The Harlem Renaissance
By:Jelani Durley
HP:JD
After decades of suffering the devastating pain and despair of slavery, African Americans decided to celebrate and express their culture instead of just going straight to their lives as official free citizens of the United States. The Harlem Renaissance included many memorable events and celebrations that made up a huge part of the roaring twenties. This wonderful time of celebration and rejoice of African Americans began with The Great Migration.
This huge moving of hundreds of thousands of African Americans started in 1915 during World War I. This huge movement took place as a result of white supremacy in the South. White supremacy was established after the slaves were freed, although at the time, about 90% of the South’s population was made up of African Americans. During the first movement of the African Americans, there was a total of about 454,000 African American southerners moving from the south to northern cities. The major cities that they were moving to were cities such as Chicago, Illinois, Detroit, New York, New York, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 1920, another 800,000 African Americans left the South and moved to the North. Between 1940 and 1960, over 3,348,000 Africans had migrated from the South to the North. In World War II, African Americans continued to move to major Northern cities such as San Francisco, California, Seattle, Washington, Portland, Oregon, and Los Angeles, Oakland. This huge migration of African Americans was beneficial for them and the North. The demand for workers in the North was at an all time high because of the 5 million men that had to leave the North to go and serve in the armed forces. Many railroads up North were so desperate for workers that that would pay for the travel expenses of the African American’s travels. Not only did the African Americans move from the South to the North for job opportunities, but also to escape the torturing and mistreatment of their kind by white supremacists. During this time in the South, African Americans were lynched, drowned, beaten, kidnapped, and killed by white supremacists for little to no reason. It was very rare that the criminals were ever sentenced to time in jail or punished in any way after committing these crimes. This lasted from from about 1910 to 1920. After the Great Migration occured, the roaring 20s began to surface. The 1920s was seen as an age of dramatic political and social change. For the first time, there was more Americans living in cities than on farms. The total wealth of the nation more than doubled between 1920 and 192. This economic growth swept many Americans into an affluent but unfamiliar “consumer society”. People from coast to coast purchased the same goods , did the same dances, listened to the same music and even used the same slang of English. Many Americans were not comfortable with this the new and urban mass culture that was being created. In fact, for most of the people in the United States, the 1920s brought way more problems than celebration. However, for a small handful of young people in the nation’s big cities, the 1920s were roaring indeed. The culture in Harlem began to evolve after a while. During the 1920s, many Americans had a lot of extra money to spend, which they spent on consumer goods such as clothing and home appliances such as electric refrigerators. In particular, majority of the Americans purchased radios with the extra spending money. The first commercial radio station in the U.S., Pittsburgh’s KDKA, hit the airwaves in 1920. Three years later there were more than 500 stations in the nation. By the end of the 1920s, there were radios in more than 12 million households. People also went to the movies: Historians estimate that, by the end of the decades, three-quarters of the American population visited a movie theater every week.
But the most important consumer product of the 1920s was the automobile. Low prices and generous credit made cars affordable luxuries at the beginning of the decade; by the end, they were practically necessities. In 1929 there was one car on the road for every five Americans. Meanwhile, an economy of automobiles was born: Businesses like service stations and motels sprang up to meet drivers’ needs. A lot of trends began to be set by the youth of this time. What many young people wanted to do was dance: the Charleston, the cakewalk, the black bottom, the flea hop. Jazz bands played at dance halls like the Savoy in New York City and the Aragon in Chicago; radio stations and phonograph records (100 million of which were sold in 1927 alone) carried their tunes to listeners across the nation. Some older people objected to jazz music’s “vulgarity” and “depravity” (and the “moral disasters” it supposedly inspired), but many in the younger generation loved the freedom they felt on the dance floor. Another big thing during this time was the clothing that the men and women wore. Fashion in the nineteen twenties was all about comfort. The men’s pants got wider and the women stopped wearing their corsets and tight dresses. The elder women of the age considered this scandalous and still held the thought that women shouldn’t show the ankle. Though the adults disagreed with the fashion change, the young women continued to hike up their skirts, stay out late, and go with what was in style during this time. Times were, and still are, changing, and the age of the flapper was born. There were many prominent artists and poets during this time that inspired people today. One of the poets that stood out the most during the Harlem Renaissance was Langston Hughes. James Mercer Langston Hughes was born February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. His parents divorced when he was a young 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 that Hughes began to write poetry. After Hughes graduated from high school, he spent a year in Mexico followed by a year at Columbia University in New York City. During his time in Mexico, he held odd jobs such as assistant cook, launderer, and busboy. Hughes also 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, (Knopf, 1926) was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1926. He finished his college education at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania three years later. In 1930 his first novel, Not Without Laughter, (Knopf, 1930) won the Harmon gold medal for literature. Langston Hughes was one of the most important writers and thinkers of the Harlem Renaissance, which was the African American artistic movement in the 1920s that celebrated black life and culture. Hughes's creative genius was influenced by his life in New York City's Harlem, a primarily African American neighborhood. His literary works helped shape American literature and politics. Hughes, like others active in the Harlem Renaissance, had a strong sense of racial pride. Through his poetry, novels, plays, essays, and children's books, he promoted equality, condemned racism and injustice, and celebrated African American culture, humor, and spirituality. He passed away on May 22nd 1967 at the age of 65. Another famous female figure during the Harlem Renaissance was Zora Neale Hurston. On this day in 1891, Zora Neale Hurston, novelist and folklorist, is born in Eatonville, Fl. Although at the time of her death in 1960, Hurston had published more books than any other black woman in America, she was unable to capture a mainstream audience in her lifetime, and she died poor and alone in a welfare hotel. Today, she is seen as one of the most important black writers in American history. Eatonville, Fla., was an all-black town when Hurston was born. The daughter of a Baptist preacher, Hurston had little contact with white people until her mother’s death, when Hurston was 11. Until her teens, Hurston was largely sheltered from racism. A talented, energetic young women with a powerful desire to learn, she didn’t finish high school but prepared herself for college and excelled at Howard University. High-spirited, outgoing, and witty, she became famous for her storytelling talents. In 1925, she moved to New York, where she became a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance. She studied anthropology with a prominent professor at Barnard and received a fellowship to collect oral histories and folklore in her home state. She also studied voodoo in Haiti. In 1931, she collaborated with Langston Hughes on the play Mule Bone. Her first novel, Jonah’s Gourd Vine, featuring a central character based on her father, was published in 1934. Mules and Men, a collection of material from her research in oral folklore, was published in 1935 and became her bestselling work during her lifetime-but even so, it earned her only $943.75. Another figure that stood out during this time was Aaron Douglas. Aaron Douglas, (May 26, 1899—February 2, 1979) was an African American painter and graphic artist who played a leading role in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Douglas’ distinctive style of geometric symbolism (featuring flat silhouettes of human figures, muted colors, and images that are symbolic, not realistic) may be seen on many magazine covers, book illustrations and dust covers, and advertisements from the Harlem Renaissance. Douglas also painted some impressive murals (large-scale paintings, often mounted in public places) that display his unique blend of African and modernist techniques and his interest in including elements of African American history, religion, myth, and social issues in his works. Before Douglas, no African American artist had created works so unique in style and so affirming of black identity and experience. One of the many party type places that stood out during the Harlem Renaissance was the Cotton Club. Opened in 1923, the Cotton Club on 142nd St & Lenox Ave in the heart of Harlem, New York was operated by white New York gangster Owney Madden. Madden used the Cotton Club as an outlet to sell his “#1 Beer” to the prohibition crowd. Although the club was briefly closed several times in the 1920s for selling alcohol, the owners’ political connections allowed them to always reopen quickly. The Club was decorated with the idea of creating a “stylish plantation environment” for its entirely white clientele. As with many New York City clubs of the time period, that meant the upper class of the city. The Cotton Club at first excluded all but white patrons although the entertainers and most of staff were African American. Exceptions to this restriction were made in the case of prominent white entertainment guest stars and the dancers. Dancers at the Cotton Club were held to strict standards; they had to be at least 5’6” tall, light skinned with only a slight tan, and under twenty-one years of age. The oppressive segregation of the Cotton Club was reinforced by its depiction of the African American employees as exotic savages or plantation residents. The music was often orchestrated to bring to mind a jungle atmosphere. By transforming the club into this plantation atmosphere and bringing in celebrities, Owney Madden created a demand for the Cotton Club and its exclusionary policies and also helped perpetuate widely held stereotypes about African Americans. Paul Robeson was a famous African-American athlete, singer, actor, and advocate for the civil rights of people around the world. He rose to prominence in a time when segregation was legal in the United States, and Black people were being lynched by racist mobs, especially in the South. Born on April 9, 1898 in Princeton, New Jersey, Paul Robeson was the youngest of five children. His father was a runaway slave who went on to graduate from Lincoln University, and his mother came from an abolitionist Quaker family. Robeson's family knew both hardship and the determination to rise above it. His own life was no less challenging. In 1915, Paul Robeson won a four-year academic scholarship to Rutgers University. Despite violence and racism from teammates, he won 15 varsity letters in sports (baseball, basketball, track) and was twice named to the All-American Football Team. He received the Phi Beta Kappa key in his junior year, belonged to the Cap & Skull Honor Society, and graduated as Valedictorian. However, it wasn't until 1995, 19 years after his death, that Paul Robeson was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. 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. All in all, The harlem Renaissance really showed the creativity and power of African Americans and many other people. Harlem brought notice to great works that might otherwise have been lost or never produced. The results were phenomenal. The artists of the Harlem Renaissance undoubtedly transformed African American culture. But the impact on all American culture was equally strong. For the first time, white America could not look away.