The Harlem Renaissance
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What is it?
The Harlem Renaissance is the name given to the
period from the end of World War I (1919) to the
middle of the 1930s Depression, during which
time a group of talented African-American artists,
musicians, writers, and thinkers produced a sizable
contribution to American culture, expressing
themselves through:
• Intellectual Dialogue
• Literary and Artistic Creation
• Blues and Jazz
• Dance and Musical Theater
Where is Harlem?
The Island of Manhattan
New York City is on Manhattan Island
Neighborhoods
Where was the HR centered?
• Centered in the
Harlem district of
New York City, the
New Negro
Movement (as it
was called at the
time) had a major
influence across the
Unites States and
even the world.
What was the district like?
Harlem is vicious
Modernism. BangClash.
Vicious the way it's made,
Can you stand such beauty.
So violent and transforming.
- Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones)
What did the HR include?
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Racial Consciousness
The “Back to Africa” Movement
Racial Integration
Music - esp. Jazz, Ragtime, Spirituals, and Blues
Painting and Sculpture
Dancing
Dramatic Revues
Novels, Plays, and Poetry
How does the Harlem Renaissance
connect to the Great Migration?
• The economic opportunities of the era, especially those
brought on by World War I, triggered a widespread
migration of Black Americans from the rural south to
the industrial centers of the north - and especially to
New York City.
• In New York and other cities, black Americans
explored new opportunities for intellectual and social
freedom.
• Black American artists, writers, and musicians began
to use their talents to work for civil rights and obtain
equality.
As described by Intellectual Alain Locke:
• “Harlem has become the greatest Negro community the
world has known--without counterpart in the South or in
Africa. But beyond this, Harlem represents the Negro's
latest thrust towards Democracy.”
• “Here in Manhattan is not merely the largest Negro
community in the world, but the first concentration in
history of so many diverse elements of Negro life …. In
Harlem, life is seizing upon its first chances for group
expression and self- determination. It is – or promises to
be – a race capital.”
“I had an overwhelming desire to see
Harlem. More than Paris, or the
Shakespeare country, or Berlin, or the Alps,
I wanted to see Harlem, the greatest Negro
city in the world.”
- Langston Hughes, The Big Sea
How did it impact history?
• Helped to redefine how Americans and the world
understood African American culture
• Encouraged a new appreciation of folk roots and
African culture
• Integrated black and white cultures
• Marked the beginning of a black urban society
• Set the stage for the Civil Rights Movement of the
1950s and 60s
What were some common themes?
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Alienation
Marginality
Use of folk material
Use of the blues tradition
Problems of writing/creating artwork for
an elite audience (ie. white patrons)
Who do we associate with the
Harlem Renaissance?
• Intellectuals such as W.E.B. Dubois, Marcus
Garvey, and Alain Locke
• Artists such as Jacob Lawrence, Palmer
Hayden, Hale Woodruff, and Aaron Douglas
• Authors such as Langston Hughes, Zora Neale
Hurston, Claude McKay, and Countee Cullen
• Musicians such as Duke Ellington, Louis
Armstrong, Cab Calloway, and Bessie Smith
• Dancers such as Bill “Bojangles” Robinson
The Young Black Intellectuals
The Notion of “Twoness”
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 twoness - 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."
Alain Locke in The New Negro:
“So for generations in the mind of America, the
Negro has been more of a formula than a human
being - a something to be argued about, condemned
or defended, to be ‘kept down,’ or ‘in his place,’ or
‘helped up,’ to be worried with or worried over,
harassed or patronized, a social bogey or a social
burden. The thinking Negro even has been induced to
share this same general attitude, to focus his attention
on controversial issues, to see himself in the distorted
perspective of a social problem. His shadow, so to
speak, has been more real to him than his
personality.”
• The HR gave birth the
many important
publications, such as
The Crisis magazine,
edited by W. E. B.
DuBois, giving black
writers a forum where
their voices could be
heard.
The Crisis sought to use art and literature to
help build a new image for Negroes …
“All art is propaganda and
ever must be, despite the
wailing of the purists. I
stand in utter shamelessness and say that whatever
art I have for writing has
been used always for
propaganda for gaining
the right of black folk to
love and enjoy.”
- W.E.B. Du Bois, from
“Criteria of Negro Art”
Writers of the Harlem Renaissance
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Langston Hughes
Claude McKay
James Weldon Johnson
Countee Cullen
Jean Toomer
Zora Neale Hurston
James Baldwin
Langston Hughes
• Hughes is known for his
insightful, colorful, realistic
portrayals of black life in
America.
• He wrote poetry, short stories,
novels, and plays, and is known
for his involvement with the
world of jazz and the influence it
had on his writing.
• He wanted to tell the stories of
his people in ways that reflected
their actual culture, including
both their suffering and their love
of music, laughter, and language
itself.
The Negro Speaks of Rivers
(1919)
• One of Hughes's poetic innovations was to
draw on the rhythms of black musical
traditions such as jazz and blues, but “The
Negro Speaks of Rivers” recalls the heritage of
Negro spirituals in the poem's majestic
imagery and sonorous repetitions.
• Written when Hughes was only twenty as he
traveled by train across the Mississippi, the
poem is a beautiful statement of strength in the
history of black people, which Hughes
imagines stretching as far back as ancient
Egypt and further into Africa and the cradle of
civilization.
• The poem returns at the end to America in a
moment of optimistic alchemy when he sees
the "muddy bosom" of the Mississippi "turn all
golden in the sunset.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V425SdNWIJU
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.
I, too, sing America.
I, too, sing America
I am the darker brother.
(1920s)
“I, Too,” written just before
Hughes’ return to the States
from Europe and after he'd
been denied passage on a ship
because of his color, has a
contemporary feel in contrast to
the mythical dimension of “The
Negro Speaks of Rivers.” It is
powerful in its expression of
social injustice. The calm clear
statements of the 'I' have an
unstoppable force like the
progress the poem envisages.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen,“
Then.
Besides,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CUKyVrhP
gM
They'll see how beautiful I am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuRQDryS
OVQ
I, too, am America.
And be ashamed--
Cross
by Langston Hughes
My old man’s a white old man
And my old mother’s black.
If ever I cursed my white old man
I take my curses back.
If ever I cursed my black old mother
And wished she were in hell,
I’m sorry for that evil wish
And now I wish her well.
My old man died in a fine big house.
My ma died in a shack.
I wonder where I’m going to die,
Being neither white nor black?
What happens to a dream
deferred?
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?
Harlem
by Langston Hughes
Justice
by Langston Hughes
That justice is a blind goddess
Is a thing to which we black are wise.
Her bandages hide festering sores
That once perhaps were eyes.
Dreams
by Langston Hughes
Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.
The Weary Blues
http://www.y
outube.c
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James Weldon Johnson
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Author
Diplomat & Politician
Journalist & Critic
Poet & Songwriter
Anthologist
Educator
Lawyer & Early Civil
Rights Leader
Lift Every Voice
and Sing
(aka. Negro
national anthem,
first performed in
1900)
by James Weldon
Johnson
“Lift every voice and sing
Till earth and heaven ring;
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the
dark past has taught us;
Sing a song full of the hope that the
present has brought us,
Facing the rising sun of our new day
begun
Let us march on till victory is won.”
The Making of Harlem,
by James Weldon Johnson
• “To my mind, Harlem is more than a Negro community; it is
a large scale laboratory experiment in the race problem. The
statement has often been made that if Negroes were
transported to the North in large numbers the race problem
with all of its acuteness and with New aspects would be
transferred with them. Well, 175,000 Negroes live closely
together in Harlem, in the heart of New York, 75,000 more
than live in any Southern city, and do so without any race
friction. Nor is there any unusual record of crime.”
Claude McKay
America
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.
The Lynching
by Claude McKay (1890-1948)
The Incident
Countee Cullen
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.
Yet Do I Marvel
I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind
And did He stoop to quibble could tell why
The little buried mole continues blind,
Why flesh that mirrors Him must some day die,
Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus
Is baited by the fickle fruit, declare
If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus
To struggle up a never-ending stair.
Inscrutable His ways are, and immune
To catechism by a mind too strewn
With petty cares to slightly understand
What awful brain compels His awful hand.
Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:
To make a poet black, and bid him sing!
He never spoke
a word to me, And yet
Simon the Cyrenian
Speaks
He called my name; He never gave a sign
to me, And yet I knew and came. At first
I said, "I will not bear His cross upon my
back; He only seeks to place it
there Because my skin is black." But He
was dying for a dream, And He was very
meek, And in His eyes there shone a
gleam Men journey far to seek. It was
Himself my pity bought; I did for Christ
alone What all of Rome could not have
wrought With bruise of lash or stone.
James Baldwin
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Novelist
Essayist
Playwright
Poet
Social Critic
Artists of the Harlem Renaissance
• Jacob Lawrence
• Aaron Douglas
• Palmer Hayden
• Hale Woodruff
• Edward Burra
• John Henry Adams
• Lois Mailou Jones
Jacob Lawrence
• Lawrence grew up in a
settlement house in
Harlem during the
Harlem Renaissance.
• His life in Harlem, as
well as the struggle of
other Black Americans,
inspired his earliest work.
• Lawrence's parents were
among those who
migrated between 19161919, considered the first
wave of the Great
Migration.
Lawrence’s Work
• Jacob Lawrence painted his Great Migration
series during the 1940s to capture the experience
of African Americans during the 1920s
http://www.columbia.edu/itc/history/odonnell/w1
010/edit/migration/migration.html
Jacob Lawrence
Palmer Hayden
• One of the premiere artists of the African American folk
experience, as well as ordinary aspects of twentieth-century
black life
• Helped pioneer candid representations of everyday existences in
American modern art
• Incorporated African American folkloric themes and images,
which was initially more widely debated than celebrated for its
novelty
• Characterizing his work as black primitivism, his critics
denounced Hayden for his use of minstrel-like forms, which
they felt played to racist stereotypes of black people.
Hayden’s Portrayals of John Henry
Hayden’s The Subway
The Janitor Who Paints
Hayden’s The Card Game
Hayden, The Tunnel
Hale Woodruff, 1934
Hale Woodruff
Hale Woodruff
Edward Burra, 1934
Edward Burra
Study the picture for two minutes.
Form an overall impression of
the painting, then start to focus on
individual details.
Questions to think about:
1. What do you see?
2. What people do you see?
3. What objects do you see?
4. What colors do you see?
5. What actions/activities do you see?
6. How does this painting relate to the
Harlem Renaissance?
“Ascent from Ethiopia,” Lois Mailou Jones. 1932
Music of the Harlem Renaissance
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Duke Ellington
Louis Armstrong
Cab Calloway
Count Basie
Bessie Smith
Ella Fitzgerald
Billie Holiday
Josephine Baker
Harlem’s Apollo Theater
• In 1914, The Apollo was constructed on 125th Street in the
heart of Harlem. Originally, African-Americans were not
allowed in the audience.
• In 1934, the Apollo held the first live Amateur Night Hour
at the Apollo. Ella Fitzgerald was one of the first winners.
• That same year, "16 Gorgeous Hot Steppers" dazzled the
crowds with the theater's first "Colored Revue."
• In 1935, Bessie Smith made her Apollo debut, followed by
an unknown vocalist by the name of Billie Holiday who
mesmerized the audience with her undeniable style and
talent.
• Soon thereafter, the Apollo Theater became known as the
place "Where Stars are Born and Legends are Made" and
"home" to thousands of major performance artists, fans,
and patrons of the arts from around the world.
Duke Ellington
• Ellington was a jazz composer,
conductor, and performer during the
Harlem Renaissance.
• During the formative Cotton Club
years, he experimented with and
developed the style that would
quickly bring him worldwide
success. Ellington would be among
the first to focus on musical form
and composition in jazz.
• Ellington wrote over 2000 pieces in
his lifetime.
The Cotton Club
• The Duke Ellington Orchestra
was the "house" orchestra for a
number of years at the Cotton
Club. The revues featured
glamorous dancing girls,
acclaimed tap dancers, vaudeville
performers, and comics. All the
white world came to Harlem to
see the show.
• The first Cotton Club revue was
in 1923. There were two new fast
paced revues produced a year for
at least 16 years.
How do you get to Harlem?
“Take The A Train”
Billy Strayhorn for the Duke Ellington Orchestra
You must take the A train
To go to Sugar Hill way up in Harlem
If you miss the A train
You'll find you missed the quickest
way to Harlem
Hurry, get on, now it's coming
Listen to those rails a-humming
All aboard, get on the A train
Soon you will be on Sugar Hill in
Harlem
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cb2
w2m1JmCY
Louis “Satchmo”Armstrong
• Louis Armstrong was a jazz
composer and trumpet player
during the Harlem Renaissance.
• He is widely recognized as a
founding father of jazz.
• He appeared in 30 films and
averaged 300 concerts per year,
performing for both kids on the
street and heads of state.
Which do you want to hear?
• When the Saints Go Marchin’ In
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyLjbMBpGDA&feature=related
• What a Wonderful World
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2VCwBzGdPM&feature=related
• La Vie en Rose
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IJzYAda1wA&feature=related
• Mack the Knife
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgYgl4OodeY
What is Jazz?
“Man, if you gotta ask you’ll
never know.”
- Louis Armstrong
The Jazz Age
• “Jazz music is idiosyncratic by nature where the
performer creates the rhythm. There is truly no
incorrect way to play Jazz. J.A. Roger wrote, ‘Jazz
isn't just music, but also a spirit that can express
itself in almost everything.’ It was in many ways a
revolt against constraints because it was so joyous.
Typically instrumented by piano, string bass, brass,
and drums, jazz began to take charge of the new era
of music.”
– -- Kwa King, “The Jazz Age”
Bessie Smith, “Empress of the Blues”
• Bessie Smith was a famous jazz and
blues singer during the Harlem
Renaissance.
• Smith recorded with many of the
great Jazz musicians of the 1920s,
including Louis Armstrong.
• Smith was popular with both blacks
and whites
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Who6fTHJ34
Josephine Baker
• Josephine Baker fled
the racism of America
to live and perform in
France
• This scene was shot in
1927 for the French
silent movie La Revue
Des Revues
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsXyDrf9HO
0&feature=related
Billie Holiday, aka. “Lady Day”
• Legendary Jazz singer
• Known for the tagline
“Lady Sings the
Blues”
• The U2 song “Angel
of Harlem” paid
tribute to Holiday
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thSfGPZGmn
Q&feature=fvwrel
The Lindy Hop
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0BHxhUnokU
The Charleston
http://www.yo
utube.com/wat
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kp0&feature=r
elated
http://www.yo
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eature=related
Flappers in the 1920’s
• Song by Cliff Edwards 'The Sweetheart of Sigma
Chi'.
• Edwards, aka. 'Ukulele
Ike,’ was the voice of
Jiminy Cricket for the
Pinnochio movie.
• The ukulele was booming
in the 1920's.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09uIxQBCxrk
Quickstep vs. Charleston
http://ww
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6KDtr
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Dorothy Dandridge and the Nicholas Brothers,
Chattanooga Choo Choo
- Scene
from the
1941 movie Sun
Valley Serenade
Chattanooga Choo
Choo, with Glenn
Miller
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=eM
R3OnbmWkA&NR=1
Female Writers of the Harlem
Renaissance and Beyond …
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Zora Neale Hurston
Alice Walker
Toni Morrison
Maya Angelou
Zora Neale Hurston
• Zora Neale Hurston (1901-1960)
was a novelist, folklorist,
anthropologist and playwright
whose fictional and factual
accounts of black heritage are
unparalleled.
• She is the author of Tell My
Horse, Their Eyes Were Watching
God, Dust Tracks on a Road,
Mules and Men, and Mule Bone.
• $945 is the most any of her books
made.
• 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.
• In her quest, she found
herself and her history
throughout these highly
metaphorical folk-tales,
"big old lies," and the lyrical
language of song.
Mules and Men
• Mules and Men is the first
great collection of black
America's folk tales.
• In it, Hurston captures the
vernacular of the people.
• With this collection,
Hurston helped to reveal
and preserve African
American culture in the
South.
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Excerpt from Their Eyes …
“The sun was gone…It was the time to hear things
and talk. These sitters had been tongueless,
earless, eyeless conveniences all day long. Mules
and other brutes had occupied their skins. But
now, the sun and the bossman were gone, so the
skins felt powerful and human. They became lords
of sounds and lesser things. They passed nations
through their mouths. They sat in judgment” (1.4).
Alice Walker
Excerpt from The Color Purple
Shug: More than anything God love admiration.
Celie: You saying God is vain?
Shug: No, not vain, just wanting to share a good thing. I think it
pisses God off when you walk by the color purple in a field and
don't notice it.
Celie: You saying it just wanna be loved like it say in the bible?
Shug: Yeah, Celie. Everything wanna be loved. Us sing and dance,
and holla just wanting to be loved. Look at them trees. Notice
how the trees do everything people do to get attention... except
walk? [they laugh] Oh Miss Celie, I feels like singing!
[On leaving the farm
in Shug's car, shouting
to Albert]
Celie: I'm poor, black,
I might even be ugly,
but dear God, I'm here.
I'm here!
Toni Morrison
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Beloved
Sula
The Bluest Eye
Jazz
Paradise
Song of Solomon
A Mercy
“I wrote my first
novel because I
wanted to read it.”
- Toni Morrison
“The theme you choose may change or
simply elude you, but being you own story
means you can always choose the tone. It
also means that you can invent the language
to say who you are and what you mean.”
-Toni Morrison
Maya Angelou
• I Know Why the Caged
Bird Sings
• Gather Together in My
Name
• I Shall Not Be Moved
• Singin’ and Swingin’ and
Makin’ Merry Like
Christmas
• All God’s Children Need
Traveling Shoes
At President Clinton’s Inauguration:
“On the Pulse of Morning”