Samuel A. Floyd
- Published in print:
- 1997
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195109757
- eISBN:
- 9780199853243
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195109757.003.0006
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
The flowerings of the Negro Renaissance in Harlem (1917–1935) and Chicago (1935–1950) were initiated by Pan Africanism, which speculates that black people share an origin and a heritage, that the ...
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The flowerings of the Negro Renaissance in Harlem (1917–1935) and Chicago (1935–1950) were initiated by Pan Africanism, which speculates that black people share an origin and a heritage, that the welfare of black people is inevitably linked, and that the cultural products of blacks should convey their particular fundamental beliefs. The “extended forms” that Renaissance leaders wanted to see were produced by Duke Ellington. However, the New Negroes may not have perceived these events as significant to their goals, since Ellington's works did not meet their social requirements: Renaissance leaders' use of the term “symphonic” (meaning “orchestra”) was stimulated by the politics of “racial elevation,” and of the noble aspirations of Alain Locke and other intellectuals.Less
The flowerings of the Negro Renaissance in Harlem (1917–1935) and Chicago (1935–1950) were initiated by Pan Africanism, which speculates that black people share an origin and a heritage, that the welfare of black people is inevitably linked, and that the cultural products of blacks should convey their particular fundamental beliefs. The “extended forms” that Renaissance leaders wanted to see were produced by Duke Ellington. However, the New Negroes may not have perceived these events as significant to their goals, since Ellington's works did not meet their social requirements: Renaissance leaders' use of the term “symphonic” (meaning “orchestra”) was stimulated by the politics of “racial elevation,” and of the noble aspirations of Alain Locke and other intellectuals.
Mark Whalan
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780813032061
- eISBN:
- 9780813039015
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813032061.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, African-American Literature
This chapter evaluates how the Great War modified the perceptions of gender. This chapter looks into the changing perceptions of gender that dominated during wartime. During the war period, the ...
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This chapter evaluates how the Great War modified the perceptions of gender. This chapter looks into the changing perceptions of gender that dominated during wartime. During the war period, the figure of a black officer trained at Des Moines became the symbol of New Negro masculinity and this was used in the New Negro literature of the 1920s. This New Negro masculinity was associated with patriarchal authority, Victorian gentility, and traditional ideas of martial heroism. These new forms of masculinity were often celebrated and subjected to subtle criticism in the literature of the 1920s. The most notable of these were Edward Christopher Williams's The Letters of Davy Carr, Walter White's The Fire in the Flint, and Nella Larsen's Passing. In contrast, several narratives also attempted to revise and broaden the masculinist articulations of the New Negro. These new articulations of the New Negro and black subjectivity were not only observed in literary representations and literature, this new black subjectivity also had an impact on the system of mass testing the physiology and IQs of soldier draftees. This new data garnered from these tests was much debated in the 1920s. The debate centered on issues of the racial basis of scientific methodology and the capacity of this new technology and science to quantify racial identity. Debates on the link between race and intelligence and the data garnered by these tests were used by anthropologists as basis for their claim of the emergence of a new and distinct African American physiology which paved the way for the emergence of the so-called “brown America”. Anthropologists and African American writer alike presumed and suggested the emergence of the cultural shift of the New Negro Renaissance, and this was largely connected to physiological changes that were observed during the 1920s.Less
This chapter evaluates how the Great War modified the perceptions of gender. This chapter looks into the changing perceptions of gender that dominated during wartime. During the war period, the figure of a black officer trained at Des Moines became the symbol of New Negro masculinity and this was used in the New Negro literature of the 1920s. This New Negro masculinity was associated with patriarchal authority, Victorian gentility, and traditional ideas of martial heroism. These new forms of masculinity were often celebrated and subjected to subtle criticism in the literature of the 1920s. The most notable of these were Edward Christopher Williams's The Letters of Davy Carr, Walter White's The Fire in the Flint, and Nella Larsen's Passing. In contrast, several narratives also attempted to revise and broaden the masculinist articulations of the New Negro. These new articulations of the New Negro and black subjectivity were not only observed in literary representations and literature, this new black subjectivity also had an impact on the system of mass testing the physiology and IQs of soldier draftees. This new data garnered from these tests was much debated in the 1920s. The debate centered on issues of the racial basis of scientific methodology and the capacity of this new technology and science to quantify racial identity. Debates on the link between race and intelligence and the data garnered by these tests were used by anthropologists as basis for their claim of the emergence of a new and distinct African American physiology which paved the way for the emergence of the so-called “brown America”. Anthropologists and African American writer alike presumed and suggested the emergence of the cultural shift of the New Negro Renaissance, and this was largely connected to physiological changes that were observed during the 1920s.
David A. Varel
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780226534886
- eISBN:
- 9780226534916
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226534916.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, History of Ideas
The second chapter analyzes Davis’s literary style and intellectual agenda during the New Negro Renaissance. It shows how Davis, along with his good friend Sterling Brown, aimed to endow the poor ...
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The second chapter analyzes Davis’s literary style and intellectual agenda during the New Negro Renaissance. It shows how Davis, along with his good friend Sterling Brown, aimed to endow the poor black masses with humanity and virtue through a distinctive style of critical realism called “Negro Stoicism.” Publishing in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s Crisis and the National Urban League’s Opportunity magazines, Davis combined literature with polemical essays that promoted racial solidarity and critiqued the approaches of leading black intellectuals of the time. He criticized the “race chauvinism” of the older generation, led by William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, who used art as propaganda. He also castigated sordid representations of black people developed by many of the younger artists, led by Langston Hughes, who were influenced by modernism. Because Davis participated in the Renaissance from Virginia, and because he drew inspiration for his work from the poor blacks he encountered there, his ideas reveal the national scope of the New Negro Renaissance, and they make clear how bottom-up forces shaped the movement.Less
The second chapter analyzes Davis’s literary style and intellectual agenda during the New Negro Renaissance. It shows how Davis, along with his good friend Sterling Brown, aimed to endow the poor black masses with humanity and virtue through a distinctive style of critical realism called “Negro Stoicism.” Publishing in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s Crisis and the National Urban League’s Opportunity magazines, Davis combined literature with polemical essays that promoted racial solidarity and critiqued the approaches of leading black intellectuals of the time. He criticized the “race chauvinism” of the older generation, led by William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, who used art as propaganda. He also castigated sordid representations of black people developed by many of the younger artists, led by Langston Hughes, who were influenced by modernism. Because Davis participated in the Renaissance from Virginia, and because he drew inspiration for his work from the poor blacks he encountered there, his ideas reveal the national scope of the New Negro Renaissance, and they make clear how bottom-up forces shaped the movement.
Samuel A. Floyd
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252037023
- eISBN:
- 9780252094392
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252037023.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This chapter argues that the “Negro Renaissance” in Harlem and Chicago was spawned by Pan-Africanism, which suggests the belief that black people all over the world share an origin and a heritage, ...
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This chapter argues that the “Negro Renaissance” in Harlem and Chicago was spawned by Pan-Africanism, which suggests the belief that black people all over the world share an origin and a heritage, that the welfare of black people everywhere is inexorably linked, and that the cultural products of blacks everywhere should express their particular fundamental beliefs. The chapter describes the quandary of renaissance artists, intellectuals, and entertainers who drew inspiration from the vernacular yet professed allegiance to the styles and tone of high or modern culture. It also notes that the black arts manifesto of poet Hughes' generational cohort exemplifies the refusal of these artists and intellectuals to accept the hierarchical oppositional distinction between high (middle class, northern, urban) and low (folk, spiritual, rural).Less
This chapter argues that the “Negro Renaissance” in Harlem and Chicago was spawned by Pan-Africanism, which suggests the belief that black people all over the world share an origin and a heritage, that the welfare of black people everywhere is inexorably linked, and that the cultural products of blacks everywhere should express their particular fundamental beliefs. The chapter describes the quandary of renaissance artists, intellectuals, and entertainers who drew inspiration from the vernacular yet professed allegiance to the styles and tone of high or modern culture. It also notes that the black arts manifesto of poet Hughes' generational cohort exemplifies the refusal of these artists and intellectuals to accept the hierarchical oppositional distinction between high (middle class, northern, urban) and low (folk, spiritual, rural).
Phoebe Wolfskill
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780252041143
- eISBN:
- 9780252099700
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252041143.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
An essential African American artist of his era, Archibald Motley Jr. created paintings of black Chicago that aligned him with the revisionist aims of the New Negro Renaissance. Yet Motley’s approach ...
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An essential African American artist of his era, Archibald Motley Jr. created paintings of black Chicago that aligned him with the revisionist aims of the New Negro Renaissance. Yet Motley’s approach to constructing a New Negro—a dignified figure both accomplished and worthy of respect—reflected the challenges faced by African American artists working on the project of racial reinvention and uplift. Phoebe Wolfskill demonstrates how Motley’s art embodied the tenuous nature of the Black Renaissance and the wide range of ideas that structured it. Focusing on key works in Motley’s oeuvre, Wolfskill reveals the artist’s complexity and the variety of influences that informed his work. Motley’s paintings suggest that the racist, problematic image of the Old Negro was not a relic of the past but an influence that pervaded the Black Renaissance. Exploring Motley in relation to works by notable black and non-black contemporaries, Wolfskill reinterprets Motley’s oeuvre as part of a broad effort to define American cultural identity through race, class, gender, religion, and regional affiliation. The book concludes by considering how racist images of the past continue to fuel conflicts over black representation.
Less
An essential African American artist of his era, Archibald Motley Jr. created paintings of black Chicago that aligned him with the revisionist aims of the New Negro Renaissance. Yet Motley’s approach to constructing a New Negro—a dignified figure both accomplished and worthy of respect—reflected the challenges faced by African American artists working on the project of racial reinvention and uplift. Phoebe Wolfskill demonstrates how Motley’s art embodied the tenuous nature of the Black Renaissance and the wide range of ideas that structured it. Focusing on key works in Motley’s oeuvre, Wolfskill reveals the artist’s complexity and the variety of influences that informed his work. Motley’s paintings suggest that the racist, problematic image of the Old Negro was not a relic of the past but an influence that pervaded the Black Renaissance. Exploring Motley in relation to works by notable black and non-black contemporaries, Wolfskill reinterprets Motley’s oeuvre as part of a broad effort to define American cultural identity through race, class, gender, religion, and regional affiliation. The book concludes by considering how racist images of the past continue to fuel conflicts over black representation.
Kevin Young
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617031564
- eISBN:
- 9781617031571
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617031564.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
The rise of modernism coincided with the emergence and reach of the blues. This chapter explores the influence of blues music on modernism, focusing on the importance, intricacies, and intimacies of ...
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The rise of modernism coincided with the emergence and reach of the blues. This chapter explores the influence of blues music on modernism, focusing on the importance, intricacies, and intimacies of Harlem or New Negro Renaissance. It argues that the achievement of African American writers (and sculptors and artists) should be considered one of the heights of modernism. The chapter also comments on the recent disregard heaped upon the notion of Africa as a popular theme in the Harlem Renaissance and how this attitude denies the power of place in the black imagination.Less
The rise of modernism coincided with the emergence and reach of the blues. This chapter explores the influence of blues music on modernism, focusing on the importance, intricacies, and intimacies of Harlem or New Negro Renaissance. It argues that the achievement of African American writers (and sculptors and artists) should be considered one of the heights of modernism. The chapter also comments on the recent disregard heaped upon the notion of Africa as a popular theme in the Harlem Renaissance and how this attitude denies the power of place in the black imagination.
Louise Hardwick
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781786940735
- eISBN:
- 9781786945044
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781786940735.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
The chapter discusses the relationship between Zobel’s novels and the Négritude movement. By providing the first detailed contextualisation of the conditions in which he began to write novels, it ...
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The chapter discusses the relationship between Zobel’s novels and the Négritude movement. By providing the first detailed contextualisation of the conditions in which he began to write novels, it also addresses the impact of the Harlem Renaissance (also known as the Negro Renaissance) for Zobel, and demonstrates how his work engages – through conceptual and formal resonances – with the two movements.Less
The chapter discusses the relationship between Zobel’s novels and the Négritude movement. By providing the first detailed contextualisation of the conditions in which he began to write novels, it also addresses the impact of the Harlem Renaissance (also known as the Negro Renaissance) for Zobel, and demonstrates how his work engages – through conceptual and formal resonances – with the two movements.
Zita Nunes
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- March 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780195385342
- eISBN:
- 9780190252779
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780195385342.003.0028
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
This chapter focuses on American novels written during the Harlem Renaissance, a period of unprecedented artistic production spanning the early 1920s and the mid-1930s. Also known as the Negro ...
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This chapter focuses on American novels written during the Harlem Renaissance, a period of unprecedented artistic production spanning the early 1920s and the mid-1930s. Also known as the Negro Renaissance, the Harlem Renaissance coincided with the New Negro Movement in which art and culture became the primary medium for black writers, artists, and intellectuals to counter racism and to advocate social and political change. The chapter explores how Harlem Renaissance novels offered representations of black people using new technologies such as photography, film, and recordings. It also considers the Harlem Renaissance novel's depictions of sex and sexuality, along with the genres with which Harlem Renaissance writers experimented, including science fiction and detective fiction. Finally, the chapter looks at a number of Harlem Renaissance novels, including Carl Van Vechten's Nigger Heaven (1926), Rudolph Fisher's The Conjure-Man Dies: A Mystery Tale of Dark Harlem (1932), Nella Larsen's Quicksand (1928) and Passing (1929), W.E.B. Du Bois's Dark Princess (1928), Wallace Thurman's Infants of the Spring (1932), and Countee Cullen's One Way to Heaven (1932).Less
This chapter focuses on American novels written during the Harlem Renaissance, a period of unprecedented artistic production spanning the early 1920s and the mid-1930s. Also known as the Negro Renaissance, the Harlem Renaissance coincided with the New Negro Movement in which art and culture became the primary medium for black writers, artists, and intellectuals to counter racism and to advocate social and political change. The chapter explores how Harlem Renaissance novels offered representations of black people using new technologies such as photography, film, and recordings. It also considers the Harlem Renaissance novel's depictions of sex and sexuality, along with the genres with which Harlem Renaissance writers experimented, including science fiction and detective fiction. Finally, the chapter looks at a number of Harlem Renaissance novels, including Carl Van Vechten's Nigger Heaven (1926), Rudolph Fisher's The Conjure-Man Dies: A Mystery Tale of Dark Harlem (1932), Nella Larsen's Quicksand (1928) and Passing (1929), W.E.B. Du Bois's Dark Princess (1928), Wallace Thurman's Infants of the Spring (1932), and Countee Cullen's One Way to Heaven (1932).
Clare Corbould
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- July 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780807834626
- eISBN:
- 9781469602967
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/9780807878026_brundage.17
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This chapter focuses on Black Americans and how they expended a remarkable amount of energy describing the history, culture, and current conditions of people in the nearby republic of Haiti. Their ...
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This chapter focuses on Black Americans and how they expended a remarkable amount of energy describing the history, culture, and current conditions of people in the nearby republic of Haiti. Their efforts went beyond nonfiction, with a diverse bunch of cultural producers turning their hands to the task, including librettists, composers, visual artists, filmmakers, photographers, and writers of short stories, poetry, novels, and plays. Such products were part of a cultural-political movement, known as the New Negro Renaissance, characterized by an intense scrutiny of all issues relating to black identity. Culture produced during the era challenged mainstream and dominant accounts of history, which claimed for the United States a unique position as the most progressive of nation-states, the founder of modern democracy, the place where the ideals formulated in ancient Greece finally came to fruition.Less
This chapter focuses on Black Americans and how they expended a remarkable amount of energy describing the history, culture, and current conditions of people in the nearby republic of Haiti. Their efforts went beyond nonfiction, with a diverse bunch of cultural producers turning their hands to the task, including librettists, composers, visual artists, filmmakers, photographers, and writers of short stories, poetry, novels, and plays. Such products were part of a cultural-political movement, known as the New Negro Renaissance, characterized by an intense scrutiny of all issues relating to black identity. Culture produced during the era challenged mainstream and dominant accounts of history, which claimed for the United States a unique position as the most progressive of nation-states, the founder of modern democracy, the place where the ideals formulated in ancient Greece finally came to fruition.
Shannon King
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781479811274
- eISBN:
- 9781479866915
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479811274.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
The Harlem of the early twentieth century was more than just the stage upon which black intellectuals, poets and novelists, and painters and jazz musicians created the New Negro Renaissance. It was ...
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The Harlem of the early twentieth century was more than just the stage upon which black intellectuals, poets and novelists, and painters and jazz musicians created the New Negro Renaissance. It was also a community of working people and black institutions who combated the daily and structural manifestations of racial, class, and gender inequality within Harlem and across the city. New Negro activists, such as Hubert Harrison and Frank Crosswaith, challenged local forms of economic and racial inequality. Insurgent stay-at-home black mothers took negligent landlords to court, complaining to magistrates about the absence of hot water and heat in their apartment buildings. Black men and women, propelling dishes, bricks, and other makeshift weapons from their apartment windows and their rooftops, retaliated against hostile policemen harassing blacks on the streets of Harlem. From the turn of the twentieth century to the Great Depression, black Harlemites mobilized around local issues—such as high rents, jobs, leisure, and police brutality—to make their neighborhood an autonomous black community. This book argues that Harlemites' mobilization for community rights raised the black community's racial consciousness and established Harlem's political culture. By the end of the 1920s, Harlem had experienced a labor strike, a tenant campaign for affordable rents, and its first race riot. These public forms of protest and discontent represented the dress rehearsal for black mass mobilization in the 1930s and 1940s. By studying blacks' investment in community politics, the book makes visible the hidden stirrings of a social movement deeply invested in a Black Harlem.Less
The Harlem of the early twentieth century was more than just the stage upon which black intellectuals, poets and novelists, and painters and jazz musicians created the New Negro Renaissance. It was also a community of working people and black institutions who combated the daily and structural manifestations of racial, class, and gender inequality within Harlem and across the city. New Negro activists, such as Hubert Harrison and Frank Crosswaith, challenged local forms of economic and racial inequality. Insurgent stay-at-home black mothers took negligent landlords to court, complaining to magistrates about the absence of hot water and heat in their apartment buildings. Black men and women, propelling dishes, bricks, and other makeshift weapons from their apartment windows and their rooftops, retaliated against hostile policemen harassing blacks on the streets of Harlem. From the turn of the twentieth century to the Great Depression, black Harlemites mobilized around local issues—such as high rents, jobs, leisure, and police brutality—to make their neighborhood an autonomous black community. This book argues that Harlemites' mobilization for community rights raised the black community's racial consciousness and established Harlem's political culture. By the end of the 1920s, Harlem had experienced a labor strike, a tenant campaign for affordable rents, and its first race riot. These public forms of protest and discontent represented the dress rehearsal for black mass mobilization in the 1930s and 1940s. By studying blacks' investment in community politics, the book makes visible the hidden stirrings of a social movement deeply invested in a Black Harlem.
David A. Varel
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780226534886
- eISBN:
- 9780226534916
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226534916.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, History of Ideas
The first chapter traces Davis’s social and intellectual influences in the first third of his life, from 1902 to 1931. In 1902, Davis was born into a relatively affluent black family in Washington, ...
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The first chapter traces Davis’s social and intellectual influences in the first third of his life, from 1902 to 1931. In 1902, Davis was born into a relatively affluent black family in Washington, D.C. Though his family suffered from Woodrow Wilson’s segregation of the federal government, Allison nevertheless achieved a first-rate education from Dunbar High School and was firmly part of the black middle class. After graduating as valedictorian, Davis studied English literature at Williams College from 1920 to 1924, again graduating as valedictorian. Then, he completed a master’s degree in English literature from Harvard College in 1925, where he was influenced by the New Humanism of Irving Babbitt. In 1925, Davis took a job as a professor of English at Hampton Institute in Virginia, where he worked until 1931. During these years, he contributed to the New Negro Renaissance while encouraging students to protest the administrative paternalism at Hampton and other white-run black colleges.Less
The first chapter traces Davis’s social and intellectual influences in the first third of his life, from 1902 to 1931. In 1902, Davis was born into a relatively affluent black family in Washington, D.C. Though his family suffered from Woodrow Wilson’s segregation of the federal government, Allison nevertheless achieved a first-rate education from Dunbar High School and was firmly part of the black middle class. After graduating as valedictorian, Davis studied English literature at Williams College from 1920 to 1924, again graduating as valedictorian. Then, he completed a master’s degree in English literature from Harvard College in 1925, where he was influenced by the New Humanism of Irving Babbitt. In 1925, Davis took a job as a professor of English at Hampton Institute in Virginia, where he worked until 1931. During these years, he contributed to the New Negro Renaissance while encouraging students to protest the administrative paternalism at Hampton and other white-run black colleges.
