Harlem Renaissance

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the eponymous basketball team, see New York Renaissance.

Major representatives of the Harlem Renaissance.

The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned the 1920s. At the time, it was known as the "New Negro Movement", named after the 1925 anthology by Alain Locke. Though it was centered in the Harlem neighborhood ofNew York City, many French-speaking black writers from African and Caribbean colonies who lived in Paris were also influenced by the Harlem Renaissance.[1][2][3][4] The Harlem Renaissance is unofficially recognized to have spanned from about 1919 until the early or mid1930s. Many of its ideas lived on much longer. The zenith of this "flowering of Negro literature", as James Weldon Johnson preferred to call the Harlem Renaissance, was placed between 1924 (the year thatOpportunity: A Journal of Negro Life hosted a party for black writers where many white publishers were in attendance) and 1929 (the year of the stock marketcrash and the beginning of the Great Depression)

Background to Harlem
Until the end of the Civil War, the majority of African Americans had been enslaved and lived in the South. After the end of slavery, the emancipated African Americans began to strive for civic participation, political equality and economic and cultural self-determination. Soon after the end of the Civil War the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 gave rise to speeches by African American Congressmen addressing this Bill. By 1875 sixteen blacks had been elected and served in Congress and gave numerous speeches with their newfound civil empowerment. The Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 was renounced by black Congressmen and resulted in the passage of Civil Rights Act of 1875, part of Reconstruction legislation by republicans. By the late 1870s, democratic whites managed to regain power in the South. From 1890 to 1908 they proceeded to pass legislation that disenfranchised most Negros and many poor whites, trapping them without representation. They established white supremacist regimes of Jim Crow segregation in the South and one-party block voting behind southern Democrats. The Democratic whites denied African Americans their exercise of civil and political rights by terrorizing black communities with lynch mobs and other forms of vigilante

violence[5] as well as by instituting a convict labor system that forced many thousands of African Americans back into unpaid labor in mines, on plantations, and on public works projects such as roads and levees. Convict laborers were typically subject to brutal forms of corporal punishment, overwork, and disease from unsanitary conditions. Death rates were extraordinarily high. [6] While a small number of blacks were able to acquire land shortly after the Civil War, most were exploited as sharecroppers. [7] As life in the South became increasingly difficult, African Americans began to migrate North in great numbers. Most of the African-American literary movement arose from a generation that had lived through the gains and losses of Reconstruction after the American Civil War. Sometimes their parents or grandparents had been slaves. Their ancestors had sometimes benefited by paternal investment in social capital, including better-than-average education. Many in the Harlem Renaissance were part of the Great Migration out of the South into the Negro neighborhoods of the North and Midwest. African Americans sought a better standard of living and relief from the institutionalized racism in the South. Others were people of African descent from racially stratified communities in theCaribbean who came to the United States hoping for a better life. Uniting most of them was their convergence in Harlem, New York City.

Development of African-American community in Harlem

Contemporary silent black and white documentary short.

During the early portion of the 20th century, Harlem was the destination for migrants from around the country, attracting both people seeking work from the South, and an educated class who made the area a center of culture, as well as a growing "Negro" middle class. The district had originally been developed in the 19th century as an exclusive suburb for the white middle and upper middle classes; its affluent beginnings led to the development of stately houses, grand avenues, and world-class amenities such as the Polo Grounds and the Harlem Opera House. During the enormous influx of European immigrants in the late nineteenth century, the once exclusive district was abandoned by the native white middle-class, who moved further north. Harlem became an African-American neighborhood in the early 1900s. In 1910, a large block along 135th Street and Fifth Avenue was bought by various African-American realtors and a church group. Many more African Americans arrived during the First World War. Due to the war, the migration of laborers from Europe virtually ceased, while the war effort resulted in a massive demand for unskilled industrial labor. The Great Migration brought hundreds of thousands of African Americans to cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, and New York. Despite the increasing popularity of Negro culture, virulent white racism, often by more recent ethnic immigrants, continued to affect African-American communities, even in the North. After the end of World War I, many African American soldierswho fought in segregated units such as the Harlem Hellfighterscame home to a nation whose citizens often did not respect their accomplishments.Race

riots and other civil uprisings occurred throughout the US during the Red Summer of 1919, reflecting economic competition over jobs and housing in many cities, as well as tensions over social territories

An explosion of culture in Harlem

The first stage of the Harlem Renaissance started in the late 1910s. 1917 saw the premiere of Three Plays for a Negro Theatre. These plays, written by white playwright Ridgely Torrence, featured African-American actors conveying complex human emotions and yearnings. They rejected the stereotypes of the blackface and minstrel show traditions. James Weldon Johnson in 1917 called the premieres of these plays "the most important single event in the entire history of the Negro in the American Theater."[8] Another landmark came in 1919, when the poet Claude McKay published his militant sonnet, "If We Must Die". Although the poem never alluded to race, to African-American readers heard its note of defiance in the face of racism and the nationwide race riots and lynchings then taking place. By the end of the First World War, the fiction of James Weldon Johnson and the poetry of Claude McKay were describing the reality of contemporary AfricanAmerican life in America. In 1917 Hubert Harrison, "The Father of Harlem Radicalism," founded the Liberty League and The Voice, the first organization and the first newspaper, respectively, of the "New Negro Movement". Harrison's organization and newspaper were political, but also emphasized the arts (his newspaper had "Poetry for the People" and book review sections). In 1927, in the Pittsburgh Courier, Harrison challenged the notion of the renaissance. He argued that the "Negro Literary Renaissance" notion overlooked "the stream of literary and artistic products which had flowed uninterruptedly from Negro writers from 1850 to the present", and said the so-called "renaissance" was largely a white invention. The Harlem Renaissance grew out of the changes that had taken place in the African-American community since the abolition of slavery, as well as the expansion of communities in the North. These accelerated as a consequence of World War I and the great social and cultural changes in early 20th century United States. Industrialization was attracting people to cities from rural areas and gave rise to a new mass culture. Contributing factors leading to the Harlem Renaissance were the Great Migration of African Americans to northern cities, which concentrated ambitious people in places where they could encourage each other, and the First World War, which had created new industrial work opportunities for tens of thousands of people. Factors leading to the decline of this era include the Great Depression.

Music
A new way of playing the piano called the Harlem Stride Style was created during the Harlem Renaissance, and helped blur the lines between the poor Negros and socially elite Negros. The traditional jazz band was composed primarily of brass instruments and was considered a symbol of the south, but the piano was considered an instrument of the wealthy. With this instrumental modification to the existing genre, the wealthy blacks now had more access to jazz music. Its popularity soon spread throughout the country and was consequently at an all time high. Innovation and liveliness were important characteristics of performers in the beginnings of jazz. Jazz musicians at the time like Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, Jelly Roll Morton, and Willie "The Lion" Smith were very talented and competitive, and were considered to have laid the foundation for future musicians of their genre.[9][10]

During the time period, the musical style of blacks was becoming more and more attractive to whites. White novelists, dramatists and composers started to exploit the musical tendencies and themes of African-Americans in their works. Composers used poems written by African American poets in their songs, and would implement the rhythms, harmonies and melodies of African-American musicsuch asblues, spirituals, and jazzinto their concert pieces. Negros began to merge with Whites into the classical world of musical composition. The first Negro male to gain wide recognition as a concert artist in both his region and internationally was Roland Hayes. He trained with Arthur Calhoun in Chattanooga, and at Fisk University in Nashville. Later, he studied with Arthur Hubbard in Boston and with George Henshel and Amanda Ira Aldridge in London, England. He began singing in public as a student, and toured with the Fisk Jubilee Singersin 1911.[11]

Music
A new way of playing the piano called the Harlem Stride Style was created during the Harlem Renaissance, and helped blur the lines between the poor Negros and socially elite Negros. The traditional jazz band was composed primarily of brass instruments and was considered a symbol of the south, but the piano was considered an instrument of the wealthy. With this instrumental modification to the existing genre, the wealthy blacks now had more access to jazz music. Its popularity soon spread throughout the country and was consequently at an all time high. Innovation and liveliness were important characteristics of performers in the beginnings of jazz. Jazz musicians at the time like Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, Jelly Roll Morton, and Willie "The Lion" Smith were very talented and competitive, and were considered to have laid the foundation for future musicians of their genre.[9][10] During the time period, the musical style of blacks was becoming more and more attractive to whites. White novelists, dramatists and composers started to exploit the musical tendencies and themes of African-Americans in their works. Composers used poems written by African American poets in their songs, and would implement the rhythms, harmonies and melodies of African-American musicsuch asblues, spirituals, and jazzinto their concert pieces. Negros began to merge with Whites into the classical world of musical composition. The first Negro male to gain wide recognition as a concert artist in both his region and internationally was Roland Hayes. He trained with Arthur Calhoun in Chattanooga, and at Fisk University in Nashville. Later, he studied with Arthur Hubbard in Boston and with George Henshel and Amanda Ira Aldridge in London, England. He began singing in public as a student, and toured with the Fisk Jubilee Singersin 1911.[11] [edit]Characteristics

and themes

Characterizing the Harlem Renaissance was an overt racial pride that came to be represented in the idea of the New Negro, who through intellect and production of literature, art, and music could challenge the pervading racism and stereotypes to promote progressive orsocialist politics, and racial and social integration The creation of art and literature would serve to "uplift" the race. There would be no uniting form singularly characterizing the art that emerged out of the Harlem Renaissance. Rather, it encompassed a wide variety of cultural elements and styles, including a PanAfrican perspective, "high-culture" and "low-culture" or "low-life," from the traditional form of music to the blues and jazz, traditional and new experimental forms in literature such as modernism and the new form of jazz poetry. This duality meant that numerous African-American artists came into conflict with conservatives in the black intelligentsia, who took issue with certain depictions of black life. Some common themes represented during the Harlem Renaissance were the influence of the experience of slavery and emerging African-American folk traditions on black identity, the effects of

institutional racism, the dilemmas inherent in performing and writing for elite white audiences, and the question of how to convey the experience of modern black life in the urban North. The Harlem Renaissance was one of primarily African-American involvement. It rested on a support system of black patrons, black-owned businesses and publications. However, it also depended on the patronage of white Americans, such as Carl Van Vechten and Charlotte Osgood Mason, who provided various forms of assistance, opening doors which otherwise would have remained closed to the publication of work outside the black American community. This support often took the form of patronage or publication. There were other whites interested in so-called "primitive" cultures, as many whites viewed black American culture at that time, and wanted to see such "primitive" in the work coming out of the Harlem Renaissance. As with most fads, some people may have been exploited in the rush for publicity. Interest in African-American lives also generated experimental but lasting collaborative work, such as the all-black productions of George Gershwin's opera Porgy and Bess, and Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein's Four Saints in Three Acts. In both productions the choral conductor Eva Jessye was part of the creative team. Her choir was featured in Four Saints.[12] The music world also found white band leaders defying racist attitudes to include the best and the brightest African-American stars of music and song in their productions. The African Americans used art to prove their humanity and demand for equality. The Harlem Renaissance led to more opportunities for blacks to be published by mainstream houses. Many authors began to publish novels, magazines and newspapers during this time. The new fiction attracted a great amount of attention from the nation at large. Some authors who became nationally known were Jean Toomer,Jessie Fauset, Claude McKay, Zora Neale Hurston, James Weldon Johnson, Alain Locke, Eric D. Walrond and Langston Hughes. The Harlem Renaissance helped lay the foundation for the post-World War II phase of the Civil Rights Movement. Moreover, many black artists who rose to creative maturity afterward were inspired by this literary movement. The Renaissance was more than a literary or artistic movement, it possessed a certain sociological developmentparticularly through a new racial consciousnessthrough racial integration, as seen in the Back to Africa movement led by Marcus Garvey. W. E. B. Du Bois' notion of "twoness", introduced in The Souls of Black Folk (1903), explored a divided awareness of one's identity that was a unique critique of the social ramifications of racial consciousness.

Influence of the Harlem Renaissance

[edit]A

new black Identity

Langston Hughes, novelist and poet, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1936

"Sometimes I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can anyone deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It's beyond me." - Zora Neale Hurston[13] The Harlem Renaissance was successful in that it brought the Black experience clearly within the corpus of American cultural history. Not only through an explosion of culture, but on asociological level, the legacy of the Harlem Renaissance redefined how America, and the world, viewed African Americans. The migration of southern Blacks to the north changed the image of the African-American from rural, undereducated peasants to one of urban, cosmopolitan sophistication. This new identity led to a greater social consciousness, and African Americans became players on the world stage, expanding intellectual and social contacts internationally. The progressboth symbolic and realduring this period, became a point of reference from which the African-American community gained a spirit of self-determination that provided a growing sense of both Black urbanity and Black militancy, as well as a foundation for the community to build upon for the Civil Rights struggles in the 1950s and 1960s. The urban setting of rapidly developing Harlem provided a venue for African Americans of all backgrounds to appreciate the variety of Black life and culture. Through this expression, the Harlem Renaissance encouraged the new appreciation of folk roots and culture. For instance, folk materials and spirituals provided a rich source for the artistic and intellectual imagination, which freed Blacks from the establishment of past condition. Through sharing in these cultural experiences, a consciousness sprung forth in the form of a united racial identity.

Criticism of the movement

Many critics point out that the Harlem Renaissance could not escape its history and culture in its attempt to create a new one, or sufficiently separate from the foundational elements of White, European culture. Often Harlem intellectuals, while proclaiming a new racial consciousness, resorted to mimicry of their white counterparts by adopting their clothing, sophisticated manners and etiquette. This 'mimicry' may also be called assimilation, as that is typically what minority members of any social construct must do in order to fit social norms created by that construct's majority. This could be seen as a reason for which the artistic and cultural products of the Harlem Renaissance did not overcome the presence of White-American values, and did not reject these values. In this regard, the creation of the "New Negro" as the Harlem intellectuals sought, was considered a success. The Harlem Renaissance appealed to a mixed audience. The literature appealed to the AfricanAmerican middle class and to whites. Magazines such as The Crisis, a monthly journal of the NAACP, and Opportunity, an official publication of the National Urban League, employed Harlem Renaissance writers on their editorial staffs; published poetry and short stories by black writers; and promoted African-American literature through articles, reviews, and annual literary prizes. As important as these literary outlets were, however, the Renaissance relied heavily on white publishing houses and whiteowned magazines. A major accomplishment of the Renaissance was to push open the door to mainstream white periodicals and publishing houses, although the relationship between the Renaissance writers and white publishers and audiences created some controversy. W. E. B. Du Bois did not oppose the relationship between black writers and white publishers, but he was critical of works such as Claude McKay's bestselling novel Home to Harlem (1928) for appealing to the "prurient demand[s]" of white readers and publishers for portrayals of black "licentiousness." [14] Langston Hughes spoke for most of the writers and artists when he wrote in his essay The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain (1926) that black artists intended to express themselves freely, no matter what the black public or white public thought.[15] African-American musicians and other performers also played to mixed audiences. Harlem's cabarets and clubs attracted both Harlem residents and white New Yorkers seeking out Harlem nightlife. Harlem's famous Cotton Club, where Duke Ellington performed, carried this to an extreme, by providing black entertainment for exclusively white audiences. Ultimately, the more successful black musicians and entertainers who appealed to a mainstream audience moved their performances downtown. Certain aspects of the Harlem Renaissance were accepted without debate, and without scrutiny. One of these was the future of the "New Negro." Artists and intellectuals of the Harlem Renaissance echoed the American progressivism in its faith in democratic reform, in its belief in art and literature as agents of change, and in its almost uncritical belief in itself and its future. This progressivist worldview rendered Black intellectualsjust like their White counterpartsunprepared for the rude shock of the Great Depression, and the Harlem Renaissance ended abruptly because of naive assumptions about the centrality of culture, unrelated to economic and social realities.

Notable figures and their works

[edit]Novels Arna Bontemps God Sends Sunday (1931), Black Thunder (1936) Countee Cullen One Way to Heaven (1932) Jessie Redmon Fauset There is Confusion (1924), Plum Bun (1928), The Chinaberry Tree (1931), Comedy, American Style (1933)

Rudolph Fisher The Walls of Jericho (1928), The Conjure-Man Dies (1932) Langston Hughes Not Without Laughter (1930) Zora Neale Hurston Jonah's Gourd Vine (1934), Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) Nella Larsen Quicksand (1928), Passing (1929) Claude McKay Home to Harlem (1927), Banjo (1929), Gingertown (1931), Banana Bottom (1933) George Schuyler Black No More (1931), Slaves Today (1931) Wallace Thurman The Blacker the Berry (1929), Infants of the Spring (1932), Interne (1932) Jean Toomer Cane (1923) Carl Van Vechten Nigger Heaven (1926) Walter White The Fire in the Flint (1924), Flight (1926)

Short story collections

Eric Walrond Tropic Death (1926)

[edit]Drama Joseph Seamon Cotter, Jr., author of the play, On the Fields of France. Charles Gilpin, actor Angelina Weld Grimke, author of the drama, Rachel Langston Hughes, Mulatto, produced on Broadway. Hughes also helped to found the Harlem Suitcase Theater Zora Neale Hurston, author of the play Color Struck Georgia Douglas Johnson, author of the play, Plumes, A Tragedy. John Matheus, author of the play, 'Cruiter. Richard Bruce Nugent, author of the play, Sahdji, an African Ballet. Paul Robeson, actor Eulalie Spence, author of the play, Undertow.

Poetry
Lewis Grandison Alexander, poet Gwendolyn Bennett, poet Arna Bontemps, poet Sterling A. Brown, poet Lillian Byrnes, poet Joyce Sims Carrington, poet Ethel M. Caution, poet Anita Scott Coleman, poet Jessie Redmon Fauset, editor, poet, essayist and novelist Angelina Weld Grimke, poet and dramatist Gladys May Casely Hayford, poet Virginia A. Houston, poet Langston Hughes, poet, fictionwriter, essayist, dramatist, autobiographer, editor Marjorie Marshall, poet Dorothea Mathews, poet Bessie Mayle, poet Claude McKay, poet and novelist May Miller, poet

Joseph Seamon Cotter, Jr., poet Mae V. Cowdery, poet Countee Cullen, poet The Black Christ and Other Poems (1929)

Mary Jenness, poet Georgia Douglas Johnson, poet Helene Johnson, poet James Weldon Johnson, poet, God's Trombones Rosalie M. Jonas, poet Dorothy Kruger, poet Aqua Laluah, poet Elma Ehrlich Levinger, poet

and playwright Isabel Neill, poet singer Effie Lee Newsome, poet Richard Bruce Nugent, poet Esther Popel, poet Anne Spencer, poet Margaret L. Thomas, poet Eloise Bibb Thompson, poet Jean Toomer, poet and novelist Eda Lou Walton, poet Lucy Ariel Williams, poet Octavia Beatrice Wynbush, poet Kathleen Tankersley Young, poet

Clarissa Scott Delany, poet Ruth G. Dixon, poet

Blanche Taylor Dickinson, poet

Alice Dunbar-Nelson, poet and fiction writer

Leading intellectuals
William Stanley Braithwaite Marion Vera Cuthbert W. E. B. Du Bois James Weldon Johnson Charles Spurgeon Johnson S. J. Joyce A. Philip Randolph Joel Augustus Rogers Arthur Schomburg

Marcus Garvey Hubert Harrison Leslie Pinckney Hill

Alain Locke Mary White Ovington Chandler Owen

Carl Van Vechten Walter White Cyril Briggs

[edit]Visual

artists
Palmer Hayden Paul Heath Sargent Johnson Jacob Lawrence Norman Lewis, Artist Archibald Motley Augusta Savage Prentiss Taylor

Charles Alston Henry Bannarn Romare Bearden Beauford Delaney

Leslie Bolling, Wood carvings Aaron Douglas

William H. Johnson, Painter Lois Mailou Jones

Popular entertainment
Cotton Club Apollo Theater Harlem Opera House Lafayette Theatre Black Swan Records Small's Paradise Connie's Inn Harlem Globetrotters Speakeasies Rent party Savoy Ballroom

[edit]Musicians

and composers
Adelaide Hall Roland Hayes Fletcher Henderson Earl "Fatha" Hines Billie Holiday Lena Horne Charlie Johnson James P. Johnson Lonnie Johnson Moms Mabley The Nicholas Brothers Ma Rainey Nora Douglas Holt Ray Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson Cecil Scott Noble Sissle Bessie Smith Mamie Smith Victoria Spivey William Still

Marian Anderson Lil Armstrong Louis Armstrong Ivie Anderson Josephine Baker Count Basie Eubie Blake Lucille Bogan George Bueno Cab Calloway

The King Cole Trio The Chocolate Dandies The Dandridge Sisters Duke Ellington Ella Fitzgerald Dizzy Gillespie

Pigmeat Markham The Will Mastin Trio McKinney's Cotton Pickers Nina Mae McKinney Florence Mills Thelonious Monk Mantan Moreland Jelly Roll Morton

Billy Strayhorn Fats Waller Ethel Waters Chick Webb Bert Williams Fess Williams

[edit]See

also

New York City portal African American portal

African American art Blackbirds of 1928 List of African-American visual artists African American culture African American literature Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance (book) New Negro Niggerati Roaring Twenties Shuffle Along Runnin' Wild Charleston

[edit]References
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. ^ New York Times ^ New York Times ^ Jcu.edu ^ Los Angeles Times ^ Woods, Clyde (1998). Development Arrested. New York and London: Verso. ^ Blackmon, Douglas A. (2009). Slavery By Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II. Anchor. 7. Collins. 8. 9. 10. 11. ^ The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, Norton, New York, 1997, p. 931 ^ Boland, Jesse. "Harlem Renaissance Music." 1920s Fashion and Music. Web. 23 Nov. 2009. ^ 1920s-fashion-and-music.com ^ Southern, Eileen. Music of Negro Americans a history. New York: Norton, 1997. Print, pp. 404, 405, and 409. 12. ^ "Eva Jessye", University of Michigan, accessed 4 Dec 2008 ^ Foner, Eric (1988). Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877. Harper

13.

^ Irving, Shae (2008), Nolo's encyclopedia of everyday law: answers to your most frequently asked legal questions (7 ed.), Nolo, p. 68, ISBN 978-1-4133-0560-9

14.

^ Aptheker, H. ed. (1997), The Correspondence of WEB Dubois: Selections, 18771934, Vol. 1, pp. 3745

15.

^ Books.google.com

[edit]External

links

A Guide to Harlem Renaissance Materials, from the Library of Congress The Approaching 100th Anniversary of the Harlem Renaissance by HR historian Aberjhani

[edit]Bibliography
Amos, Shawn, compiler. Rhapsodies in Black: Words and Music of the Harlem Renaissance. Los Angeles: Rhino Records, 2000. 4 Compact Discs. Andrews, William L.; Foster, Frances S.; Harris, Trudier eds. The Concise Oxford Companion To African American Literature. New York: Oxford Press, 2001. ISBN 1-4028-9296-9 Bean, Annemarie. A Sourcebook on African-American Performance: Plays, People, Movements. London: Routledge, 1999; pp. vii + 360. Greaves, William' documentary From These Roots. Hicklin, Fannie Ella Frazier. 'The American Negro Playwright, 19201964.' Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Speech, University of Wisconsin, 1965. Ann Arbor: University Microfilms 65-6217. Huggins, Nathan. Harlem Renaissance. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973. ISBN 0-19-501665-3 Hughes, Langston. The Big Sea. New York: Knopf, 1940. Hutchinson, George. The Harlem Renaissance in Black and White. New York: Belknap Press, 1997. ISBN 0-674-37263-8 Lewis, David Levering, ed. The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader. New York: Viking Penguin, 1995. ISBN 0-14-017036-7 Lewis, David Levering. When Harlem Was in Vogue. New York: Penguin, 1997. ISBN 0-14-026334-9 Ostrom, Hans. A Langston Hughes Encyclopedia. Westport:Greenwood Press, 2002. Ostrom, Hans and J. David Macey, eds. The Greenwood Encylclopedia of African American Literature. 5 volumes. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2005. Patton, Venetria K. and Maureen Honey, eds. Double-Take: A Revisionist Harlem Renaissance Anthology. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2006. Perry, Jeffrey B. A Hubert Harrison Reader. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2001. Perry, Jeffrey B. Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 18831918. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. Powell, Richard and David A. Bailey, editors. Rhapsodies in Black: Art of the Harlem Renaissance. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Rampersad, Arnold. The Life of Langston Hughes. 2 volumes. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986 and 1988.

Soto, Michael, ed. Teaching The Harlem Renaissance. New York: Peter Lang, 2008. Tracy, Steven C. Langston Hughes and the Blues. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988. Watson, Steven. The Harlem Renaissance: Hub of African-American Culture, 19201930. New York: Pantheon Books, 1995.ISBN 0-679-75889-5 Williams, Iain Cameron. "Underneath a Harlem Moon ... The Harlem to Paris Years of Adelaide Hall". Continuum Int. Publishing, 2003ISBN 0826458939 Wintz, Cary D. Black Culture and the Harlem Renaissance. Houston: Rice University Press, 1988. Wintz, Cary D. Harlem Speaks: A Living History of the Harlem Renaissance. Naperville, Illinois: Sourcebooks, Inc., 2007

Not Without Laughter

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article needs additional citations for verification . Please help improve this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.(January 2011)

Not Without Laughter

Author(s)

Langston Hughes

Country

United States

Language

English

Genre(s)

Novel

Publisher

Random House

Publication date

1930

Media type

Print (Hardback & Paperback)

ISBN

ISBN 0-394-43873-6 (hardback edition)

Not Without Laughter is a novel written by Langston Hughes and published in 1930. It is Hughes' first novel, and first major work of prose.
Contents
[hide]

1 Plot introduction 2 Characters in Not Without Laughter 3 Background 4 References

[edit]Plot

introduction

Not Without Laughter portrays African American life in the 1910s, focusing on character development rather than plot. However, The main storyline focuses on Sandy's "awakening to the sad and the beautiful realities of black life in a small Kansas town." The major intent of the novel is to portray Sandy's life as he tries to be the best he can be, aspiring to folks like W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington.

[edit]Characters

in Not Without Laughter

Sandy Rogers the protagonist of the novel Jimboy Sandy's father, generally portrayed as irresponsible Annjee Williams Sandy's mother Aunt Hager Williams Annjee's mother and Sandy's grandmother, a conservative Baptist Tempy Siles/Williams Annjee's rich sister Mr. Siles a rich man who marries Tempy Harriett Williams sister of Annjee; blues singer Willie-Mae friend of Sandy

[edit]Background
Hughes has said that the novel is semi-autobiographical, and that a good portion of the characters and setting included in the book are based on his memories of growing up in Lawrence, Kansas. Hughes has said about Not Without Laughter: "I wanted to write about a typical Negro family in the Middle West, about people like those I had known in Kansas. But mine was not a typical Negro family."

[edit]References
The New York Times. 3 August 1930 http://www.nytimes.com

"Not Without Laughter". 9 August 2011.

[hide]

Langston Hughes

"The Negro Speaks of Rivers" (1921)

"The Weary Blues" (1926) Poems "Come to the Waldorf Astoria" (1931) "Let America be America Again" (1938)

Fine Clothes to the Jew (poems, 1927)

Collections

The Ways of White Folks (short stories, 1934)

Montage of a Dream Deferred (poems 1951)

Mule Bone (1931) Plays

Street Scene (1947)

Tambourines to Glory (1956)

Black Nativity (1961)

Jerico-Jim Crow (1964)

Novels

Not Without Laughter (1930)

Films

Way Down South (1939)

Charles Henry Langston (grandfather) People John Mercer Langston (great uncle)

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Langston Hughes, dated to 1919 or 1920

"The Negro Speaks of Rivers" is a poem by American writer Langston Hughes.

Contents
[hide]

1 Composition and publication history 2 Analysis 3 See also 4 References 5 External links

[edit]Composition

and publication history

Twenty years after its publication, Hughes suggested the poem be turned into a Hollywood film but the project never went forward.[1]:305

[edit]Analysis
This section requires expansion.
(February 2011)

In his early writing, including "The Negro Speaks of Rivers", Hughes was inspired by American poet Carl Sandburg.[2] Like many of Hughes's other writings, the poem depicts an African-American who recognizes and reaffirms his connection to Africa and uses that African heritage as a source of pride. [3]:169

[edit]See

also

Confluence, an artwork by Robert Stackhouse and Carol Mickett inspired by the poem in the collection of the Indianapolis Art Center.

[edit]References
1. ^ Berry, Faith (1992), Langston Hughes: Before and Beyond Harlem, New York: Citadel Press, ISBN 0-8065-1307-1. 2. ^ Tracy, Steven Carl (2001), Langston Hughes and the Blues, University of Illinois Press, p. 142, ISBN 0-252-06985-4. 3. ^ Ikonn, Chidi (1981), From DuBois to Van Vechten: The Early New Negro Literature, 1903 1926, Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing,ISBN 0-313-22496-X.

[edit]External

links

Wikisource has original text related to this article: The Negro Speaks of Rivers

Shades of Black at the DuBois Learning Center On "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" at Modern American Poetry

[hide]

Langston Hughes

"The Negro Speaks of Rivers" (1921)

"The Weary Blues" (1926) Poems "Come to the Waldorf Astoria" (1931) "Let America be America Again" (1938)

Fine Clothes to the Jew (poems, 1927)

Collections

The Ways of White Folks (short stories, 1934)

Montage of a Dream Deferred (poems 1951)

Mule Bone (1931)

Street Scene (1947)

Plays

Tambourines to Glory (1956)

Black Nativity (1961)

Jerico-Jim Crow (1964)

Novels

Not Without Laughter (1930)

Films

Way Down South (1939)

Charles Henry Langston (grandfather) People

John Mercer Langston (great uncle)

This article related to a poem is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
Categories:

1921 poems Poetry by Langston Hughes Works originally published in American magazines

Harlem Renaissance, a blossoming (c. 191837) of African American culture, particularly in the creative arts, and the most influential movement in African American literary history. Embracing literary, musical, theatrical, and visual arts, participants sought to reconceptualize the Negro apart from the white stereotypes that had influenced black peoples relationship to their heritage and to each other. They also sought to break free of Victorian moral values and bourgeois shame about aspects of their lives that might, as seen by whites, reinforce racist beliefs. Never dominated by a particular school of thought but rather characterized by intense debate, the movement laid the groundwork for all later African American literature and had an enormous impact on subsequent black literature and consciousness worldwide. While the renaissance was not confined to the Harlem district of New York City, Harlem attracted a remarkable concentration of intellect and talent and served as the symbolic capital of this cultural awakening.

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The background
The Harlem Renaissance was a phase of a larger New Negro movement that had emerged in the early 20th century and in some ways ushered in the civil rights movement of the late 1940s and early 1950s. The social foundations of this movement included the Great Migration of African Americans from rural to urban spaces and from South to North; dramatically rising levels of literacy; the creation of national organizations dedicated to pressing African American civil rights, uplifting the race, and opening socioeconomic opportunities; and developing race pride, including pan-African sensibilities and programs. Black exiles and expatriates from the Caribbean and Africa crossed paths in metropoles such as New York City and Paris after World War I and had an invigorating influence on each other that gave the broader Negro renaissance (as it was then known) a profoundly important international cast. The Harlem Renaissance is unusual among literary and artistic movements for its close relationship to civil rights and reform organizations. Crucial to the movement were magazines such as The Crisis, published by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People(NAACP); Opportunity, published by the National Urban League; and The Messenger, a socialist journal eventually connected with the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, a black labour union. Negro World, the newspaper of Marcus Garveys Universal Negro Improvement Association, also played a role, but few of the major authors or artists identified with Garveys Back to Africa movement, even if they contributed to the paper.

The renaissance had many sources in black culture, primarily of the United States and the Caribbean, and manifested itself well beyond Harlem. As its symbolic capital, Harlem was a catalyst for artistic experimentation and a highly popular nightlife destination. Its location in the communications capital of North America helped give the New Negroes visibility and opportunities for publication not evident elsewhere. Located just north of Central Park, Harlem was a formerly white residential district that by the early 1920s was becoming virtually a black city within the borough of Manhattan. Other boroughs of New York City were also home to people now identified with the renaissance, but they often crossed paths in Harlem or went to special events at the 135th Street Branch of the New York Public Library. Black intellectuals from Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and other cities (where they had their own intellectual circles, theatres, and reading groups) also met in Harlem or settled there. New York City had an extraordinarily diverse and decentred black social world in which no one group could monopolize cultural authority. As a result, it was a particularly fertile place for cultural experimentation. While the renaissance built on earlier traditions of African American culture, it was profoundly affected by trendssuch as primitivismin European and white American artistic circles. Modernist primitivism was inspired partly by Freudian psychology, but it tended to extol primitive peoples as enjoying a more direct relationship to the natural world and to elemental human desires than overcivilized whites. The keys to artistic revolution and authentic expression, some intellectuals felt, would be found in the cultures of primitive races, and preeminent among these, in the stereotypical thinking of the day, were the cultures of sub-Saharan Africans and their descendants. Early in the 20th century, European avant-garde artists had drawn inspiration from African masks as they broke from realistic representational styles toward abstraction in painting and sculpture. The prestige of such experiments caused African American intellectuals to look on their African heritage with new eyes and in many cases with a desire to reconnect with a heritage long despised or misunderstood by both whites and blacks.

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Angelina Weld Grimk(American dramatist)

Arna Bontemps(American writer)

Carl Van Vechten(American writer and photographer)

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Claude McKay(American writer)

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Langston Hughes(American poet)

May Miller(American playwright and poet)

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Regina M. Anderson(American librarian and playwright)

Richard Nugent(American writer, artist and actor)

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Wallace Henry Thurman(American writer)

Zora Neale Hurston(American author)

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Langston Hughes
James Langston Hughes was born February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. His parents divorced when he was a small child, and his father moved to Mexico. He was raised by his grandmother until he was thirteen, when he moved to Lincoln, Illinois, to live with his mother and her husband, before the family eventually settled in Cleveland, Ohio. It was in Lincoln, Illinois, that Hughes began writing poetry. Following graduation, he spent a year in Mexico and a year at Columbia University. During these years, he held odd jobs as an assistant cook, launderer, and a busboy, and travelled to Africa and Europe working as a seaman. In November 1924, he moved to Washington, D.C. Hughes's first book of poetry, The Weary Blues, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1926. He finished his college education at

Poems by Langston Hughes Dream Variations Dreams I, Too, Sing America Let America Be America Again Life is Fine Madam and Her Madam

Lincoln University in Pennsylvania three years later. In 1930 his first novel, Not Without Laughter, won the Harmon gold medal for literature. Hughes, who claimed Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg, and Walt Whitman as his primary influences, is particularly known for his insightful, colorful portrayals of black life in America from the twenties through the sixties. He wrote novels, short stories and plays, as well as poetry, and is also known for his engagement with the world of jazz and the influence it had on his writing, as in "Montage of a Dream Deferred." His life and work were enormously important in shaping the artistic contributions of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Unlike other notable black poets of the periodClaude McKay, Jean Toomer, and Countee CullenHughes refused to differentiate between his personal experience and the common experience of black America. 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. Langston Hughes died of complications from prostate cancer in May 22, 1967, in New York. In his memory, his residence at 20 East 127th Street in Harlem, New York City, has been given landmark status by the New York City Preservation Commission, and East 127th Street has been renamed "Langston Hughes Place." In addition to leaving us a large body of poetic work, Hughes wrote eleven plays and countless works of prose, including the well-known Simple books: Simple Speaks His Mind, Simple Stakes a Claim,Simple Takes a Wife, and Simple's Uncle Sam. He edited the anthologies The Poetry of the Negro and The Book of Negro Folklore, wrote an acclaimed autobiography (The Big Sea) and co-wrote the play Mule Bone with Zora Neale Hurston. A Selected Bibliography Poetry Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz (1961) Collected Poems of Langston Hughes (1994) Dear Lovely Death (1931) Fields of Wonder (1947) Fine Clothes to the Jew (1927) Freedom's Plow (1943) Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951) One-Way Ticket (1949) Scottsboro Limited (1932) Selected Poems (1959) Shakespeare in Harlem (1942) The Dream Keeper and Other Poems (1932) The Panther and the Lash: Poems of Our Times (1967) The Weary Blues (1926)

Madam and the Phone Bill Night Funeral in Harlem Po' Boy Blues The Negro Speaks of Rivers The Weary Blues Theme for English B Will V-Day Be Me-Day Too?

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Prose Good Morning, Revolution: Uncollected Social Protest Writings by Langston Hughes (1973) I Wonder as I Wander (1956) Laughing to Keep From Crying (1952) Not Without Laughter (1930) Remember Me to Harlem: The Letters of Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten, 1925-1964 (2001) Simple Speaks His Mind (1950) Simple Stakes a Claim (1957) Simple Takes a Wife (1953) Simple's Uncle Sam (1965) Something in Common and Other Stories (1963) Tambourines to Glory (1958) The Arna Bontemps-Langston Hughes Letters (1980) The Big Sea (1940) The Langston Hughes Reader (1958) The Ways of White Folks (1934) Drama Black Nativity (1961) Collected Works of Langston Hughes, vol. 5: The Plays to 1942: Mulatto to The Sun Do Move (2000) Don't You Want to Be Free? (1938) Five Plays by Langston Hughes (1963) Little Ham (1935) Mulatto (1935) Mule Bone (1930) Simply Heavenly (1957) Soul Gone Home (1937) The Political Plays of Langston Hughes (2000) Poetry in Translation Cuba Libre (1948) Gypsy Ballads (1951) Selected Poems of Gabriela Mistral (1957) Translation Masters of the Dew (1947) - See more at: http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/83#sthash.9sBKpIiV.dpuf