The Harlem Renaissance was a very important part of American history and literary history, but is sadly neglected in ‘traditional’ history courses. Naturally, I had read some works by prominent figures of the Harlem Renaissance, such as Langston Hughes and James Weldon Johnson, but most of the participants were unknown to me. Furthermore, I knew next to nothing about the historical and social context out of which the Harlem Renaissance arose.
In conducting my research, I consulted four books on the Harlem Renaissance, many articles in The Oxford Companion to African American Literatureand nine published articles. It would be impossible to describe everything I learned about the Harlem Renaissance in these essays. The aspects of the Harlem Renaissance that I will primarily focus on are the philosophical debate among African-Americans about how they should be represented in literature, writers’ responses to the debate, a brief biographical account of eight of the artists, a list of their major works, and how their lives and works connect to American Romanticism.
My first stop on my search for the Harlem Renaissance was The Oxford Companion to African American Literature. From the article on the “Harlem Renaissance,” I learned that there are a lot of ambiguities about the movement. Many literary critics and historians question the time period of its beginning and end. The article states, however, that there is a broad consensus that Richard Wright’s proposal native sound (1940) “heralded a new phase of harsh realism in African-American writing”, thus distancing himself from the philosophy of the Harlem Renaissance writers (Singh 340). The movement’s philosophy was also controversial; the black intelligentsia and artists had opposing views on what the literary movement should be.
To further explore these opposing viewpoints, I turned to Black culture and the Harlem Renaissance By Cary D Wintz. Wintz offers a highly detailed account of the social and political forces that fostered the movement, the literary roots of the Harlem Renaissance, an extensive list of people, both black and white, involved in the movement and their contributions to it. I won’t give an abbreviated description of everything I learned from Wintz’s book; to do so would be an injustice to the full scope of his work. But I will point out a few points from his study of the Harlem Renaissance.
Wintz argues that there was no consensus among artists, critics, and publishers about what the Harlem Renaissance should be. He claims that the participants took two positions: (1) those who thought that art should be used for political and propaganda purposes, and (2) those who insisted that art should be for art’s sake and resisted attempts to limit freedom of artistic expression. expression. Although all or most of the participants in the movement came from a middle-class background, they split into two groups arguing over how black people should be portrayed in literature. On one side (the ‘promoters’), there were James Weldon Johnson, Alain Locke and Charles Johnson, who promoted artistic freedom. James Weldon Johnson argued that “it was far more important that a black writer find a publisher than that his works adopt middle-class moral standards or consciously seek to improve the race” (Wintz 108). Alain Locke’s vision of art was purely aesthetic; thus, he “applauded the vigorous, vigorous realism embraced by most young writers, and praised their struggle to break free from the dictates of their elders who felt that art must fight social battles and make up for social wrongs” (Wintz 113 ).
On the other hand, those who defended the use of art for political and/or propaganda purposes were such prominent men as WEB DuBois, William Stanley Braithwaite, Charles W. Chestnutt and Benjamin Brawley. These critics objected to the representation of the black in what was called ghetto realism. Braithwaite claimed that ghetto realism “praised degradation” and would “stereotype blacks as immoral” (Wintz 132). Brawley saw the ghetto realism and representation of local Harlem color as providing “bigoted whites ammunition to use in their fight against racial equality” (Wintz 135). Brawley wanted black writers to use their art as a means of “counteracting prevailing prejudices and representing race in a favorable light” (Wintz 135). WEB DuBois, editor of The crisiswas firmer in his condemnation of art for art’s sake:
So all Art is propaganda and
should never be, despite the laments of the
purists I stand in utter shamelessness
and say that the art that you have to write
It has always been used for propaganda. . . .
I don’t give a fuck what art it is
It is not used for advertising. (Wintz 145)
Although Alain Locke promoted freedom of expression for younger artists, he was well aware of the dangers of stereotypical portrayals of African-Americans in literature, as were men like DuBois. In his essay, “The American Literary Tradition and the Negro,” Locke identifies seven stereotypical images of African-Americans. It was these stereotypes that DuBois and his school worked so hard to dismantle, but unlike DuBois, Locke did not believe that African-Americans should be portrayed as having only middle-class values, but rather as actually existing.
Both sides of this debate exhibit elements of romanticism. The use of art for propaganda purposes wanted to idealize African-Americans by portraying only good middle-class qualities and values; in short, to show that they were like everyone else. Art for art’s sake focused more on depicting the reality of Harlem’s lower-class culture. In effect, this side rebelled against the idea that blacks must become like whites in order to overcome stereotypes. They promoted the ‘blackness’ of their culture and sought a shared identity or racial consciousness.
These opposing views stem from the literary history of African Americans. Between the Reconstruction era and the early period of the Harlem Renaissance, three main literary genres existed, which were written by black writers and by white writers representing African-Americans. These genres were plantation lore, protest literature, and “passage” novels.
The plantation tradition was instigated by whites in the South after the Civil War who “sought, through romantic images of plantation life, to recapture for the nation the forms of racial power and order that war and Reconstruction had dismantled” (MacKethan 579). The North embraced this type of literature:
northern magazines like Scribner’s, the
Century, Harper’s, Atlantic Monthly guest
syrupy visions of the Old South
delivered in dialect by his slave
workforce recast as family
retainers and fluttering mammies.
Thus the meeting of the North and the South,
and the effective establishment
of a policy of white racial supremacy,
were achieved through a literature
design in which pastoral nostalgia
masked slave violence
past and stereotypical african american
characters became defenders of their
own disempowerment. (MacKethan 579-80)
The second genre, protest literature, originated with Phyllis Wheatley, around the time of the American Revolution. Although Wheatley’s style was one of “gentle piety and classical verse”, she used her poetry primarily to “affirm human equality and liberty and express her opposition to slavery” (Bruce 601). Slave narratives are also part of this genre of protest literature, such as the autobiographies of Frederick Douglass.
The third genre in the literary tradition is the ‘passage’ novel. While this genre is sometimes used to protest, other times it is not. The characters in these novels who attempt to ‘pass’ as white do so for a myriad of reasons, for example, to escape slavery, avoid racism, or improve their economic opportunities (Little 548). Some examples of this type of genre are those of William Wells Brown. Clotel, or the President’s Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States (1853) by Frances Ellen Watkin Harper Iola Leroy, or Lifted Shadows (1892) by Charles Waddell Chestnut The house behind the cedars (1900) and James Weldon Johnson The autobiography of an ex-colored man (1912).
This genre shows romantic tendencies in that the novels often contain “the taboo of interracial sex and the built-in dramas of hidden identity, tangled deceit, fear of exposure, guilt, and the search for identity” (Little 548). The protagonists are crossing borders and are on a quest to define themselves. In these novels, most of the characters ultimately choose not to pass as white, and as such, this genre “has been used largely to promote racial loyalty and solidarity” (Little 548). Young writers of the Harlem Renaissance will use all three of these genres, but with the addition of their own distinctive voices.
Like the elders of the Harlem Renaissance, the younger generation of writers would also grapple with the question of how African-Americans should be portrayed in literature. And also like the elders, their views diverge. While it is difficult to place the poets and novelists of the Harlem Renaissance in one philosophy of art or the opposite philosophy (since at various times both points of view are present in their works), they generally show tendencies toward one of the more philosophies. than the other. in most of his works. Thus, while Countee Cullen, Jessie Fauset, Nella Larsen, and Claude McKay primarily use their art for propaganda or political purposes; and Jean Toomer, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, and Wallace Thurman lean more toward the use of art for art’s sake, I will not fail to point out in the following discussion where they diverge from those views.
In Part Two, I begin by examining the life and contributions of Countee Cullen to the Harlem Renaissance.
Bibliography
Bruce Jr., Dickson D. “Protest Literature.” The Oxford Companion to African American Literature. eds. William L. Andrews, Frances Smith Foster, and Trudier Harris. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. 600-04.
Little, Jonathan D. “Novels of Passage.” The Oxford Companion to African American Literature. eds. William L. Andrews, Frances Smith Foster, and Trudier Harris. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. 548-50.
Locke, Alain. “The American Literary Tradition and the Negro”. The Harlem Renaissance, 1920-1940. Ed. Cary D. Wintz. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1996. 79-86.
MacKethan, Lucinda H. “Planting Tradition.” The Oxford Companion to African American Literature. eds. William L. Andrews, Frances Smith Foster, and Trudier Harris. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. 579-82.
Singh, Amritjit. “Harlem Renaissance”. The Oxford Companion to African American Literature. eds. William L. Andrews, Frances Smith Foster, and Trudier Harris. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. 340-342.
Wintz, Cary D. Black culture and the Harlem Renaissance. Houston: Rice University Press, 1988.