HARLEM RENAISSANCE

The Harlem Renaissance was the development of the Harlem neighborhood in New York City as a black cultural mecca in the
early 20th Century and the subsequent social and artistic explosion that resulted. Lasting roughly from the 1910s through
the mid-1930s, the period is considered a golden age in African American culture, manifesting in literature, music, stage
performance and art.
Great Migration
The northern Manhattan neighborhood of Harlem was meant to be an upper-class white neighborhood in the 1880s, but
rapid overdevelopment led to empty buildings and desperate landlords seeking to fill them.
In the early 1900s, a few middle-class black families from another neighborhood known as Black Bohemia moved to Harlem,
and other black families followed. Some white residents initially fought to keep African Americans out of the area, but failing
that many whites eventually fled.
Outside factors led to a population boom: From 1910 to 1920, African American populations migrated in large numbers from
the South to the North, with prominent figures like W.E.B. Du Bois leading what became known as the Great Migration.
In 1915 and 1916, natural disasters in the south put black workers and sharecroppers out of work. Additionally, during and
after World War I, immigration to the United States fell, and northern recruiters headed south to entice black workers to
their companies.
Langston Hughes
This considerable population shift resulted in a Black Pride movement with leaders like Du Bois working to ensure that black
Americans got the credit they deserved for cultural areas of life. Two of the earliest breakthroughs were in poetry, with
Claude McKay’s collection Harlem Shadows in 1922 and Jean Toomer’s Crane in 1923.
Novelist and du Bois protege Jessi Redmond Fauset’s 1924 novel There Is Confusion explored the idea of black Americans
finding a cultural identity in a white-dominated Manhattan. Fauset was literary editor of the magazine The Crisis and
developed a magazine for black children with Du Bois.
The debut event of Fauset’s novel was engineered for a larger purpose by sociologist Charles Spurgeon Johnson, who was
integral in shaping the Harlem literary scene. Johnson used the novel’s debut party to organize resources to create
Opportunity, the National Urban League magazine he founded and edited, a success that bolstered writers like Langston
Hughes. Hughes was at that party along with other promising black writers and editors, as well as powerful white New York
publishing figures. Soon many writers found their work appearing in mainstream magazines like Harper’s.
Zora Neal Hurston
Anthropologist and folklorist Zora Neal Hurston courted controversy through her involvement with a publication called
FIRE!! Helmed by white author and Harlem writers’ patron Carl Van Vechten, the magazine exoticized the lives of Harlem
residents. Van Vechten’s previous fiction stirred up interest among whites to visit Harlem and take advantage of the cultural
and night life there.
Louis Armstrong
The music that percolated in and then boomed out of Harlem in the 1920s was jazz, often played at speakeasies offering
illegal liquor. Jazz became a great draw for not only Harlem residents, but outside white audiences also.
Some of the most celebrated names in American music regularly performed in Harlem—Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington,
Bessie Smith, Fats Waller and Cab Calloway, often accompanied by elaborate floor shows. Tap dancers like John Bubbles and
Bill “Bojangles” Robinson were also popular.
Cotton Club
With the groundbreaking new music came a vibrant nightlife. The Savoy opened in 1927, an integrated ballroom with two
bandstands that featured continuous jazz and dancing well past midnight, sometimes in the form of battling bands helmed
by Fletcher Henderson, Jimmie Lunceford and King Oliver.
While it was fashionable to frequent Harlem nightlife, entrepreneurs realized that some white people wanted to experience
black culture without having to socialize with African Americans and created clubs to cater to them.
The most successful of these was the Cotton Club, which featured frequent performances by Ellington and Calloway. Some in
the community derided the existence of such clubs, while others believed they were a sign that black culture was moving
towards greater acceptance.
Paul Robeson
The cultural boom in Harlem gave black actors opportunities for stage work that had previously been withheld. Traditionally,
if black actors appeared onstage, it was in a minstrel show musical and rarely in a serious drama with non-stereotypical
roles.
At the center of this stage revolution was the versatile Paul Robeson, an actor, singer, writer, activist, and more. Robeson first
moved to Harlem in 1919 while studying law at Columbia University and continually maintained a social presence in the
area, where he was considered an inspirational but approachable figure. Robeson believed that arts and culture were the
best paths forward for Black Americans to overcome racism and make advances in a white-dominated culture.
Josephine Baker
Black musical revues were staples in Harlem, and by the mid-1920s had moved south to Broadway, expanding into the white
world. One of the earliest of these was Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle’s Shuffle Along, which launched the career of Josephine
Baker.
White patron Van Vechten helped bring more serious black stage work to Broadway, though largely the work of white
authors and considered to fall short of the potential. It wasn’t until 1929 that a black-authored play about black lives,
Wallace Thurman and William Rapp’s Harlem, played Broadway.
Playwright Willis Richardson offered more serious opportunities for black actors with a several one-act plays written in the
1920s, as well as articles in Opportunity magazine outlining his goals. Stock companies like the Krigwa Players and the
Harlem Experimental Theater also gave black actors serious roles.
Aaron Douglas
The visual arts were never welcoming to black artists, with art schools, galleries and museums shutting them out. Sculptor
Meta Warrick Fuller, a protege of Auguste Rodin, explored African American themes in her work and influenced Du Bois to
champion black visual artists.
The most celebrated Harlem Renaissance artist is Aaron Douglas, often called “the Father of Black American Art,” who
adapted African techniques to realize paintings and murals, as well as book illustration.
Sculptor Augusta Savage’s 1923 bust of Du Bois garnered considerable attention. She followed that up with small, clay
portraits of everyday African Americans, and would later be pivotal enlisting black artists into the Federal Art Project, a
division of the Work Progress Administration (WPA).
James Van Der Zee’s photography captured Harlem daily life, as well as by commissioned portraits in his studio that he
worked to fill with optimism and separate philosophically from the horrors of the past.
Harlem Renaissance Ends
The end of Harlem’s creative boom began with the stock market crash of 1929 and wavered until Prohibition ended in 1933,
which meant white patrons no longer sought out the illegal alcohol in uptown clubs.
By 1935 many pivotal Harlem residents had moved on seeking work, replaced by the continuous flow of refugees from the
South, many requiring public assistance.
That same year, a riot broke out following the arrest of a young shoplifter, resulting in three dead, hundreds injured, and
millions of dollars in property damage, as well as serving as a marker of the end of the Harlem Renaissance.
Source: https://www.history.com/topics/roaring-twenties/harlem-renaissance. Retrieved: Sept. 9th 2018.