The Harlem
Renaissance

H
A
R
L
E
• The name given to the movement at the end of WWI
& through the middle of the 1930’s Depression
M
• Talented African-American writers produced a sizable body of literature in the four prominent genres of poetry, fiction, drama and essay.

One of the movement’s greatest influences was the American Civil War from 1861-1865.
Due to the oppression in the South, after the war blacks moved north to find cities that had many job opportunities.
This is known today as the Great Migration.
As more and more educated blacks settled in
Harlem, it became a cultural hub for African
Americans.
In 1909, the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded to advance the rights of blacks.
This gave strength to the African American society and served as the foundation for the
Harlem Renaissance.

• In the 1920s and 1930s, the
Harlem
Renaissance was a cultural movement that took place in the streets of
Harlem, New
York.
• Also known as the “Negro Movement,” it was first time in history where the public called attention to the literary achievements of African
Americans. Publishers and critics finally began to appreciate their works.

Parade – Jacob Lawrence

• From her editorial perch, Fauset became a central force in the
Renaissance, nurturing and encouraging many young writers. She was instrumental in the development and publication of both Jean Toomer and Langston
Hughes , and offered crucial help early in the careers of
Arna Bontemps and
Countee Cullen .

A Few of the Harlem Poets/Writers:
Countee Cullen
Langston Hughes
Zora Neale Hurston
Claude McKay
•

“It is becoming increasingly difficult to decide where jazz starts or where it stops, where Tin Pan Alley begins and jazz ends, or even where the borderline lies between between classical music and jazz. I feel there is no boundary line.”
~ Duke Ellington~

Earliest Jazz styles:
• Ragtime and Dixieland in
1890’s New Orleans
Has roots in:
• African rhythms
• European harmonies
• American Gospel sound
• Work songs
• Many African Americans that flourished during this time period continue to influence us today.
• Both jazz and blues music thrived in the Harlem atmosphere.
• Artists such as the trumpet player and singer, Louis Armstrong, and pianist and composer, Duke Ellington , flourished in their craft.
http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/window/media/page/0,,348657-1414956,00.html
http://www.pbs.org/jazz/beat/discography_artist_ellington.htm

The hot night spot that best evokes the glittering nights in Harlem in the 1920’s and 1930’s. While literary urbanites appreciated Harlem
Renaissance writers like Langston Hughes, more fun-loving New
Yorkers were attracted to the neighborhood's vibrant cabarets. If you were white and well-heeled, you could enjoy African American entertainers like Louis Armstrong and Bill "Bojangles" Robinson at the elegant Cotton Club.

• Harlem’s Cotton Club illustrates concretely the paradox of blackwhite relations in many northern capitals: the club was instrumental in launching the careers of many brilliant black musicians like Duke Ellington, yet it was operated by whites primarily for white audiences.
• Writes Hughes: “White people began to come in droves. For several years they packed the expensive Cotton Club on Lenox
Avenue. But I was never there, because the Cotton Club was a
Jim Crow club for gangsters and monied whites.”

• Blues is a type of music that deals with hardships of life and love.
• This type of music was typically selfaccompanied by the singer on a harmonica or a guitar.
• Singers often worked with jazz bands or pianists.
• It paved the way for boogie-woogie music which later became known as rhythm and blues.
• Jazz and Blues were originally played in the South but rapidly began spreading to the North.
“The blues ain't nothing but a good man feelin' bad”
~ Leon Redbone ~
The blues is the foundation, and it's got to carry the top.
The other part of the scene, the rock 'n' roll and the jazz, are the walls of the blues.
Luther Allison http://www.pbs.org/theblues/aboutfilms/wenders.html#null

Harlem at Night
Winold Reiss, 1924

What is Africa to me:
Copper sun or scarlet sea,
Jungle star or jungle track,
Strong bronzed men, or regal black
Women from whose loins I sprang
When the birds of Eden sang?
One three centuries removed
From the scenes his fathers loved,
Spicy grove, cinnamon tree,
What is Africa to me?
What images stand out to you?

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.
•What is the scene depicting?
•What lines of imagery symbolize the two boys?
•Why use day and night?
•How do the boys feel about one another? Are they aware of the town’s reaction?
•What is the town’s reaction?
•What does the line, “That lightning brilliant as a sword should blaze the path of thunder” mean?

•What is the narrator describing?
Once riding in old Baltimore
Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,
I saw a Baltimorean
Keep looking straight at me.
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."
I saw the whole of Baltimore
From May until December;
Of all the things that happened there
That's all that I remember.
•Is this the voice of a young narrator, or an older man?
•Who is the antagonist? What is the negative action the antagonist makes?
•How does this impact the narrator?
•What is the rhyme scheme?

• In the 1920’s, McKay’s book of poetry
(1922) became one of the first works by African-American authors to achieve national acclaim with a reputable mainstream publisher.
“Harlem Shadows”
I hear the halting footsteps of a lass
In Negro Harlem when the night lets fall
Its veil. I see the shapes of girls who pass
To bend and barter at desire's call.
Ah, little dark girls who in slippered feet
Go prowling through the night from street to street!
Through the long night until the silver break
Of day the little gray feet know no rest;
Through the lone night until the last snowflake
Has dropped from heaven upon the earth's white breast,
The dusky, half-clad girls of tired feet
Are trudging, thinly shod, from street to street.
Ah, stern harsh world, that in the wretched way
Of poverty, dishonor and disgrace,
Has pushed the timid little feet of clay,
The sacred brown feet of my fallen race!
Ah, heart of me, the weary, weary feet
In Harlem wandering from street to street.

Chapter One: My Birthplace
Like the dead-seeming, cold rocks, I have memories within that came out of the material that went to make me. Time and place have had their say.
Theme:
* Breaking away from childhood poverty in the rural South
So you will have to know something about the time and place where I came from, in order that you may interpret the incidents and directions of my life.
I was born in a Negro town. I do not mean by that the black back-side of an average town. Eatonville, Florida, is, and was at the time of my birth, a pure Negro town--charter, mayor, council, town marshal and all. It was not the first Negro community in America, but it was the first to be incorporated, the first attempt at organized self-government on the part of Negroes in America.
Eatonville is what you might call hitting a straight lick with a crooked stick.
The town was not in the original plan. It is a by-product of something else.
It all started with three white men on a ship off the coast of Brazil. They had been officers in the Union Army. When the bitter war had ended in victory for their side, they had set out for South America. Perhaps the post-war distress made their native homes depressing. Perhaps it was just that they were young, and it was hard for them to return to the monotony of everyday being after the excitement of military life, and they, as numerous other young men, set out to find new frontiers.

S
G
O
N
L
A
N
T
The Negro Speaks of Rivers
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.
I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15722
H U G H E S

Poetic Comparison: Walt Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing”
I HEAR America singing, the varied carols I hear;
Those of mechanics—each one singing his, as it should be, blithe and strong;
The carpenter singing his, as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his, as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work;
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat—the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck;
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench—the hatter singing as he stands;
The wood-cutter’s song—the ploughboy’s, on his way in the morning, or at the noon intermission, or at sundown;
The delicious singing of the mother—or of the young wife at work—or of the girl sewing or washing—
Each singing what belongs to her, and to none else;
The day what belongs to the day—
At night, the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,
Singing, with open mouths, their strong melodious songs .
*This is a CELEBRATION of work through the
“varied carols” of men and women who take pride in their occupations.
*Whitman’s poetry frequently possesses the use of catalogs, long lists of related things, people or events.
Write/answer the following questions on your own paper.
1.
What occupations are celebrated? Are they “white collar” or “blue collar”?
2.
What is the mood of Whitman’s poem?
3.
Who is building America?
4.
If Whitman were writing this poem today, what singing do you think he might hear?
5.
What jobs would be celebrated?
In what way might these songs be different?

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.
Write and answer these on your own paper.
*Hughes’ poem alludes to Whitman’s but there is a different meaning here.
1) What do people feel when they are excluded from something?
2) What does “I, Too” suggest about people who are excluded?
Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me, "Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.
3) Hughes uses metaphors to describe his feelings and hopes. What does the kitchen metaphor symbolize?
Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed–
4) What warnings are contained within the lines?
5) How would you paraphrase the title?
I, too, am America.
6) What is Hughes’ message? Is it all negative, or is some of it uplifting?