child. [DMJ R 784.756 BO]
Locke, Alain. The New Negro. New York: Albert and Charles Boni, 1925.
Originally published as the March 1925 issue of the magazine Survey Graphic. According to Locke this volume documents the New Negro culturally and socially- and registers the transformation of the inner and outer life of the Negro in America that have so significantly taken place in the last few years. Included in this work are the essays of thirty-three other writers and Locke. [DMJ R 328 NE]
Locke, Alain. Negro Art: Past and Present. Washington, D.C. : Associates in Negro Folk Education, 1936.
Written by the critic, educator, philosopher, publisher and first African American Rhodes Scholar, this book traces African American art from its genesis in Africa, to its coverage of early artist to coverage of the future of the black art. [DPW R 709.73 LO]
Martin, Tony. Race First: The Ideological and Organizational Struggles of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1976.
Considered the leading authority on Garvey, Professor Martin has produced the classic and most comprehensive work on Garvey. The late scholar John Henrik Clarke called this work as close to a definitive study of Marcus Garvey as we have seen. [DMJ R 305.896 MA]
Miller, Kelly and Joseph R. Gay. Progress and Achievements of the Colored People. Washington, D.C., Austin Jenkins, 1913.
Leading African American educator, sociologist, and writer, Miller is remembered as a conciliator between Garvey and those who opposed him and also between Washington and DuBois followers. This handbook for self-improvement according to Miller tells the story of the wonderful advancement of the Colored Americans. [DMJ R 920 MI]
Miller, Kelly. Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights. Washington, D.C.: Austin Jenkins, 1919.
Containing over 120 pictures, outline map drawings made especially for this volume this work is considered a brilliant account of World War 1 and the important
role that Blacks played. [DMJ R 940.3 MI]
Moore, Richard B. The Name "Negro" Its Origin and Evil Use. New York: Afro-American Publishers, 1960.
Signed by the author this book, traces the comprehensive use and definition of the word negro. This was part of Moore's campaign to promote the adoption of "Afro-American" as the preferred designation of black people. [DMJ R 973 MO]
Moton, Robert R. What The Negro Thinks. London: Student Christian Movement, 192?.
Successor to Booker T. Washington at Tuskegee Institute this book aims to place on record some facts concerning the problems facing early twentieth century African Americans. The volume aims illuminate for the entire country the discrimination and problems that African Americans endure in all parts of the United States. [DMJ R 305.896073 LO]
Padmore, George. Colonial and Coloured Unity: A Programme of Action. London :
Hammersmith Bookshop, 1963.
This is a reprint of the Fifth Pan African Congress which took place in Manchester, England. Organized by George Padmore and Kwame Nkrumah the goal of this conference was to rid Africa of colonialism and imperialism. [DMJ R 320.54096 PA]
Robeson, Paul. Here I Stand. New York: Othello Associates, 1958.
The autobiography of one of the twentieth century's greatest concert singers, Phi Beta Kappa graduate, lawyer, activist and actor. This book tells the story of a voice that refused to be silenced who spoke out against segregation , discrimination, and helped lay the foundation for the civil rights movement of the 1960's. For his activism Robeson paid a dear price his passport was revoked, he was relentlessly persecuted by the U.S. government, and his artistic career destroyed within the United States. [DMJ R 301.45196 RO]
Schomburg Arthur. Racial Integrity: A Plea for the Establishment of a Chair of Negro History in our Schools and Colleges, etc. [S.l.] A.V. Bernier, [1913?]
Born in Cangrejos, Puerto Rico, it was Schomburg's private collection of books, documents, paintings, letters, playbills, prints and artifacts that became the cornerstone of The New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. This pamphlet was read before the teachers summer class at Cheney Institute, July 1913. It was a plea for the establishment of a Chair of Black History in black schools and colleges. [DMJ R 973.049607 SC]
REFERENCES
Dr. Anthony Dixon:
Crisis, 30 (May, 1925): 8.
REFERENCES
Dr. Ralph B. Johnson:
Bundles, A'Lelia, On Her Own Ground, 2007.
Crew, Spencer, Field To Factory; Afro-American Migration 1915-1940, Smithsonian Institution, 1987.
Femme Noir, A Web Portal for Women Of Color (on line) Available http://www.femmenoir.net/new/content/view/233/159/, 2007
"Hall of Fame," Ebony Magazine, Feb., 1956.
Hayward Gallery, Institute of International Visual Arts, University of California Press, Rhapsodies in Black; Art of the Harlem Renaissance, 1997.
Julien, Isaac, Looking for Langston, (VCR), San Ko Fa Film and Video, 1989.
Poppeliers, John, What Style Is it? A Guide To American Architecture, The Preservation Press, 1983.
Madam C. J. Walker, (on line) Available http://www.madamecjwalker.com/excerpt.hml. 2007
Wilson, Dreck Spurlock, Editor, African American Architects: A Biographical Dictionary 1865-1945, Routhledge, 2004.
REFERENCES
Dr. Joseph McNair:
Richard J. Powell, Re/Birth of a Nation, Rhapsodies in Black, Art of the Harlem Renaissance, (London, Hayward Gallery; London, Institute of International Visual Arts; Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, University of California Press; London, South Bank Centre, 1997).
Simon Callow, Voodoo Macbeth, Rhapsodies in Black, Art of the Harlem Renaissance, (London, Hayward Gallery; London, Institute of International Visual Arts; Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, University of California Press; London, South Bank Centre, 1997).
Jeffrey C. Stewart, Paul Robeson and the Problem of Modernism, Rhapsodies in Black, Art of the Harlem Renaissance, (London, Hayward Gallery; London, Institute of International Visual Arts; Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, University of California Press; London, South Bank Centre, 1997).
Paul Gilroy, Modern Tones, Rhapsodies in Black, Art of the Harlem Renaissance, (London, Hayward Gallery; London, Institute of International Visual Arts; Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, University of California Press; London, South Bank Centre, 1997).
Henry Louis Gates Jr., Harlem on Our Minds', Rhapsodies in Black, Art of the Harlem Renaissance, (London, Hayward Gallery; London, Institute of International Visual Arts; Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, University of California Press; London, South Bank Centre, 1997).
Amy Helene Kirschke, The Evolution of Douglas's Artistic Language, Aaron Douglas, Art, Race & The Harlem Renaissance, (Mississippi, University Press of Mississippi, 1995).
Cynthia Moody, Midonz, la Déese de la Transmutation, 1996.
Richard J. Powell, A Painter in the World: 1930-1938, Homecoming: The Art and Life of William H. Johnson, (Washington DC, Smithsonian Institution, 1991).
Evelyn Silber and Terry Friedman, 1920-1929 Portraits', Jacob Epstein, Sculpture and Drawings, (Leeds, The Henry Moore Centre for the study of sculpture; Leeds City Art Gallery, 1987).
Ellen Harkins Wheat, Jacob Lawrence: The Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman Series of 1938-1940, (Hampton, Hampton University Press; Seattle, London, University of Washington Press, 1991).
WEBSITES
Walls, George F. Swamp Gas: To Be, or Not To Be: That is the Question. [online] URL: http://userpages.umbc.edu/~frizzell/SwampGas.html
The Harlem Renaissance, [online] URL: http://www.fatherryan.org/harlemrenaissance/
Reuben, Paul, PAL: Perspectives in American Literature - A Research and Reference Guide - An Ongoing Project [online] URL:
http://web.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap9/9intro.html
Watkiss, Charmaine, The Harlem Renaissance, [online] URL: http://www.iniva.org/harlem/hren.html
Harlem Renaissance, [online] URL: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/forum/february98/harlem_2-20.html
Library of Congress, The Harlem Renaissance and the Flowering of Creativity [online] URL: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/aaohtml/exhibit/aopart7b.html
