NOTES ON HARLEM RENAISSANCE

Bob Corbett 1998

Books consulted or read

• Bontemps, Arna., ed. THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE REMEMBERED Dodd, Mead and Co. NY 1972
• Johnson, James Welden. ALLONG THIS WAY. 1954. Viking Press, NY
• McKay, Claude. HOME TO HARLEM New York, Harper and Row, 1965 from 1928 original.
• Mullen, Edward J. LANGSTON HUGHES IN THE HISPANIC WORLD AND HAITI.
• Singh, Amritjit, William S. Shiver and Stanley Brodwin. THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE: REVALUATIONS Garland Publishing, Inc. NY. 1989.
• Watson, Steven. THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE: HUM OF AFRICAN- AMERICAN CULTURE, 1920-1930. Pantheon, NY 1995.

SPECIFIC WORKS:

• Mullen, Edward J. LANGSTON HUGHES IN THE HISPANIC WORLD AND HAITI.
  In my library as # 603.
  Hughes (1902 - 1967)
  
  • 1932: Essay: Notes U.S. Senate never ratified the treaty. emphasizes 1. blackness 2. historical glory.
  • 1934: letter protesting Roumain's sentencing to 2 years in prison.
    • p. 33. July 1931 Hughes spent 2 months in Cap Haitien.
    • 1932: Popo and Fifina
    • 1949: Emperor of Haiti: An Historical Drama (basis of Troubled Island)
• "A Letter From Haiti" New Masses 12 (July 1931) 11.
• Masters of the Dew: translated with Mercer Cook and Langston Hughes. 1947.
• Matthews "Langston Hughest as a translator" p. 167-169. in: O'Daniel, Therman B. (ed) LANGSTON HUGHES BLACK GENIUS. NY: William Morrow, 1971.
• "People Without Shoes" New Masses 12 (Oct. 1931) 12.
• "White Shadows in a Black Land" The Crisis 41 (May 1932) 157. whole of this is on pages 90-92.
• "An Appeal For Jacque Roumain (sic) New Republic 81 (12 Dec. 1934
  • p. 130. whole of this is on p. 92.
• "Haiti: Mood for Maracas" New Republic 145 (25 Sept. 1961) 22.
• Filatova, Lydia "Langston Hughes: American Writer" Soviet Literature. 20 no. 1 (1933) 99-107.

• Johnson, James Welden. ALLONG THIS WAY. 1954. Viking Press, NY (my library # 403)
  • Feb. 1920. Went on orders of Theodore Roosevelt to investigate "...reports of the harsh conditions due to the American occupation." p. 344.
  • Returned home mid May, 1920. Thus he spent about 3 months in Haiti.
  • Met all famous and well connected people. Most important: Georges Sylvain. Wanted something like the NAACP. Wrote 4 pieces for Nation.
  • He made a 10 trip to Cap Haitien and after the trip met with both Vandercook and Seabrook to talk with them about Haiti.
  • Johnson in Harlem Renaissance p 374 ff. (382) For him it was a "...mere excursion." p. 382.
  • 1921 he started an anthology of Negroe Poetry. Claude McKay Harlem Shadows (1922) Jean Toomer (CANE) stories, only book.
  • The Crisis (edited by W.E.B. DuBois) was key. Opportunity (edited by Charles S. Johnson was also.
  • 1924 Countee Cullen: poetry
  • 1925 Langston Hughes poetry.
  • Carl Van Vechten "...most sophisticated of American novelists." 379. published NIGGER HEAVEN in 1926. Followed by Claude McKay's HOME TO HARLEM in 1928.
  • Symbols of themes:
    1. intellectual class
    2. low lifes.

• Singh, Amritjit, William S. Shiver and Stanley Brodwin. THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE: REVALUATIONS Garland Publishing, Inc. NY. 1989.
  • Coles, Robert A. and Diane Isaacs. "Primitivism As A Therapeutic Persuit: Notes Toward A Reassessment of Harlem Renaissance Literature" 3 - 12.
  • primitivism "...implement more vital and constructive human values..." "psychic imbalance." 3/4
  • "...apparant barbarism of trench warfare..."
  • influence of Marcus Garvey's negritude.
  • black women did not embrace primitivism (the exception to this was Zora Neale Hurston). the old images were slavery mammy and exotic loose woman
  • Renaissance image:
    • physical value
    • spiritual value. see esp. Nella Larsen's QUICKSAND.

• Cooley, John "White Writers and the Harlem Renaissance" p. 14. Nov. 3, 1920. O'Neill's EMPEROR JONES. mixed cast. Paul Robeson was the first black to have a title role in a major NY play.

• Davis, Thadious M. "Nella Larsen's Harlem Aesthetic"
  • p. 246. 87,000 blacks went to Harlem in 1920s. 25 block area above 125th st. "the greatest Negro city in the world" said James Welden Johnson.

  • "For no culture advance is safe without some sound economic under pinning...and no emerging elite -- artistic, professional or mercantile -- can suspend itself in thin air over the avyss of a mass of unemployed [people] stranded in an over-expensive, disease and crime-ridden slum ... for there is no cure of saving magic in poetry or art, an emerging generation of talent, or international prestige and interracial recognition, for unemployment...for high rents, high mortality rates, civic neglect, capitalistic exploitation." (quote taken from Alain Locke, "Harlem: Dark Weather-Vane" SURVEY GRAPHIC, 25 (August 1936), 457-462, 493-495.

• Freda L. Scott "The Star of Ethopia" by DuBois. in this piece "the revolt of the Maroons and Toussaint L'Ouverture's leadership of Haiti's liberation." occur.

• Alfred J. Guillaume, Jr. "Negritude and Humanism: Senghor's Vision of A Universal Civilization."
  • Harlem Renaissance: 20s
  • Negritude 30s.
  • p.271. Key figures:
    Etienne Lero
    Jules Minnerot in 1932 published "Legitime Defense"
    Rene Menil
    any Haitians among them?
  • Real start of negritude: 1934 journal Etudiant Noir.
    Aime Cesaire (coined the term)
    Leon Damas
    Leopold Senghor -- chief champion.

• THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE: HUM OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN CULTURE, 1920-1930. Steven Watson. Pantheon, NY 1995.
  • p. 9. Sterling Brown (critic) cites 5 themes of movement:
    1. Africa as source of racial pride
    2. Black American heros
    3. Racial political propaganda
    4. Black folk tradition
    5. Candid self-revelation

  ---

  • Best known writers:
    Langston Hughes
    Zora Neale Hurston
    Countee Cullen
    Claude McKay
    Jean Toomer
    all were bi or gay save Hurston and Toomer.
  • Alain Locke, key critic, was also bi. Hughes never was associated with McKay. He broke with almost all others.
  • p. 81. 1922 Claude McKay went to Russia.
  • major patrons: Charlotte Mason
    Carl Van Vechten
    Amy and Joel Spingarn
  • p. 174. June 14, 1932 Hughes sailed for Europe on Europa.
  • 1932 wrote "Good Morning Revolution" "Goodby Christ" he was left radicalized and rejected both God and capitalism.
  • Joe McCarthy interrogated him in 1950s. Hughes named no names, but ate humble pie and was released as a "friendly witness."

• THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE REMEMBERED ed by Arna Bontemp with a memoir Dodd, Mead and Co. NY 1972
  • p. 6/7 Aug. 1921 Marcus Garvey called Universal Negro Improvement Association to meet in Harlem. see poem: The Negro Speaks of Rivers.
  • Hurston 1903 -- 1960 57 years.
  • p. 194. Hurston coined "Negrotarians" whites who sided with blacks also Niggerati Negro intellectuals/writers with primitivist thrust.

    ---

  • p. 244 Gilpin, Patrick J. "Charles S. Johnson: Entrepreneur of the Harlem Renaissance"
  • Quotes Hughes: "That spring for me (and, I guess, all of us) was the end of the Harlem Renaissance. We were no longer in vogue, anyway, we Negroes. Sophisticated New Yorkers turned to Noel Coward." p. 334. THE BIG SEA. I can't quite tell the year.