Harlem Renaissance
c.a. 1920-1935
Boll Weevil
WWI
James Reese Europe
James Europe and his Band
Philip Payton
The fight I am making has got to be made
sooner or later and I see no better time than
now. —1905
My first opportunity came as a result of a
dispute between two landlords in West 134th
Street. To ‘get even’ one of them turned his
house over to me to fill with colored tenants. I
was successful in renting and managing this
house, and after a time I was able to induce
other landlords to... give me their houses to
manage.
Strivers’ Row
James VanDerZee
VanDerZee, Wedding Couple
VanDerZee Portrait of a Lady
Madame C.J. Walker
A’Lelia Walker
Bessie Smith
Cotton Club advertisement
Rent Party Posters
If sweet mama is running
wild,
And you are looking for a
Do-right child,
Just come around and linger.
Let your papa drink the
whisky
Let your mama drink the wine
But you come to Cora’s and
do the Georgia grind.
W.E.B. DuBois
Marcus Garvey
Carl Van Vechten
Claude McKay
Langston Hughes
Zora Neale Hurston
Countee Cullen
Alain Locke
If We Must Die
Zora Neale Hurston
Sterling Brown The Nation
(October 16, 1937)
The dedication of the town’s first lamp and the
community burial of an old mule are rich in humor
but they are not cartoons. Many incidents are
unusual, and there are narrative gaps in need of
building up. Miss Hurston’s forte is the recording
and the creation of folk-speech. . . . Though
inclined to violence and not strictly conventional,
her people are not naive primitives. About human
needs and frailties they have the unabashed
shrewdness of the Blues.
Richard Wright, New Masses
(October 5, 1937)
Miss Hurston seems to have no desire whatsoever to move
in the direction of serious fiction. . . . Miss Hurston
voluntarily continues in her novel the tradition which was
forced upon the Negro in the theater, that is, the minstrel
technique that makes the ‘white folks’ laugh. Her characters
eat and laugh and cry and work and kill; they swing like a
pendulum eternally in that safe and narrow orbit in which
America likes to see the Negro live: between laughter and
tears. . . . The sensory sweep of her novel carries no theme,
no message, no thought. In the main, her novel is not
addressed to the Negro, but to a white audience whose
chauvinistic tastes she knows how to satisfy.
Zora Neale Hurston
I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow
dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes.
I do not mind at all. I do not belong to the sobbing
school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow
has given them a lowdown dirty deal and whose
feelings are all hurt about it. . . . No, I do not weep
at the world—I am too busy sharpening my oyster
knife.
To me, bitterness is the underarm odor of wishful
weakness. It is the graceless acknowledgement of
defeat.
Langston Hughe
s
The Negro Speaks of Rivers
Walt Whitman
The little one sleeps in its cradle,
I lift the gauze and look a long time, and silently brush away flies with my hand.
The youngster and the red-faced girl turn aside up the bushy hill,
I peeringly view them from the top.
The suicide sprawls on the bloody floor of the bedroom,
I witness the corpse with its dabbled hair, I note where the pistol has fallen.
The blab of the pave, tires of carts, sluff of boot-soles, talk of the promenaders,
The heavy omnibus, the driver with his interrogating thumb, the ciank of the shod horses on the granite
floor,
The snow-sleighs, clinking, shouted jokes, pelts of snow-balls,
The hurrahs for popular favorites, the fury of rous'd mobs,
The flap of the curtain'd litter, a sick man inside borne to the hospital,
The meeting of enemies, the sudden oath, the blows and fall,
The excited crowd, the policeman with his star quickly working his passage to the centre of the crowd,
The impassive stones that receive and return so many echoes,
What groans of over-fed or half-starv'd who fall sunstruck or in fits,
What exclamations of women taken suddenly who hurry home and give birth to babes,
What living and buried speech is always vibrating here, what howls restrain'd by decorum,
Arrests of criminals, slights, adulterous offers made, acceptances, rejections with convex lips,
I mind them or the show or resonance of them---I come and I depart.
Walt Whitman
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer
grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this
air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and
their parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
Robert Johnson
Crossroads Blues
I went to the crossroads, fell down on
my knees
I went to the crossroads, fell down on
my knees
Asked the Lord above, have mercy
now, save poor Bob if you please
Standin' at the crossroads, tried to
flag a ride
Whee-hee, I tried to flag a ride
Didn't nobody seem to know me,
everybody pass me by
Standin' at the crossroads, risin’ sun
goin' down
Standin' at the crossroads baby, the
risin' sun goin' down
I believe to my soul now, po' Bob is
sinkin' down
You can run, you can run, tell my
friend Willie Brown
You can run, you can run, tell my
friend Willie Brown
That I got the crossroad blues this
mornin', Lord, baby I'm sinkin'
down
I went to the crossroad, mama, I
looked east and west
I went to the crossroad, babe, I looked
east and west
Lord, I didn't have no sweet woman,
ooh well, babe, in my distress
Bessie Smith,
Empty Bed Blues
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
I woke up this morning with a awful
aching head
I woke up this morning with a awful
aching head
My new man had left me, just a room
and a empty bed
Bought me a coffee grinder that's the
best one I could find
Bought me a coffee grinder that's the
best one I could find
Oh he could grind my coffee, cause he
had a brand new grind
He's a deep sea diver with a stroke
that can't go wrong
He's a deep sea diver with a stroke
that can't go wrong
He can stay at the bottom and his wind
holds out so long
When my bed get empty make me feel
awful mean and blue
My springs are getting rusty, sleeping
single like I do
He give me a lesson that I never had
before
When he got to teachin' me, from my
elbow down was sore
He poured my first cabbage and he made
it awful hot
When he put in the bacon, it overflowed
the pot
•
•
When you git good lovin', never go and
spread the news
Yes he'll doublecross you, and leave
you with them empty bed blues
Bessie Smith
Black Mountain blues
Out in Black Mountain a child will smack your face
I'm saying out on Black Mountain a child will smack
your face
The babies cryin' for liquor, and all the birds sing
bass
Well, those people in Black Mountain are mean as
they can be
And those people in Black Mountain are mean as
they can be
Now they uses gun powder just to sweeten up their
tea
Weary Blues
Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,
Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,
I heard a Negro play.
Down on Lenox Avenue the other night
By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light
He did a lazy sway . . .
He did a lazy sway . . .
To the tune o’ those Weary Blues.
With his ebony hands on each ivory key.
O Blues!
Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool
He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool.
Sweet Blues!
Coming from a black man’s soul.
O Blues!
Song for a Dark Girl
Way Down South in Dixie
(Break the heart of me)
They hung my black young lover
To a cross roads tree.
Way Down South in Dixie
(Bruised body high in air)
I asked the white Lord Jesus
What was the use of prayer.
Way Down South in Dixie
(Break the heart of me)
Love is a naked shadow
On a gnarled and naked tree.
Bound No’th Blues
Goin' down the road, Lawd,
Goin' down the road.
Down the road, Lawd,
Way, way down the road.
Got to find somebody
To help me carry this load.
Hates to be lonely,
Lawd, I hates to be sad.
Says I hates to be lonely,
Hates to be lonely an' sad,
But ever friend you finds seems
Like they try to do you bad.
Road's in front o' me,
Nothin' to do but walk.
Road's in front o' me,
Walk ... an' walk ... an' walk.
I'd like to meet a good friend
To come along an' talk.
Road, road, road, O!
Road, road ... road ... road,
road!
Road, road, road, O!
On the no'thern road.
These Mississippi towns ain't
Fit fer a hoppin' toad.