Harlem and Urban American Identity in the 1920s

1. Harlem and Urban American Identity in the 1920s Jacob LawrenceDust to Dust (The Funeral) 1938

2. Griffith's vision of Americanism in Birth of a Nation • Backward-looking, racialized vision of American identity • Idealizes conventionalized vision of gender and family • Family is metaphor for American nation • Race, gender, sexuality

3. D.W. Griffith and Motion Picture Reform • Backward-looking vision of American identity • Cinematic genius and moral crusader • combined various cinematic innovations to produce Birth of a Nation • saw motion pictures as powerful medium for enforcing white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant values D.W. Griffith

4. Family as a Metaphor for U.S. National Community • Silas Lynch's desire to marry Elsie Stoneman • national reunification takes the form of double marriage between Stoneman and Cameron families

5. Depiction of African Americans in the film • faithful servants versus unruly freedmen and women • significance of mulatto figures • contrast between African-American womanhood and white American womanhood (gender and American cultural formation)

7. The film 's depiction of African Americans raises critical questions that will be taken up by the writers, artists, and intellectuals of Harlem Renaissance: • Who will control the representation of African Americans in modern American culture? • Will the representation of African Americans continue to look backward to the Southern rural past of slavery and oppression? Or will it look forward to a utopian urbanism represented by Harlem, the "race capital"? Jacob LawrenceDust to Dust (The Funeral) 1938 Ronald C. Moody, Midonz (Goddess of Transmutation) 1937

8. And finally:How will popular and high culture interact in the modern, urbanist representation of African-American identity? • Just as Griffith sought to bring cultural refinement to the popular medium of film, • African American writers and intellectuals of the Harlem Renaissance sought to harness the popular cultural vitality of jazz and blues expression to the aesthetic aspirations of the African-American literary and artistic elite Archibald Motley, Blues, 1929

9. Archibald Motley, The Jockey Club, 1929

10. Archibald Motley, Nightlife, 1943

11. Griffith's vision of Americanism versus that of Harlem Renaissance artists, writers, and musicians. • Harlem and the Great Migration: • Mass migration of African Americans from South to industrial centers of Northeast and Midwest, beginning in the 1910s • Also a migration from predominantly rural way of life to urban setting • Harlem was the most important of several Northern, urban destinations for Southern black migrants Jacob Lawrence, The Migration, 1940-41

12. Social and cultural landscape of Harlem - its relation to the broader geography of New York and urbanizing America • working-class Harlem and the racial nationalism of Marcus Garvey • Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association was the largest mass movement in African American history • Proclaimed a black nationalist “Back to Africa” message Universal Negro Improvement Association hosts African leaders Marcus Garvey

13. Other aspects of Harlem’s relation to the broader geography of New York and urbanizing America:blues and jazz music, Harlem nightlife, and white fascination with black primitivism and exoticism Mamie Smith and Her Jazz Hounds, 1922 the "New Negro" movement as a middle-class response to Garveyism and the cultural vitality of blues and jazz

14. The New Negro's vision of Harlem, African-American Identity, and Urban Life • New Negro writings speak to the experience of African-American migrants: • Tension between Southern hinterland and Northern metropolis runs throughout the music, art and literature of the Harlem Renaissance • What are some specific examples of this? • Importance of urban setting - "the thrill of the urban" (Maria Balshaw, Looking for Harlem) • How is the urban setting represented by specific writers?

15. Locke's emphasis on Harlem as an urban, utopian "race capital" is reflected in changes he made to the collection from the Survey Graphic edition to The New Negro • Rudolph Fisher's "City of Refuge" exemplifies The New Negro’s urban tone: Gillis sat down his tan-cardboard extension-case and wiped his black, shining brow. Then slowly, spreadingly, he grinned at what he saw: Negroes at every turn; up and down Lenox Avenue, up and down One Hundred and Thirty-fifth Street; big, lanky Negroes, short, squat Negroes; black ones, brown ones, yellow ones; men standing idle on the curb, women, bundle-laden, trudging reluctantly homeward, children rattle-trapping about the sidewalks; here and there a white face drifting along, but Negroes predominantly, overwhelmingly everywhere. There was assuredly no doubt of his whereabouts. This was Negro Harlem. Rudolph Fisher, "City of Refuge," 57-58

16. Other examples of The New Negro's urbanism: James Weldon Johnson • In the make-up of New York, Harlem is not merely a Negro colony or community, it is a city within a city, the greatest Negro city in the world. It is not a slum or a fringe, it is located in the heart of Manhattan and occupies one of the most beautiful and healthful sections of the city. It is not a "quarter" or dilapidated tenements, but is made up of new-law apartments and handsome dwellings, with well-paved and well-lighted streets. It has its own churches, social and civic centers, shops, theaters, and other places of amusement. And it contains more Negroes to the square mile than any other spot on earth. A stranger who rides up magnificent Seventh Avenue on a bus or in an automobile must be struck with surprise at the transformation which takes place after he crosses One-Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street. Beginning there, the population suddenly darkens and he rides through twenty-five solid blocks where the passers-by, the shoppers, those sitting in restaurants, coming out of theaters, standing in doorways and looking out of windows are practically all Negroes; and then he emerges where the population as suddenly becomes all white again. • James Weldon Johnson, "Harlem: The Culture Capital," 301-2

17. J.A. Rogers on jazz as urban American music – The direct predecessor of jazz is ragtime. That both are atavistically African there is little doubt, but to what extent it is difficult to determine . . . [J]azz is faster and more complex than African music. With its cowbells, auto horns, calliopes, rattles, dinner gongs, kitchen utensils, cymbals, screams, crashes, clankings and monotonous rhythm it bears all the marks of a nerve-strung, strident, mechanized civilization. It is a thing of the jungles - modern, man-made jungles. J.A. Rogers, “Jazz at Home,” 218

18. James Weldom Johnson on Harlem as an American community: • . . . The language of Harlem is not alien; it is not Italian or Yiddish; it is English. Harlem talks American, reads American, thinks American. • Johnson, “Harlem: The Culture Capital,” 319

19. Ambivalent portrayals of Harlem culture and community • Rudolph Fisher's "City of Refuge“ • Does Harlem fulfill King Solomon Gillis’s expectations?

20. Even the oldest and rattiest cabarets in Harlem have sense of shame enough to hide themselves under the ground - for instance, Edwards's. To get into Edwards's you casually enter a dimly lighted corner saloon, apparently - only apparently - a subdued memory of brighter days. What was once the family entrance is now a side entrance for ladies. Supporting yourself against close walls, you crouchingly descend a narrow, twisted staircase until, with a final turn, you find yourself in a glaring, long, low basement. In a moment your eyes become accustomed to the haze of tobacco smoke. You see men and women seated at wire-legged, white-topped tables, which are covered with half-empty bottles and glasses; you trace the slow-jazz accompaniment you heard as you came down the stairs to a pianetist, a cornetist, and a drummer on a little platform at the far end of the room. There is a cleared space from the foot of the stairs, where you are standing, to the platform where this orchestra is mounted, and in it a tall brown girl is swaying from side to side and rhythmically proclaiming that she has the world in a jug and the stopper in her hand. Behind a counter at the left sits a fat, bald, tea-colored Negro, and you wonder if this is Edwards - Edwards, who stands in with the police, with the political bosses, with the importers of wines and worse. A white-vested waiter hustles you to a seat and takes your order. The song's tempo changes to a quicker; the drum and the cornet rip out a fanfare, almost drowning the piano; the girl catches up her dress and begins to dance. . . . (Fisher, 71)

21. Contrast Fisher’s portrayal of the cabaret with Langston Hughes’ more celebratory portrayal in “Jazzonia”: • Oh, silver tree!Oh, shining rivers of the soul! • In a Harlem cabaretSix long-headed jazzers play. A dancing girl whose eyes are boldLifts high a dress of silken gold. • Oh, singing tree!Oh, shining rivers of the soul! • Were Eve's eyesIn the first gardenJust a bit too bold?Was Cleopatra gorgeous In a gown of gold? • Oh, singing tree!Oh, shining rivers of the soul! • In a whirling cabaretSix long-headed jazzers play. • -Langston Hughes (226)

22. But Langston Hughes also saw the limits to Harlem’s utopian promise: When I came back to New York in 1925 the Negro Renaissance was in full swing. Countee Cullen was publishing his early poems. Zora Neale Hurston, Rudolph Fisher, Jean Toomer, and Wallace Thurman were writing. Louis Armstrong was playing. Cora Le Redd was dancing, and the Savoy ballroom was open with a specially built floor that rocked as the dancers swayed. Alain Locke was putting together The New Negro. Art took heart from Harlem creativity. Jazz filled the night air--but not everywhere--and people came from all around after dark to look upon our city within a city, Black Harlem. Had I not had to earn a living, I might have thought it even more wonderful. But I could not eat the poems I wrote. Unlike the whites who came to spend their money in Harlem, only few Harlemites seem to live in even a modest degree of luxury. Most rode the subway downtown every morning to work or look for work. . .

23. Downtown I soon learned that it was seemingly impossible for black Harlem to live without white downtown. . . . It was not even an area that ran itself. The famous night clubs were owned by whites, as were the theaters. Almost all the stores were owned by whites, and many at that time did not even (in the very middle of Harlem) employ Negro clerks. . . And almost all the policemen in Harlem were white. Black Harlem really was in white face, economically speaking. So I wrote this poem:

24. Other topics for discussion: • More examples of Langston Hughes' and Claude McCay's celebratory, blues-inflected poetry • Literary portrayals of jazz performance and African-American double consciousness • Motifs of New Negro writing: primitivism, exoticism, jazz expression

25. Harlem Renaissance Writers and American Identity: Langston Hughes • I, too, sing America.I am the darker brother.They send me to eat in the kitchenWhen company comes,But I laugh,And eat well,And grow strong. • Tomorrow,I'll be at the tableWhen company comes.Nobody'll dareSay to me,"Eat in the kitchen,"Then.Besides,They'll see how beautiful I amAnd be ashamed--I, too, am America.

26. J.A. Rogers, "Jazz at Home“ What after all is this taking new thing, that, condemned in certain quarters, welcomed in others, has nonchalantly gone on until it ranks with the movie and the dollar as the foremost exponent of modern Americanism? Jazz isn't music merely, it is a spirit that can express itself in almost anything. The true spirit of jazz is a joyous revolt from convention, custom, authority, boredom, even sorrow. . . . It is the revolt of the emotions against repression. J.A. Rogers, "Jazz at Home," 216-17

27. Alain Locke on African-Americans’ contribution to American identity: Democracy itself is obstructed and stagnated to the extent that any of its channels are closed. Indeed they cannot be selectively closed. So the choice is not between one way for the Negro and another way for the rest, but between American institutions frustrated on the one hand and American ideals progressively fulfilled and realized on the other. Locke, "The New Negro" 12

28. Literature, art, and music of the Harlem Renaissance speaks to broader American experience in the 1920s • urbanism, self-conscious modernism of 1920s America • increasing sexual expressiveness of American culture • growing interest in primitivism and exoticism after World War I • How do Aaron Douglas’s block prints in The New Negro reflect the theme of primitivism? Loïs Mailou Jones,Les Fetiches 1938

29. Aaron Douglas, Into Bondage 1936Oil on canvas, 153.4 x 153.7 cmIn the Collection of the Corcoran Gallery of Art,Washington DC,USA

31. Aaron Douglas, Aspects of Negro Life: Song of the Towers, 1934

32. Literature, art, and music of the Harlem Renaissance also speaks specifically to African-American experience in the 1920s • hopes and dreams of African Americans • experience of hardship, toil, and disillusionment • efforts to claim authorship over representations of African Americans, and thereby to challenge racist portrayals like Griffith's Birth of a Nation

33. It is important to keep in mind what is left out of Locke's New Negro collection • Predominantly middle-class reflections on African-American urban experience in the 1920s • Poems of Hughes and McKay and the commentary of J.A. Rogers celebrate the vitality and sexual openness of African-American popular music • Yet they filter it through a heightened literary or academic language, even as they see it as inalienable from African-American identity

34. More Discussion Questions -- Jazz and Blues Music • What do the jazz performances of Mamie Smith and Bessie Smith share in common? What gender and sexual tensions do their performances reflect? • 2. During the 1920s, many Americans enthusiastically referred to their cultural moment as "the Jazz Age." Based on the songs that you have heard, what explains the immense appeal of jazz music in the 1920s? • 3. Based on the materials you have examined this week, how would you characterize the relationship between jazz performers and the artists and intellectuals of the Harlem Renaissance?

35. Conclusions • Racial accents of 1920s American culture are complex -- intersect with class, gender, regional accents • The stark contrast between Birth of a Nation and The New Negro reflects that racial complexity • both Griffith and the contributors to The New Negro sought to reconcile racially specific rural pasts with a modern, urban, industrialized present • both Griffith and many of The New Negro's contributors sought to direct that reconciliation in particular ways • Griffith sought to control the cultural impact of film • Harlem Renaissance writers and intellectuals sought to control the cultural impact of blues and jazz performance • Neither was ultimately successful in sanitizing or guiding the development of potent new means of popular entertainment