The Harlem Renaissance

0:02 Hi class. This week we're going to learn about the Harlem Renaissance. It's one of my favorite units because it really exemplifies this ability of Americans to demonstrate their fierce power of creativity no matter the circumstances. We're going to start by taking a look at some of the historical background that contributed to the Harlem Renaissance. So why is it called a Renaissance? Renaissance means rebirth and only two eras have formally earned the title of a renaissance and that's the European Renaissance in Italy in the 15th century and the Harlem Renaissance in the United States uh around the 20s to30s. Uh the European R renaissance was a renewal of knowledge, study and art after a long

0:49 period of cultural stagnation. Similarly, the Harlem Renaissance represents this renewal of black artistic talent after the oppressions of slavery. Calling the birth of black art in America a renaissance highlights this idea that cultural renewal is not linked to a single race. It's something all of humanity is capable of. So, the Harlem Renaissance is a cultural, intellectual, and artistic movement from about 1918 to 1935 that transformed African-American expression. It's a celebration of black identity, history, and culture. And it's a rejection of racist stereotypes, a way of defining African-American life on their own terms. And it's a way of

1:36 renewing efforts towards civil rights by demonstrating the cultural and artistic worth worth of black Americans. To understand the context of the Harlem Renaissance, we first have to look at what life is like in the Jim Crow South. So we have segregation. This is separate public facilities like schools, transportation, hospitals, parks. It's also separate private facilities like restaurants hotels neighborhoods uh entertainment, things like movie theaters. Um, and separate was never equal. We have extreme economic disparity. So, there's limited job opportunities for African-Americans in the South. Um, they may be sharecroppers or tenant farmers

2:21 or maybe household staff in white homes. And then there is racial violence. So, this is mob intimidation. that this is lynchings and it's also disenfranchisement um through the use of pole taxes, literacy tests, and voter intimidation. So, at this time, African-Americans are going to start moving out of the rural south. Uh in 1900, 90% of black Americans lived in the south. Uh, and between about 1910 and lasting all the way until 1970, 6 [snorts] million black Americans are going to migrate out of the rural south to escape segregation, discrimination, and racial violence. Most of these migrants are going to settle settle in

3:07 major cities. Um, those would be maybe New York, Chicago, Cleveland, Baltimore, Detroit. But this wasn't always a happy story. So, as uh African-Americans were moving into already overcrowded cities, competition for housing contributed to racial violence. Uh, and this caused the creation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People or the NAACP. Um, they formed in 1909 in response to a race riot in 1908 in Springfield Illinois. But why Harlem? So, in the late 1800s, the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan was developed for middle-class white folks. Um, there

3:54 was a real estate crash in 1904 that then led to many vacant apartments. And the African-American real estate agent, Philip Payton, Jr., bought these vacant apartments and rented them to recently arrived migrants who had difficulty looking for housing elsewhere due to racial discrimination. Harlem soon became one of the largest black communities in the United States with their own blackowned businesses, newspapers, churches, and theaters. Harlem became an environment where black culture could flourish. One of these early flourishings of black culture um come from the ideas of Alan Lockach in the New Negro. Alan Lockach was an African-American writer,

4:39 philosopher, and teacher who wrote and edited the New Negro as a manifesto for the new black identity in the United States. And he writes, "In the last decade, something beyond the watch and guard of statistics has happened in the life of the American Negro and the three Norns who have traditionally presided over the Negro problem have a changing in their laps. The sociologist, the philanthropist, the race leader are not unaware of the new negro, but they are at a loss to account for him. He simply cannot be swaythed in their formuli. For the younger generation is vibrant with a new psychology. The new spirit is awake in the masses and under the very eyes of the professional observers is transforming what had been perennial a perennial problem into the progressive phases of contemporary negro life. So

5:27 Loach called this period in which black artists were flourishing the Negro Renaissance and it would later become known as the Harlem Renaissance. He's seeing this new generation of African-Americans rising up ready to demonstrate their talents in art, literature, and music. And his central theme is this idea that the black American should no longer hold on to or internalize the oppressions and strictures white society has imposed upon them. James Vand Derzy is an African-American photographer who would document life during the Harlem Renaissance. Uh he photographed important events like the Elks Club parade. He photographed meetings of local church groups and he also photographed uh crucial

6:14 leaders of the early civil rights movement like Marcus Garvey seen here. But his most famous photos, uh, like wedding photography and this shot of, um, a children's dance class were meant to dispel racist stereotypes and show that black Americans are really just like everyone else. In the next part, we're going to take a look at some of the great achievements of the art of the Harlem Renaissance. But first, I'd like to discuss web deoce, uh, the criteria of negro art. So this was originally a speech delivered at the NAACP's annual conference in Chicago in 1926. [snorts] He writes, "Thus all art is propaganda and ever must be despite the

7:00 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. I do not care a damn for any art that is not used for propaganda, but I do care when propaganda is confined to one side while the other is stripped and silent. So, he's arguing that art can never truly be separated from politics. And there's there's a particular imperative in black art to send a message that African-Americans deserve their rights and freedoms as much as anyone else. The first example of Harlem Renaissance art we're going to look at is Archabald Mley's Blues 1929. I want to look at

7:47 just a few examples of the visual art from the Harlem Renaissance. Um, taking a note from Duboce, Harlem Renaissance art always has a distinct point of view. It is a celebration of the black American experience and the flourishing of the culture of Harlem. So in Mley's Blues, he's depicting a crowded, energetic black nightclub in jazz age Paris. So the setting, not in Harlem, but in Paris, is demonstrating the cultural reach that the Harlem Renaissance had internationally. We see musicians performing in the foreground while these tightly packed couples dance, drink, and socialize. Mley's using exaggerated bodies and vivid colors. There's these sharp contrasts of light and darkness and

8:32 these overlapping figures that make the composition feel rhythmic and improvisational. It's almost like jazz translated into paint. Next, I'd like to look at Aaron Douglas's aspects of negro life from slavery to reconstruction. So, this image here is just one part of a four-part mural series. Uh, and the series shows African-American history through slavery, reconstruction, the great migrations, and all the way into the Harlem Renaissance. Douglas is combining African inspired imagery with um modern art deco forms. He's using silhouettes, concentric circles, and limited colors to suggest movement through history. Uh the murals represent

9:19 black history as a story of oppression followed by resistance followed by migration and then culminating in cultural achievement. And they also connect the Harlem Renaissance to this much longer African um and African-American past, showing modern black creativity as part of this ongoing struggle for freedom. Next, I'm going to look at Palmer Hayden's Midsummer Night in Harlem. So, Hayden portrays a crowded Harlem neighborhood on a hot summer's night where residents are gathering outside their apartments in front of a church laughing, they're talking, they're playing music, and they're seeking relief from the oppressive heat. Um, the

10:07 interesting part is that Hayden deliberately uses a cartoonish style that could be considered reminiscent of racist caricatures, but his point is to demonstrate that these caricatures no longer have a hold on the black American soul. For a black man to caricaturize his own people, um, this is an act of taking power back. Another work by Palmer Hayden is the janitor who paints. So Palmer Hayden worked in a variety of different styles. You can immediately see how this painting is very different from Midsummer Night in Harlem. In this painting, Hayden is showing an average family in Harlem and celebrating the hard work necessary to participate in

10:54 artistic life. So most African-Americans at this time don't have outside financial support if they want to be an artist. They have to work all day and then come home to paint at night. Uh the painting was actually inspired by Hayden's friend Cloyd uh Boyin. And Hayden called it a protest painting. It exposes how racism and poverty forced talented black artists into service work and prevented others from acknowledging their artistic identities. Finally, I want to look at a female Harlem Renaissance artist. Augustus Savage was a sculptor. Um, in Savage's

11:39 realization, which is the one here on the left, um, the bode bodies and the solemn expressions of her figures suggest this moment that they realize the harshness of their oppression. It's often interpreted as this awakening to the reality of slavery, racism, and poverty. And unlike heroic portrayals of racial progress, Savage is emphasizing uh vulnerability, exhaustion, shared suffering, and the figures nevertheless retain this sense of dignity and emotional uh strength. The sculpture in the middle is Little Boy. And Little Boy turns the tables on those classic bust sculptures. So if you

12:24 think of a Greek or Roman bust portraying an important political figure, um her version is celebrating the life of the average little boy in Harlem. And then finally, uh we have the piece on the right, Lift Every Voice and Sing. So this was commissioned in 1939 for the New York World's Fair and it's inspired by the song of the same name which is in our weekly playlist and it became known as the black national anthem. Music is elevated as a source of strength and community and it's utilized in the vision of racial harmony. All right. So next we're going to turn to poetry and literature in our readings for this week. I understand that I've assigned a lot of reading for this week.

13:10 There are just so many wonderful writers of the Harlem Renaissance and I had to narrow down this selection from a group of works that that really could have been 10 times as long. So, I hope that you'll bear with me as we go through each one and that you found at least one of them uh interesting or at the most inspiring. All right, we have Langston Hughes, The Negro Artist, and the Racial Mountain. So, Hughes is grappling with a very difficult issue. Um, this is a time of scientific racism, a time where white Americans are looking down on black Americans, um, acting as if their culture cannot compare to the cultural legacy of Europe. And the desire for many black artists is to prove that they can produce art that is equivalent to

13:58 white art. Hughes challenges this idea. if the standard of art was created by whites for whites, um he's instead going to argue that black artists need to create something that's entirely their own and that exists outside of those standards that white society has created. Uh for Hughes, acceptance is not going to come from imitation, but from proving that the cultural achievements of the black race can stand on their own equal to those of whites. Next, we're going to look at Langston Hughes poem, The Negro Speaks of Rivers. So, the speaker claims to have known rivers stretching from the ancient Euphrates all the way to the

14:43 Mississippi. And this is not meant literally. The speaker represents the collective experiences of people of African descent. Uh, the movement from the Congo and Nile to the Mississippi connects African civilization with African-American history. Rivers are this powerful symbol that witness both the achievements and the sufferings of black people, but they continue flowing. They make uh making them then symbols of survival and endurance. Um when the speaker says that his soul has grown deep like rivers. Hughes gives black identity and ancient history and this sense of spiritual depth. Um the poem is challenging narratives in which black history begins with enslavement.

15:30 We've seen other authors use water as a symbol of the collective um or the personal or the unconscious. In Deoce's The Souls of Black Folk, he uses this imagery of water in a similar way to Hughes. He's highlighting how water can represent the deep pool of our unexpressed feeling. Uh but in the Awakening by Kate Shopan, uh we also see water being used as a metaphor, but this time for her own personal self-discovery. Here, Hughes is emphasizing the river as this winding, neverending path of history that's connecting us to our ancestors, but also charging forth into the future. Next, we're going to discuss Hughes's poem, I too. So Hughes here is using a

16:19 typical image um the black American being excluded from the white dinner table as a symbol of the larger racial conversation. So blacks are excluded from American social and political life and the table is just this one momentary representation of that. [snorts] But Hughes ends the poem on a hopeful note, a note of confidence, not submission. They'll see how beautiful I am and be ashamed. He knows that African-Americans have a lot to offer at the American table and [clears throat] bring to um our cultural millu and he sees the future is one in which whites will be ashamed of their exclusion of African-Americans. What he's also doing here is responding to Walt Whitman's I hear America singing. He says I too sing America

17:06 emphasizing how African-Americans deserve their place in the American cultural tradition. So, next we're going to turn to Zora Neil Hursten's How It Feels to Be Colored Me. So, Hursten describes growing up in Eatenville, Florida, um which is an all black town, uh where she didn't initially experience herself as racially different. Um, she became a lot more conscious of race after moving to Jacksonville, uh, where she entered spaces where white people defined her as different, called her colored. Despite recognizing this racism, Hursten refuses

17:52 to portray herself primarily as a victim. She declares that she is not tragically colored and emphasizes uh, things uh, like her ambition, her pleasure, her confidence in herself. Um, at other times she does feel intensely black, especially when she's surrounded by white people, but at other moments she simply feels like herself. Her famous image of these people um being metaphorized as different colored bags suggests that outward racial categories don't determine everything contained within a person. The essay doesn't claim that race is unimportant. Instead, um, Hursten is refusing to allow racism to define the entirety of her identity and her personal emotional life. This

18:38 distinguishes her perspective from writers who central racial suffer suffering or collective suffering. Finally, I want to take a look at Seventh Street from Jean Tumor's Cane. Um, this was one of the works that was discussed by Hughes as exemplary of the new Negro and new black artistic forms. It depicts this rapidly growing black neighborhood in Washington DC rather than Harlem. Uh, and the street has been transformed by the great migration. Um, black southerners move north and money connected to World War II and prohibition have entered the picture. Tumor describes the street as energetic.

19:24 It's crowded. it's defiant. Um, and his fragmented sentences, um, use of repetition and shifting from one image to another imitate this, um, rhythm and improvisation that we're going to see in jazz. >> [snorts] >> The recurring image of black blood flowing through white society suggests that black energy is transforming modern America. But it also um with this imagery connected to this imagery of um money of bootlegging uh crowded buildings also give the neighborhood this sense of danger and exploitation. Tumor is portraying urban black modernity as both exciting and destructive. The juxtaposition that he's doing here

20:10 between beauty and transformation um with danger and exploitation is highlighting how uh economic inequality shapes the American experience. Um his observations are going to end up eventually being mirrored in the early years of rap music in the 1980s with the physical um and emotional dangers that were present uh for those that lived in the hood. Finally, we're going to discuss a little bit about the music of the jazz age. So, jazz is an African-American art form, but it is also an all-American art form. Uh it originated with African-American communities in New

20:56 Orleans at the turn of the century and it drew inspiration from uh blues, ragtime, spirituals, work songs, um and African music traditions. It emphasized modernist themes, so improvisation and individual expression. And it spread through the new technologies of the modern world. Um, and in this this spread via new technologies, it introduced Americans of all races to African-American artistry for the first time. So, at this time, the recording industry was segregated. Uh, so records were marketed specifically to African-Americans and labeled race records or hot jazz. Um, audiences of all races ended up buying these records.

21:43 And so by about 1949, this genre ended up being renamed rhythm and blues. Uh to counter um what was intended to be marketed only to African-American audiences, uh we have the introduction of sweet jazz. Um it was marketed as this white alternative to hot jazz. But what's important to understand is that in marketing to white audiences, um, it it very much took away from jazz what made it jazz in the first place. So, sweet jazz has little to no improvisation. It has a slower tempo and its rhythm doesn't swing. Um it also um was pre-arranged rather than um improvised

22:31 at this time. We also see the growth of dance halls and clubs. And there's a um a huge distinction between clubs that centered the African-American experience and clubs that reinforced racism. Uh first we're going to look at the Cotton Club. The Cotton Club was called by Langston Hughes a Jim Crow club for gangsters and moneyed whites. It sat in the heart of Harlem and it was a whites only nightclub that featured black musicians and entertainers. Um, even though the North didn't have Jim Crow laws like the South, private establishments could still enforce segregation if they wanted to. Um, but this club would host some of the most famous performers of the Harlem Renaissance. So, Duke Ellington, Cab Callaway, Ethel Waters, and Lita Horn.

23:18 But the paradox is that white audiences were desperate for black entertainment, but they were unwilling to socialize with African-Americans. An opposite example to the Cotton Club is the Seavoy Ballroom. So, the Seavoy Ballroom opened in 1926 and it was just two blocks away from the Cotton Club and it was the first fully integrated dance hall in the United States. Its clientele were about 85% black and 15% white, but this varied depending on the night, depending on the performer. Um, some of the most famous performers included Chick Webb, Ella Fitzgerald, Dely Holiday, Count Basy, and Duke Ellington. Um, it was also importantly known for the invention of the dance move, the

24:04 Lindy Hop. And they would regularly have Lindy Hop contests on particular nights. All right, you guys. So, I want you to turn to the playlists, listen to some jazz, and watch the dance videos um on jazz dance crazes and consider as you watch them, how does jazz exemplify modernism? What is it about jazz that cross racial boundaries? How does African-American hot jazz compared to the sweet jazz that was more palatable to some white audiences? And how do you view the dance trends of the 1920s? How are they representative of the new modern America? As a final note, we're going to be having our usual uh quiz on the reading

24:51 at the end of the week, but on the same day, we also will have our first compare and contrast essay due. That's September 20th uh at 11:59 p.m. I've uploaded a lot of resources for you guys to help walk you through this assignment. I really hope that it won't be too painful because I'm only expecting about three pages. Um, if you have any questions, please send me an email um or visit my office hours and I will help you walk you through how to write a compare contrast essay. Uh, so happy writing you guys and I will see you next time.