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Literary historians and academics have yet to reach a consensus as to when the period known as the Harlem Renaissance began and ended. It is unofficially recognized to have begun in 1919 and ended during the early or mid 1930s, however its ideas lived on much longer. The zenith of this “flowering of Negro literature,” as James Weldon Johnson instead preferred to call the Harlem Renaissance, is placed between 1924 when Opportunity magazine hosted a party for black writers where many white publishers were in attendance and 1929, the year of the stock market crash and the resulting economic Great Depression.
Most of the participants in this African American literary movement were descendants from a generation whose parents or grandparents had witnessed the injustices of slavery and the gains and losses that would come with Reconstruction after the American Civil War as the nation moved forward into the gradual entrenchment of Jim Crow in the Southern states and in its non-codified forms in many other parts of the country. Many of these people were part of the Great Migration out of the South and other racially stratified communities who sought relief from the worst of prejudices against them for a better standard of living in the North and Midwest regions of the United States. Others were Africans and people of African descent from the Caribbean who had come to the United States hoping for a better life. Uniting most of them was their convergence in Harlem, New York. They would make Harlem the most famous center of African American life in the United States at that time and one that would have far reaching influence on people of Africa and people of African descent across the world as well as American culture in general.
Characterizing the Harlem Renaissance was an overt racial pride that came to be represented in the idea of the New Negro who through intellect, the production of literature, art, and music could challenge the pervading racism and stereotypes from the larger white community of that era to promote progressive or socialist politics and racial integration and social integration. The creation of art and literature would serve to “uplift” the race. This became known as racial political propaganda. There would be no set style or uniting form singularly characterizing the various forms of art coming out of the Harlem Renaissance. Rather, there would be a mix of celebrating a Pan-Africanist perspective, “high-culture” and the “low-culture or low-life,” the traditional form of music to the blues and jazz, traditional and new experimental forms in literature like modernism and in poetry, for example, the new form of jazz poetry. This duality would eventually result in a number of African American artists of the Harlem Renaissance coming into conflict with conservatives in the black intelligentsia who would take issue with certain depictions of black life in whatever medium of the arts.
The Harlem Renaissance was one of primarily African American involvement and an interpersonal support system of black patrons, black owned businesses and publications, and so on. But, on the peripheral it was supported by a number of white Americans who through genuine altruistic generosity, paternalism, and perhaps a degree of liberal guilt provided various forms of assistance to these black artists and opened doors for them which otherwise would have remained closed to the publicizing of their work to a larger audience outside of the black American community. This support often took the form of being a patron, a publisher, or another artist of some variety. Then, there were those whites interested in so-called “primitive” cultures, as many whites viewed black American culture at that time and wanted to see this “primitivism” in the work coming out of the Harlem Renaissance. Other interpersonal dealings between whites and blacks can be categorized as exploitive because of the desire to capitalize on the “fad,” and “fascination” of the African American being in “vogue.” This vogue of the African American would extend to Broadway, as in Porgy and Bess, and into music where in many instances white band leaders would defy racist attitude to include the best and the brightest African American stars of music and song. For blacks, their art was a way to prove their humanity and demand for equality. For a number of whites, preconceived prejudices were challenged and overcome.
The Harlem Renaissance would help lay the foundation of the Civil Rights Movement. Moreover, many black artists coming into their own creativity after this literary movement would take inspiration from it.
Lewis, David Levering, ed. The portable Harlem Renaissance Reader. New York: Viking Penguin, 1995 ISBN 0-14-017036-7
Lewis, David Levering. When Harlem Was in Vogue. New York: Penguin, 1997 ISBN 0-14-026334-9
Hutchinson,George. The Harlem Renaisance in Black and White. New York: Belknap Press, 1997 ISBN 0-674-37263-8
Huggins, Nathan. Harlem Renaissance. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973 ISBN 0-19-501665-3
Watson, Steven. The Harlem Renaissance: Hub of African-American Culture, 1920-1930. New York: Pantheon Books, 1995 ISBN 0-679-75889-5
Andrews, William L.; Foster, Frances S.; Harris, Trudier eds. The Concise Oxford Companion To African American Literature. New York: Oxford Press,2001 ISBN 1-4028-9296-9
From These Roots the award-winning documentary on the Harlem Renaissance by William Greaves
