Harlem Renaissance: Important Features
1. Harlem Renaissance is the name given to the
period from the end of World War I and through the
middle of the 1930s Depression, during which a
group of talented African-American writers
produced a sizable body of literature in the four
prominent genres of poetry, fiction, drama, and
essays.
2. The notion of "twoness," a divided awareness of
one's identity, was introduced by W.E.B. Du Bois,
one of the founders of the National Association for
the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).and
the author of the influential book The Souls of
Black Folks (1903): "One ever feels his two-ness-an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two
unreconciled stirrings: two warring ideals in one
dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it
from being torn asunder."
3. Common themes: alienation, marginality, the
problems of writing for an elite audience.
Common characteristics: the use of folk material,
the use of the blues tradition.
4. HR was more than just a literary movement: it
included racial consciousness, "the back to Africa"
movement led by Marcus Garvey, racial integration,
the explosion of music -- particularly jazz, spirituals
and blues, painting, dramatic revues, and others.
5. Harlem Renaissance brought the black
experience clearly within the general American
cultural history.
a. Remarkable coincidences and luck
provided a sizable chunk of real estate in the heart
of Manhattan.
b. The black migration, from south to north,
changed the African-American image from rural to
urban, from peasant to sophisticate.
c. Harlem became a crossroads where black
people interacted with and expanded their contacts
internationally.
d. Harlem Renaissance profited from a spirit
of self-determination which was widespread after
W.W.I.
6. The Harlem Renaissance was significant.
a. It became a symbol and a point of
reference for everyone to recall.
b. The name, more than the place, became
synonymous with new vitality, black urbanity, and
black militancy.
c. It became a racial focal point for blacks
the world over; it remained for a time a race capital.
d. It stood for urban pluralism; Alain Locke
wrote: "The peasant, the student, the businessman,
the professional man, artist, poet, musician,
adventurer and worker, preacher and criminal,
exploiter and social outcast, each group has come
with its own special motives ... but their greatest
experience has been the finding of one another."
e. The complexity of the urban setting was
important for blacks to truly appreciate the variety
of black life. The race consciousness required that
shared experience. (from westga.edu)
1. America by Claude McKay
Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger's tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate.
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state,
I stand within her walls with not a shred
Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
And see her might and granite wonders there,
Beneath the touch of Time's unerring hand,
Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.
2. Tableau by Countee Cullen
Locked arm in arm they cross the way
The black boy and the white,
The golden splendor of the day
The sable pride of night.
From lowered blinds the dark folk stare
And here the fair folk talk,
Indignant that these two should dare
In unison to walk.
Oblivious to look and word
They pass, and see no wonder
That lightning brilliant as a sword
Should blaze the path of thunder
3. Incident by Countee Cullen
Once riding in old Baltimore,
Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,
I saw a Baltimorean
Keep looking straight at me.
I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.
Now I was eight and very small,
And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out
His tongue, and called me, 'Nigger.'
6. Harlem [Dream Deferred] by Langston
Hughes
What happens to a dream deferred?
I saw the whole of Baltimore
From May until December;
Of all the things that happened there
That's all that I remember.
4. I, Too by Langston Hughes
I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
Langston Hughes
7. STRANGE FRUIT
Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.
Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed-I, too, am America.
5. The Negro Speaks of Rivers
by Langston Hughes
I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
By Lewis Allen (AKA Abel Meeropol) /
Sung by Billy Holiday
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4ZyuULy9zs
Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.
Pastoral scene of the gallant south,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.
Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.