The Harlem Renaissance: Some Major Figures

Alain Locke

The first African American Rhodes Scholar, a graduate of Harvard University, and one of the major anthologists of the Harlem Renaissance, Alain Locke edited and published The New Negro in 1925. This anthology, which reflects the social and political contexts of the Harlem Renaissance, also distills the spirit and varied talents of Harlem Renaissance poets, dramatists, essayists, and short story writers. Considered one of the preeminent texts of its time, The New Negro conceived of black America as linked not only to other African-based cultural movements around the world but also to other movements, such as the Irish or Czech, that fused ethnic pride or nationalism with a desire for a fresh achievement and independence in art, culture, and politics" (Gates 957).

Charlotte Osgood Mason

Charlotte Osgood Mason was one of many white patrons who subsidized the careers of such artists as Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, and Alain Locke. Considered a "woman of volatile temperament and sometimes arresting ideas," Mason frequently insisted that her beneficiaries addressed her as "Godmother."

Carl Van Vechten

Carl Van Vechten was another principle--and highly visible--patron of the Harlem Renaissance. Initially a music critic and essayist, Van Vechten became closely associated with many of the African American writers who emerged from the Renaissance, including Langston Hughes, Wallace Thurman, and later, Richard Wright. During and well after the Harlem Renaissance reached its peak, Van Vechten took up photography of many of the most notable figures of that time and later. His personal papers are held at the Beinecke Library at Yale, where a collection of over 1800 Kodachrome slides of his photographs is held and featured at this, Library of Congress site.

Jessie Fauset

Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Cornell University, Jessie Fauset published four novels--including her most acclaimed, There is Confusion before becoming the literary editor of the NAACP's The Crisis magazine from 1919-1926.

Arthur Schomburg

Of Puerto Rican and German descent, Arthur Schomberg was born in Santurce, Puerto Rico in 1874. While in primary school, a teacher claimed that African Americans had 'no history.' Schomburg set out to prove her wrong. He devoted most of his adult life to archiving, recording black history that included slave narratives, literature and art, that now comprises the Arthur Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the Harlem branch of the New York Public Library (1).

W.E.B. Dubois

photo from this site.

Considered the "Father of the Harlem Renaissance," William Burqhardt Dubois was a scholar, philosopher, journalist, and educator whose groundbreaking publication, The Souls of Black Folk offered an unprecedented look at the particularized struggles of African Americans in the 20th century. Co-founder of the NAACP and editor of its literary arm, The Crisis, Dubois helped to spearhead the careers of such writers and poets as Countee Cullen and Sterling A. Brown, while he examined the nature of "Double Consciousness," "The Veil," and encouraged African Americans to think of themselves as belonging to a global community. 

The Harlem Renaissance: Written and Performing Arts

The Harlem Renaissance (known then as the "New Negro Renaissance" refers to the period of artistic boon that occurred in Harlem, New York from 1919 till 1929. A number of events can be said to have led to the birth of the Renaissance: initially, the mass movement of southern blacks from the Jim Crow South to the North--or Great Migration--contributed to a population swell and competition for jobs in cities like Harlem, Boston, Philadelphia, and Manhattan. Marcus Garvey is credited with having been a major influence on the Renaissance, as he rallied African Americans around a political campaign none had ever seen the likes of before. A newly discovered sense of unity began to form, followed by an emphasis on black nationalism in politics, a demand for deeper intellectual insight into the problems of African Americans, and a growing economy that arose from black entrepreneurship. All of these developments contributed in their own ways to the emergence of the Renaissance.

Of course the politics and philosophies of the Renaissance gave rise to the "race men" of the time. The term, coined by W.E.B. Dubois articulated the need of the artist to represent the experience of blacks in the United States and urged them to politicize their roles and their writing. Writers like Zora Neale Hurston, Jean Toomer, Rudolph Fisher, and poets Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and Claude McKay enjoyed great literary success during the decade of the Renaissance. 

                            Jessie Fauset, Langston Hughes, and Zora Neale Hurston pose at Tuskegee Institute (1). 

While literary scholars naturally like to point to the proliferation of literature that arose in Harlem, there were other areas of artistic expression that thrived during the Renaissance. Jazz clubs--like the Cotton Club--hosted numerous famous names like Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday, as well as the arrival of the Apollo Theater--a theater designed exclusively by and for African American audiences and performances. 

www.pinterest.com

Below Billie Holiday performs "Summertime":

In addition to the word, both written and sung, an upsurge of visual arts, featuring artists such as Jacob Lawrence and Archibald Motley reflected life in the hustle and bustle of Harlem: nightlife, characters, and colors were all represented. 

Archibald Motley "Black Belt"

Palmer Hayden, "Baltimore"

German-born painter, Winold Reiss, fell in love with the energy and culture of Harlem, and his paintings pay homage to the faces he observed--both recognizable and not so recognizable. His "Brown Madonna" is below.

Zora Neale Hurston by Winold Reiss:

Langston Hughes by Winold Reiss:

Finally, as Harlem was, during the Renaissance, the go-to scene for music, arts and letters, and entertainment, as well as a thriving economy, blacks enjoyed a rare and unique independence and relative freedom. Harlem author and physician Rudolph Fisher writes in "Home to Harlem" that "In Harlem, black was white" (my emphasis). Along with that freedom and self-governance came self-styling, fashion trends, and entrepreneurship.

Madame C.J. Walker became the first African American female millionaire, after having marketed her hair straightening pomade:

Image and bio of Madame Walker found at this site

And fashion was the name of the game. Below a Harlem youngster escorts his two lady friends home.

Photo shared from this site.

*Winold Reiss images, unless otherwise credited are located at www.pinterest.com

Harlem Banner at www.history.org

Civil Rights Icon: Ida Wells-Barnett, 1862-1931

*photograph sourced from this site

Born in Holly Springs, Mississippi "just six months before Emancipation," Ida B. Wells would become one of the earliest and most outspoken advocates of human rights (Gates, et al.). Her father was politically-minded and considered himself a 'race man'; her mother, Elizabeth, who worked as a cook, strongly encouraged her children's educations. Ida would attend one of the Freedman Schools in Holly Springs until she was sixteen. After losing her parents to the Yellow Fever epidemic of the 1870s, young Ida was determined to keep what remained of her family together and supported her siblings on her meager teacher's salary. Her interest in racial politics in the South began with her outrage at the disparity between the salaries earned by white teachers (eighty dollars a month) compared to those of African American teachers (about thirty dollars a month). This concern, together with a determination to improve the educational opportunities for African Americans, galvanized her early activism. Wells moved to Memphis, where she found better pay in the Shelby County School System. During the summer sessions, she would attend Fisk University (an HBC in Nashville) and LeMoyne Institute (1). 

Wells' journalism career began shortly after an incident occurred in which Wells refused to surrender her seat on a Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad train. After two lawsuits to sue the railroad (neither of which was successful), she began to write about her experiences in the newspapers, The Evening Star and The Living Way--a weekly Baptist newspaper located at the Beale Street Baptist Church. Wells wrote these columns under the pen name "Iola": a stylistic (and logistic) choice that inspired the fictitious character Iola Leroy, created by fellow activist Frances E.W. Harper in the novel by the same name. Her focus soon shifted to the subject of lynchings when in 1892 "three black businessmen opened a grocery store that competed with a white merchant. They were lynched" (Gates 676). 

The young journalist railed against the incident, exposing the "Old Threadbare Lie": the presumption among white supremacists that black males were inherently drawn to, and determine to violate, white women. "Nobody in this section believes the old threadbare lie that Negro men assault white women. If southern white men are not careful they will over-reach themselves and a conclusion will be reached which will be very damaging to the moral reputation of their women" (Gates 676). Her words sparked a firestorm, and the office of her newspaper, Free Speech, was destroyed by angered whites. Fortunately, Wells was out of town at the time. 

During her time away from the South, Wells developed her career as writer and editor, and assumed partial ownership of the New York Age. Her Red Record exposed the atrocities of lynchings in the South for a national audience, and advocated "positive action" from its readers. Wells went on to become an important figure in the club women movement--African American women who organized for social change--and was among the founding constituency for the NAACP.

Video on Wells-Barnett by Katherine Bankole-Medina