Jeffrey Helgeson
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252037023
- eISBN:
- 9780252094392
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252037023.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This chapter considers the 1940 American Negro Exposition in Chicago, the first black-organized world's fair that sought to showcase African American artists on a national stage. It delineates the ...
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This chapter considers the 1940 American Negro Exposition in Chicago, the first black-organized world's fair that sought to showcase African American artists on a national stage. It delineates the diversity of voices and competing visions of racial progress that defined the character of the Black Chicago Renaissance. Historians have described the exposition as a failure; the event did not attract mass audiences, and it did not create a broader public debate about the meanings of black identity, legacies of slavery, or contemporary discrimination in the United States. Yet, by examining the exposition as presented, rather than what it failed to be, the chapter uncovers important and sometimes surprising influences on the fair's messages.Less
This chapter considers the 1940 American Negro Exposition in Chicago, the first black-organized world's fair that sought to showcase African American artists on a national stage. It delineates the diversity of voices and competing visions of racial progress that defined the character of the Black Chicago Renaissance. Historians have described the exposition as a failure; the event did not attract mass audiences, and it did not create a broader public debate about the meanings of black identity, legacies of slavery, or contemporary discrimination in the United States. Yet, by examining the exposition as presented, rather than what it failed to be, the chapter uncovers important and sometimes surprising influences on the fair's messages.
Elizabeth Schroeder Schlabach
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252037825
- eISBN:
- 9780252095108
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252037825.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
This book examines the flowering of African American creativity, activism, and scholarship in the South Side Chicago district known as Bronzeville during the period between the Harlem Renaissance in ...
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This book examines the flowering of African American creativity, activism, and scholarship in the South Side Chicago district known as Bronzeville during the period between the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s and the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s. Poverty stricken, segregated, and bursting at the seams with migrants, Bronzeville was the community that provided inspiration, training, and work for an entire generation of diversely talented African American authors and artists who came of age during the years between the two world wars. This book investigates the institutions and streetscapes of Black Chicago that fueled an entire literary and artistic movement. It argues that African American authors and artists—such as Gwendolyn Brooks, Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, painter Archibald Motley, and many others—viewed and presented black reality from a specific geographic vantage point: the view along the streets of Bronzeville. The book explores how the particular rhythms and scenes of daily life in Bronzeville locations, such as the State Street “Stroll” district or the bustling intersection of 47th Street and South Parkway, figured into the creative works and experiences of the artists and writers of the Black Chicago Renaissance.Less
This book examines the flowering of African American creativity, activism, and scholarship in the South Side Chicago district known as Bronzeville during the period between the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s and the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s. Poverty stricken, segregated, and bursting at the seams with migrants, Bronzeville was the community that provided inspiration, training, and work for an entire generation of diversely talented African American authors and artists who came of age during the years between the two world wars. This book investigates the institutions and streetscapes of Black Chicago that fueled an entire literary and artistic movement. It argues that African American authors and artists—such as Gwendolyn Brooks, Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, painter Archibald Motley, and many others—viewed and presented black reality from a specific geographic vantage point: the view along the streets of Bronzeville. The book explores how the particular rhythms and scenes of daily life in Bronzeville locations, such as the State Street “Stroll” district or the bustling intersection of 47th Street and South Parkway, figured into the creative works and experiences of the artists and writers of the Black Chicago Renaissance.
James Smethurst
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- July 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780807834633
- eISBN:
- 9781469603100
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/9780807878088_smethurst.4
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This book endeavors to delineate some of the ways that the establishment of Jim Crow as a national system, albeit with considerable regional and local variations, and the response of African American ...
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This book endeavors to delineate some of the ways that the establishment of Jim Crow as a national system, albeit with considerable regional and local variations, and the response of African American artists and intellectuals, especially Paul Laurence Dunbar, to this profound ideological, political, economic, spatial, and cultural event deeply marked American notions of modernity—and, ultimately, modernism—for both African Americans and white Americans. By looking at some of the different strands in the development of a modern African American literature between the end of Reconstruction and the onset of the New Negro Renaissance, we can discern how some black writers came to feel a need for the creation of a distinct African American literature representing, channeling, and serving some notion of a black “people” or “nation.”Less
This book endeavors to delineate some of the ways that the establishment of Jim Crow as a national system, albeit with considerable regional and local variations, and the response of African American artists and intellectuals, especially Paul Laurence Dunbar, to this profound ideological, political, economic, spatial, and cultural event deeply marked American notions of modernity—and, ultimately, modernism—for both African Americans and white Americans. By looking at some of the different strands in the development of a modern African American literature between the end of Reconstruction and the onset of the New Negro Renaissance, we can discern how some black writers came to feel a need for the creation of a distinct African American literature representing, channeling, and serving some notion of a black “people” or “nation.”
Lindon Barrett
Justin A. Joyce, Dwight A. Mcbride, and John Carlos Rowe (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252038006
- eISBN:
- 9780252095290
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252038006.003.0005
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
This chapter focuses on the dispute between two important figures of the Harlem Renaissance: George Schuyler and Langston Hughes. Schuyler's critique of the African American avant-garde in his essay ...
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This chapter focuses on the dispute between two important figures of the Harlem Renaissance: George Schuyler and Langston Hughes. Schuyler's critique of the African American avant-garde in his essay “The Negro-Art Hokum” (1926) and Hughes's response in “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” (1926) provide a focus point to understand how African American artists and intellectuals imagined their relationship both to Western modernization and avant-garde cultural modernism. This chapter stands as a separate essay from Barrett's surviving manuscript, as it appears to be intended for a different publication; its inclusion here is meant to supplement discussion from the previous chapters, although Schuyler and Hughes did not tackle the gender and sexuality aspects of Barrett's arguments so far posited in this book.Less
This chapter focuses on the dispute between two important figures of the Harlem Renaissance: George Schuyler and Langston Hughes. Schuyler's critique of the African American avant-garde in his essay “The Negro-Art Hokum” (1926) and Hughes's response in “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” (1926) provide a focus point to understand how African American artists and intellectuals imagined their relationship both to Western modernization and avant-garde cultural modernism. This chapter stands as a separate essay from Barrett's surviving manuscript, as it appears to be intended for a different publication; its inclusion here is meant to supplement discussion from the previous chapters, although Schuyler and Hughes did not tackle the gender and sexuality aspects of Barrett's arguments so far posited in this book.
Celeste-Marie Bernier
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780748646401
- eISBN:
- 9780748684410
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748646401.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
This chapter analyzes the experienced and representative significance of World War I to the work of African American artists and writers who rejoined the civilian population following the end of the ...
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This chapter analyzes the experienced and representative significance of World War I to the work of African American artists and writers who rejoined the civilian population following the end of the war. It explores the interwoven aesthetic intricacies of the manuscripts and paintings of Horace Pippin, and other writers and artists of his generation and experience, who provided first-hand aesthetic reflections of the terrible nature of modern warfare, which were often written out of this most significant of modern events — one frequently configured as a white European tragedy. Grappling with a context in which black military experiences were caricatured or erased in white mainstream representations, their artistic and literary production confirms the Great War as the ‘locus of Afromodernism par excellence’.Less
This chapter analyzes the experienced and representative significance of World War I to the work of African American artists and writers who rejoined the civilian population following the end of the war. It explores the interwoven aesthetic intricacies of the manuscripts and paintings of Horace Pippin, and other writers and artists of his generation and experience, who provided first-hand aesthetic reflections of the terrible nature of modern warfare, which were often written out of this most significant of modern events — one frequently configured as a white European tragedy. Grappling with a context in which black military experiences were caricatured or erased in white mainstream representations, their artistic and literary production confirms the Great War as the ‘locus of Afromodernism par excellence’.
Ethelene Whitmire
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252038501
- eISBN:
- 9780252096419
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252038501.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This chapter looks at how Regina became part of the Harlem Renaissance upon her arrival in New York City. Events collided to put Regina at the forefront of the Harlem Renaissance, a cultural movement ...
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This chapter looks at how Regina became part of the Harlem Renaissance upon her arrival in New York City. Events collided to put Regina at the forefront of the Harlem Renaissance, a cultural movement marked by increased literary, musical, and artistic creativity by African American artists who wanted to challenge the prevailing stereotypical representation of their image. Writers and artists came from all over the United States to participate. In Los Angeles, writer Wallace Thurman encouraged fellow post-office worker Arna Bontemps to go to Harlem. Opportunity editor Charles S. Johnson encouraged Zora Neale Hurston to move to New York City. All of these great thinkers, writers, and artists would pass through the 135th Street Branch, where Regina was assigned.Less
This chapter looks at how Regina became part of the Harlem Renaissance upon her arrival in New York City. Events collided to put Regina at the forefront of the Harlem Renaissance, a cultural movement marked by increased literary, musical, and artistic creativity by African American artists who wanted to challenge the prevailing stereotypical representation of their image. Writers and artists came from all over the United States to participate. In Los Angeles, writer Wallace Thurman encouraged fellow post-office worker Arna Bontemps to go to Harlem. Opportunity editor Charles S. Johnson encouraged Zora Neale Hurston to move to New York City. All of these great thinkers, writers, and artists would pass through the 135th Street Branch, where Regina was assigned.
Elizabeth Schroeder Schlabach
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252037825
- eISBN:
- 9780252095108
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252037825.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
This chapter traces the complex interplay of race, geography, and cultural criticism that permeated the Renaissance as a whole. Beginning with the categorization of the neighborhood as the Black Belt ...
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This chapter traces the complex interplay of race, geography, and cultural criticism that permeated the Renaissance as a whole. Beginning with the categorization of the neighborhood as the Black Belt and ending with heralding itself as “Bronzeville,” the chapter examines the interaction of newly arrived migrants with previously settled African Americans that bloomed into an exciting community. It specifically analyzes two popular intersections in the South Side of Chicago—the “Stroll” district (the intersection of 35th and State Streets) during the early 1920s, and the intersection at 47th and South Parkway. This intersection, along with the Stroll, served as foundations and sources of work for famed African American musicians, artists, and writers, such as Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, and Gwendolyn Brooks.Less
This chapter traces the complex interplay of race, geography, and cultural criticism that permeated the Renaissance as a whole. Beginning with the categorization of the neighborhood as the Black Belt and ending with heralding itself as “Bronzeville,” the chapter examines the interaction of newly arrived migrants with previously settled African Americans that bloomed into an exciting community. It specifically analyzes two popular intersections in the South Side of Chicago—the “Stroll” district (the intersection of 35th and State Streets) during the early 1920s, and the intersection at 47th and South Parkway. This intersection, along with the Stroll, served as foundations and sources of work for famed African American musicians, artists, and writers, such as Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, and Gwendolyn Brooks.
GerShun Avilez
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252040122
- eISBN:
- 9780252098321
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252040122.003.0006
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
This concluding chapter discusses the significance of the concept of representation to nationalist discourse. Representation in the political world and the idea of cultural representation both appear ...
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This concluding chapter discusses the significance of the concept of representation to nationalist discourse. Representation in the political world and the idea of cultural representation both appear to demand a stable point of reference. However, cultural producers disruptively inhabit frameworks of representation as an element of their aesthetic radical practices. The chapter then examines visual artist Howardena Pindell alongside lesbian filmmaker Cheryl Dune because they produce works in which Black bodies become visually inaccessible. The reluctance to represent is a vital component of these artists' respective projects. Ultimately, the chapter documents how cultural producers challenge the idea that social realities oblige African American artists to produce work engaged in progressive politics.Less
This concluding chapter discusses the significance of the concept of representation to nationalist discourse. Representation in the political world and the idea of cultural representation both appear to demand a stable point of reference. However, cultural producers disruptively inhabit frameworks of representation as an element of their aesthetic radical practices. The chapter then examines visual artist Howardena Pindell alongside lesbian filmmaker Cheryl Dune because they produce works in which Black bodies become visually inaccessible. The reluctance to represent is a vital component of these artists' respective projects. Ultimately, the chapter documents how cultural producers challenge the idea that social realities oblige African American artists to produce work engaged in progressive politics.
Carmen L. Phelps
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617036804
- eISBN:
- 9781621039174
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617036804.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, African-American Literature
This chapter discusses Carolyn Rodgers’s poetic works in her poetry collections, including Paper Soul (1968) and Songs of a Black Bird (1969). It explains that Rodgers’ poetry showed that the concept ...
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This chapter discusses Carolyn Rodgers’s poetic works in her poetry collections, including Paper Soul (1968) and Songs of a Black Bird (1969). It explains that Rodgers’ poetry showed that the concept of Black Art was not a “fixed” one, but rather, something that varies and changes its form, function, and meaning with each piece of work produced by African American artists. In her first poetic works, Rodgers pointed out that the goal of defining the role of the Black Arts writer continued to be an essential preoccupation for self-acclaimed Black Arts Movement participants, as the movement wanted writers to position themselves within unwavering spaces of political expression and cultural representation.Less
This chapter discusses Carolyn Rodgers’s poetic works in her poetry collections, including Paper Soul (1968) and Songs of a Black Bird (1969). It explains that Rodgers’ poetry showed that the concept of Black Art was not a “fixed” one, but rather, something that varies and changes its form, function, and meaning with each piece of work produced by African American artists. In her first poetic works, Rodgers pointed out that the goal of defining the role of the Black Arts writer continued to be an essential preoccupation for self-acclaimed Black Arts Movement participants, as the movement wanted writers to position themselves within unwavering spaces of political expression and cultural representation.
Colette Gaiter
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816677252
- eISBN:
- 9781452947440
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816677252.003.0014
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
This chapter examines the work of artist Emory Douglas. In 1967, a young man barely in his twenties, Douglas was named Minister of Culture for the Black Panther Party. His visual skills, combined ...
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This chapter examines the work of artist Emory Douglas. In 1967, a young man barely in his twenties, Douglas was named Minister of Culture for the Black Panther Party. His visual skills, combined with the Panther leaders’ sharp verbal rhetoric, resulted in the graphically explosive Black Panther newspaper that embodied the group’s concept of revolution through self-empowerment. Over the course of his tenure as Minister of Culture, which ended in the early 1980s, Douglas used revolutionary art to empower African Americans in a post-Civil Rights Act, everyday-in-the-streets struggle. In concert with the goals of the Panther Party, Douglas’s body of work played a major role in two formations that continue to grow—black cultural liberation and the increasing dominance of images over words in cultural production.Less
This chapter examines the work of artist Emory Douglas. In 1967, a young man barely in his twenties, Douglas was named Minister of Culture for the Black Panther Party. His visual skills, combined with the Panther leaders’ sharp verbal rhetoric, resulted in the graphically explosive Black Panther newspaper that embodied the group’s concept of revolution through self-empowerment. Over the course of his tenure as Minister of Culture, which ended in the early 1980s, Douglas used revolutionary art to empower African Americans in a post-Civil Rights Act, everyday-in-the-streets struggle. In concert with the goals of the Panther Party, Douglas’s body of work played a major role in two formations that continue to grow—black cultural liberation and the increasing dominance of images over words in cultural production.
Brian Dolinar
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617032691
- eISBN:
- 9781617032707
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617032691.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, African-American Literature
This book describes how the social and political movements that grew out of the Depression facilitated the left turn of several African American artists and writers. The Communist-led John Reed Clubs ...
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This book describes how the social and political movements that grew out of the Depression facilitated the left turn of several African American artists and writers. The Communist-led John Reed Clubs brought together black and white writers in writing collectives. The Congress of Industrial Organizations’s effort to recruit black workers inspired growing interest in the labor movement. One of the most concerted efforts was made by the National Negro Congress (NNC), a coalition of civil rights and labor organizations, which held cultural panels at its national conferences, fought segregation in the culture industries, promoted cultural education, and involved writers and artists in staging mass rallies during World War II. The formation of a black cultural front is examined by looking at the works of poet Langston Hughes, novelist Chester Himes, and cartoonist Ollie Harrington. While none of them were card-carrying members of the Communist Party, they all participated in the Left at one point in their careers. Interestingly, they all turned to creating popular culture in order to reach the black masses, who were captivated by the movies, radio, newspapers, and detective novels. There are chapters on the Hughes’ “Simple” stories, Himes’ detective fiction, and Harrington’s “Bootsie” cartoons. Collectively, the experience of these three figures contributes to the story of a “long” movement for African American freedom that flourished during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. Yet this book also stresses the impact that McCarthyism had on dismantling the Black Left.Less
This book describes how the social and political movements that grew out of the Depression facilitated the left turn of several African American artists and writers. The Communist-led John Reed Clubs brought together black and white writers in writing collectives. The Congress of Industrial Organizations’s effort to recruit black workers inspired growing interest in the labor movement. One of the most concerted efforts was made by the National Negro Congress (NNC), a coalition of civil rights and labor organizations, which held cultural panels at its national conferences, fought segregation in the culture industries, promoted cultural education, and involved writers and artists in staging mass rallies during World War II. The formation of a black cultural front is examined by looking at the works of poet Langston Hughes, novelist Chester Himes, and cartoonist Ollie Harrington. While none of them were card-carrying members of the Communist Party, they all participated in the Left at one point in their careers. Interestingly, they all turned to creating popular culture in order to reach the black masses, who were captivated by the movies, radio, newspapers, and detective novels. There are chapters on the Hughes’ “Simple” stories, Himes’ detective fiction, and Harrington’s “Bootsie” cartoons. Collectively, the experience of these three figures contributes to the story of a “long” movement for African American freedom that flourished during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. Yet this book also stresses the impact that McCarthyism had on dismantling the Black Left.
