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Harlem Renaissance
Introduction
"We return.
We return from fighting.
We return fighting.
Make way for Democracy! We saved it from France, and by the Great Jehovah,
we will save it in the United States of America, or know the reason why."
W. E. B. Du Bois, "Returning Soldiers," The Crisis , XVIII (May 1919)
Beginning in 1904, Harlem, centered around 135th Street and 5th Avenue, became a
mecca for middle-class African-Americans moving north from Hell's Kitchen, Clinton, and other
neighborhoods in New York City. Black intellectuals, writers, and other artists were among the
first inhabitants of Harlem, the home of the New Negro movement, as the literary and cultural
aspects of the renaissance came to be called.
Importantly prefigured by the writings of W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington, the
Harlem Renaissance and the New Negro movement generated an explosion of creativity unique
in its breadth and depth; it included groundbreaking work in poetry, fiction, essays, music,
dance, and theater. Earlier racism, including rashes of lynchings and officially sanctioned
murder, had forced many creative black Americans abroad—among them Josephine Baker and
Paul Robeson (later James Wright and James Baldwin would also become exiles). Black
soldiers returning home from the war were defiant in the face of white people's lack of
appreciation for their service; the U.S. Army's policy had forbidden them from marching in the
victory parade on the Champs Elysées in Paris, but the formidable 369th Regiment, better
known as the Harlem Hellfighters, marched up Fifth Avenue to Harlem on February 17, 1919.
They had served longer than any other U.S. regiment (191 days on active duty). Their
triumphant return was a point of pride for the community and stirred the rallying cry from the
political leaders of Harlem for black equality in exchange for their sacrifice. At the same time,
Marcus Garvey's Back to Africa movement inspired working-class African Americans to take
control of their lives and histories. Garvey told UNIA members, "We have a beautiful history, and
we shall create another one in the future."
The Fire
By 1926 a generation gap had formed between the founders of the Harlem Renaissance
and its younger artists. These artists rejected what they saw as the elders' censorship and
political control of their work. Several of them--Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Wallace
Thurman, Richard Bruce Nugent, Gwendolyn Bennett, and Aaron Douglas--together formed
Fire!!, an arts and literary magazine devoted to free artistic expression. Only one issue was ever
published, but it made their statement that race-conscious art must be free of particular political
agendas and must not worry about the sensitivities of white patrons.
A Cultural Awakening
By the 1920s, the black population in Manhattan had settled into the northern part of the
island known as Harlem, and included native New Yorkers, southern newcomers, and
Anglophone immigrants from the Caribbean. The combination of new black perspectives, the
experimental atmosphere of modernism, and the cosmopolitanism of New York all contributed
to the artistic flowering of black writers in this small community. Meanwhile, advances in
scholarship on black culture, supportive publishing companies, the ideological thrust of the
N.A.A.C.P., and the help, if sometimes intrusive, from white promoters and patrons like
Charlotte Mason, Carl Van Vechten, H. L. Mencken, and Fannie Hurst also created a nurturing
environment for this intensely productive period of American cultural history.
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Leadership
W. E. B. Du Bois
Du Bois, a founder of the N.A.A.C.P. and a longtime editor of its publication, The Crisis,
had worked since before the war to publish literary works by black authors and to promote racial
pride. Du Bois believed that the most "talented tenth" of the race should help uplift the AfricanAmerican masses. He encouraged the scholars, writers, and artists in the forefront of the "New
Negro" movement, a term which utilized the preferred racial designation of the day and
countered negative racial epithets.
Just as Emerson and Whitman had called for and developed a distinctly American
literature based largely on the experience of pioneering expansion across the majestic
continent, Du Bois initiated an African-American aesthetic. And just as Emerson's and
Whitman's American sublime was to be judged by American and not European standards, Du
Bois's black aesthetic was to conform to black and not white artistic values. This independent
stance opened the door for poetry and fiction influenced by Negro spirituals, blues
compositions, jazz, and African-American folklore, all cultural forms born out of a history of
oppression and cultural marginalization.
Marcus Garvey
Inspired by Booker T. Washington's life and work at the Tuskegee Institute, Marcus
Garvey established the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) on his native island of
Jamaica in 1914. Washington died before the two men could meet, but Garvey persisted in his
vision for an organization that would unite and uplift peoples of African descent throughout the
world.
In 1916, Garvey moved to Harlem and shifted the headquarters of the UNIA as well.
That same year, he solicited the cooperation and support of Du Bois. Du Bois, however, was
uninterested and the two ultimately became foes, squaring off at each other from the pages of
their respective publications.
Garvey's message of racial pride and autonomy found a willing membership among
Harlem's citizens, and the UNIA hosted a mass meeting in 1920, bringing together thousands of
delegates from the UNIA's many branches in the U.S. and abroad.
Garvey and his followers, often attired in military dress, planned a return to Africa and
professed African nationalism. Drafted in 1920, the "Declaration of Rights of the Negro Peoples
of the World" proclaimed, "We believe in the freedom of Africa for the Negro people of the world,
and by the principle of Europe for the Europeans and Asia for the Asiatics; we also demand
Africa for the Africans at home and abroad."
J. Edgar Hoover distrusted Garvey and actively pursued him, eventually charging him with mail
fraud. Following his trial, imprisonment, and 1927 deportation, Garvey's support declined
significantly. The UNIA continued to exist, but did not command the attention it did during the
first half of the decade.
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Literature
Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes was pre-eminent among the poets of Harlem. Having come from a
nationally prominent family with roots in abolitionism and traveled widely by the age of twentythree, Hughes confidently took up Du Bois's call to create an uplifting, race-conscious literature.
In his poems Hughes both affirmed the beauty and decried the injustice in black people's
struggle to survive, often infusing his optimism with a detached bitterness. In The Weary Blues,
a poetry collection published in 1926, Hughes uses the rhythms and improvisational flourishes
of blues and jazz in poems that capture glimpses of life in Harlem.
Countee Cullen
Countee Cullen was a more classically-inclined poet whose powerful lyricism was
influenced by Keats, Tennyson, and Edna St. Vincent Millay. Though he wrote poems that
addressed racial prejudice and injustice, he saw himself as a poet who wrote about his
experience-one that happened to be black. Known for the precision of his form and for his ability
to speak volumes in a few words, Cullen's poems in Color convey feelings ranging from rage to
admiration to wonder and awe.
Visual Art
Aaron Douglas
Alain Locke's 1925 issue of the Survey Graphic was a special issue of the social work
journal known as Survey. This issue attempted to illustrate the African-American political and
cultural developments emerging through Harlem. When this publication came to the attention of
Kansas artist Aaron Douglas, it was "the most cogent single factor" in encouraging him to move
to New York. Like African-Americans throughout the country, Douglas was drawn to Harlem and
its community of creative artists.
The Survey Graphic also introduced him to the modernist and folk-art inspired work of Winold
Reiss. The German artist became Douglas's teacher and encouraged Douglas to study African
art forms and embrace modernism. Along with Reiss and Miguel Covarrubias, Douglas provided
illustrations for The New Negro, the book-length development of the original Survey Graphic
issue. In a letter to his wife, he noted, "I'll be the only Negro artist with a drawing in it... Some
sampling, eh?" The New Negro provided a springboard for Douglas, and his work began
appearing in magazines, including Opportunity and The Crisis.
Among Douglas's best-known works are his cover for Fire!! and his illustrations for
James Weldon Johnson's collection of "seven Negro sermons in verse," God's Trombones
(1927). His work has become a visual marker of the Harlem Renaissance.
Miguel Covarrubias
Charlotte Osgood Mason, white patron of Harlem Renaissance artists Zora Neale
Hurston, Langston Hughes, and Claude McKay, was also a sometime "godmother" to Miguel
Covarrubias. Covarrubias, born and raised in Mexico, was one of many international writers and
artists who were inspired by the cultural renaissance taking place in Harlem.
Covarrubias arrived in New York in 1923 and began documenting African-American life
in and around Harlem, sometimes publishing these images in Vanity Fair.
With introductions provided by former New York Times music critic Carl Van Vechten, he was
soon tapped to provide illustrations for The New Negro and Langston Hughes's The Weary
Blues. He published a collection of these works in 1927 under the title Negro Drawings.
While his work was generally well-received, Du Bois and other critics expressed some
concern over his depiction of African-American life.
Information from:
Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin. Teaching the American 20s: Exploring
the Decade through Literature and Art, n.d. Web. 20 Feb. 2012.
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PICS:
Info. on Covarrubias pics: CARICATURE: As an artist, Covarrubias was perhaps best
known for caricatures that reflected his talent for observation. He drew his white friend
Carl Van Vechten, who David Levering Lewis has called "Harlem's most enthusiastic
and ubiquitous Nordic," as a black man. The title: "A Prediction." This more traditional
caricature of Van Vechten appeared in the 1925 Covarrubias book The Prince of Wales
and Other Famous Americans.
‘HARLEM DANDY”: Miguel Covarrubias had a deep appreciation for the people of
Harlem. His drawings celebrate their style, manners, and exuberant cultural expression.
His 1927 book, Negro Drawings, reflected his interest in Harlem performers and people
on the street. This interest led to his later work as an anthropologist.
ON MAP: In Black Manhattan (1930), James Weldon Johnson's history of African
Americans in New York, two demographic maps of Harlem show its quick flourishing in
the early decades of the century