The New Negro and the Harlem Renaissance - Essay Example

The New Negro and the Harlem Renaissance, Especially as Described in the Works of Locke and Hughes Introduction The Harlem Renaissance has been described as a blossoming which was “ Never dominated by a particular school of thought but rather characterized by intense debate, the movement laid the groundwork for all later African American literature and had an enormous impact on subsequent black literature and consciousness worldwide.” (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2015). This essay considers this finding of a new Negro voice, especially from the complementary points of view of writers Alain Locke, who taught on the topic at Harvard University, and also poet Langston Hughes, but also making mention of other important voices of that period, and placing them in context. The city of New York was growing rapidly (The Beginnings and the Growth of New York City, undated ). This new population included a large group of Negros, many having moved north from the southern, former slave owning, states. They most often came in search of a better life style and employment opportunities. Thesis The Negros of New York were able to create their own individual cultural identity. Hughes felt that they need to aspire to be all that they could be, whereas Locke saw this as something already happening. This upsurge, or Renaissance, had links with both the recent negro past, relatively close in time, as well as with more distant non-American origins. There were also links with the more general culture of their fellow New Yorkers, yet the culture of the Harlem Renaissance was a distinctive and self-created one as described by Locke and Hughes among others. The Negros of New York were able to create their own individual cultural identity. Literature Survey As part of that move north and west Langston Hughes arrived in New York in 1921, a place described at the time as the ‘Negro capital of the world ( cited by Graham 2011). It was certainly a place where black Americans concentrated. Hughes was born in Missouri, but he moved around before settling in Cleveland ( Bio 2015) . He would eventually move to New York where he established himself as a poet and playwright. He later signed on as crew on a freighter and finally ended up in Paris where he continued as a writer. Most American Negroes did not come from a middle class background. And so, says Hughes “They accept what beauty is their own without question, whether it be jazz or the depiction of Negro faces in their art.” ( Hughes, 1926). Hughes seems to be saying that these people saw good and positive things in being Negro and having a definite Negro culture of their own. He saw black aesthetics in a quite different way to that some of the leading American Negro intellectuals of his time. He especially disagreed with W.E.B. Du Bois with regard to Negro art forms and its correct social function ( Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2012) . Du Bois considered that Negro artists ought to offer a true representation of the American Negro experience because this might help their social acceptance and elevation. Locke on the other hand criticized this as just “propaganda” ( Locke, Art of Propaganda, 1928. ) In that essay Locke explains why he doesn’t like this propaganda ,” It perpetuates the position of group inferiority even in crying out against it.” In 1926 Langston Hughes wrote about ‘The negro artist and the racial mountain.’ This was a mountain which Hughes saw as unclimbable, or at least almost impossible to scale. He describes how a young man stated that he wanted to be a poet, not a black poet. Yet he was black, at least in color, and would probably be judged by most Americans of the time more on that aspect than on his background or ability. The young man described came from a middle class background, from a family in which being white was seem as a positive to be aimed at. Analyzing this Hughes comes to the conclusion that what was being said was ‘I want to be white.’ He has little apparent sympathy for the frustrated artist who seeks recognition by a wider audience. It does not necessarily follow that the man was really saying ‘I want to be white.’. The would be poet might have meant ‘I want my work to be accepted for itself, not for who I am.’ He perhaps meant that someone reading it, without knowing who wrote it, would accept it as having merit. Hughes goes on to describe a metaphorical mountain he feels black artists have to climb towards this unattainable goal of ‘whiteness.’ Hughes sees some Negros in negative ways , because they wanted to be acceptable by the majority white society, more, he says, than to be themselves as Negroes. He says he is ashamed of someone who thinks as this man does, and who, according to Hughes, will be constrained only to produce certain kinds of work acceptable to the white majority. Hughes described the Renaissance as being about the “expression of our individual dark-skinned selves.” ( Cited by History, 2015). Negroes artists like the young man were putting themselves in danger of losing out on the positives of being a creative Negro. But these people were also Americans so couldn’t they express that too. Most were descended from families which had been living in America for many generations, and their African origins were far in the past, much of it long forgotten. Part of who they were must have been strongly influenced by wider America and ideas from there, but Hughes seems to take little account of this. He wanted his people to accept who they were, for good or bad, and to rejoice in it. That is how to overcome the metaphorical race mountain and to be ‘free within ourselves’ A year before, in 1925, Alain Locke, a philosopher and Rhodes Scholar, and a teacher at Harvard, the college from which he had graduated, had headed his article ‘Enter the New Negro’. He was describing the New Negro as being someone who knew who he was and could celebrate it. In 1926 he stated that ‘Negro life is seizing its first chances for group expression and self-determination.’ He is also cited as describing it as a ‘Negro coming of age’ (History, 2015) He argues that this New Negro did not emerge suddenly at the close of the war, but had long been present, but unseen by professional observers of society such as sociologists, race leaders and philanthropists. He describes a new spirit being abroad which was capable of transforming old problems into positive progress. Locke also talks about the Old Negro, a problem which he feels was in part perpetuated by black people themselves who found themselves in a situation of dependency , and forced to stay by the circumstances in which they found themselves. He describes such people as fitting closely into destructive stereotypes. He states that :-The mind of the Negro seems suddenly to have slipped from under the tyranny of social intimidation and to be shaking off the psychology of imitation and implied inferiority ( Locke, page 2, 1925) This is described by Locke as similar to a butterfly escaping from a chrysalis in order to achieve a spiritual emancipation. It became the turning of social disillusionment into racial pride. They didn’t want to be white Americans, but became proud of their black and distinctive culture. On the second page of his essay (1925) Locke considers carefully the way in which the Negros of his time had emerged as their true selves , importantly by refusing any longer to accept the psychological pressure put on them by those who considered them to be second rate , and inferior. They were no longer allowing themselves to be intimidated, but instead stood up to their oppressors , whether by simply moving north, or by refusing to accept the poor housing conditions in which money seeking landlords expected them to live. This new zest for life , described by Locke as ‘buoyancy, will compensate for any difficulties and pressures they might meet. ‘It is time to scrap the fictions, garret the bogeys and settle down to a realistic facing of facts. ‘( Locke, page 2, 1925). This escape of out of old boundaries, and from being typecast and caricatured by white society, is accompanied among the new Negroes by renewed feelings of self-respect and independence, factors which must produce a new dynamism and a greater ability among black New Yorkers to deal with problems for themselves as they occurred, using a variety of means from dealing with bad landlords to physically fighting against the New York police who regularly harassed them. Locke quotes the words of Langston Hughes from 1924:- We have tomorrow Bright before us Like a flame. Yesterday, a night-gone thing, A sun-down name. And dawn today Broad arch above the road we came. We march Locke gives his reasons for the positive changes which resulted, citing first of all the population movement, which meant that the negro people of America were not confined to the southern states. The drift north was aimed towards large, urban industrialized situations. This bought problems such as poor housing and finding employment, but Locke also states that these difficulties and the need for many adjustments, were not necessarily based upon racial issues or origins. Locke makes the point that since slavery had ended in 1865 there had been many changes and it was no longer possible by the 1920s to think of Negros ‘en masse’ that is as all being the same socially, and a process of rapid class differentiation, of which Locke himself was a good example, was taking place. It had therefore become increasingly difficult, even ridiculous, to see them as all the same. On page 3 of his article (1925) Locke considers the idea that Negros and Whites lived very separate lives, something he dismisses this as untrue. He does feel however, that where their lives did touch, the emphasis was still mainly on the unfavorable, as for instance when boot blacks, porters, train night car attendants were more likely to be black, and those they served to be white. Not so far removed from the old slave master relationship, and a situation which reinforced the ever present color line and so ensured that black people, whatever they were actually capable of, remained in a subsidiary position. He felt that, despite many interaction between the two sides, there was far too little real positive interplay between the two groups, especially outside work situations. Locke mentions faults on the part of the white population and how they have treated Negros, but adds ( page 2 , 1925) that too often the Negroes excused their own faults , blaming the way they had been treated. On one side he describes hatred or apathy, and on the other resentment and disillusionment. This contrasts with Hughes’ short essay of 1926, which places the fault upon those black people who wanted to be acceptable to whites and who therefore modified their output accordingly, so denying their true selves. Things were not perfect however. Many Negroes continued to live in great poverty and often on the edge of wider society. There are positives. Locke sees black people as making a positive contribution to social development. He also describes how observers no longer caricature Negro Americans, but instead study them seriously. To overcome difficulties it is suggested that there is a need to avoid mental ideas of segregation and to break through the color line intellectually. Locke feels that this creation of a new Negro will gradually change mainstream American attitudes towards black Americans to more positive ones. There should over time be less need for philanthropy and interventions, and an increase in both justice and understanding. As literacy levels had increased this new creativity and expression was often in the form of poetry and other literary forms, but was also to social and political thought and contributed in some ways to the Civil Rights Movement which had its beginnings in the late 1940s and early 1950s.. It would be another 30 years before Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat (Klein, 2013). Locke describes the Negro he observed as being:- “A something to be argued about, condemned or defended, to be ‘kept down,’ or ‘in his place,’ or ‘helped up,’ to be worried with or worried over, harassed or patronized” ( Locke, page 1, 1925). Thinking black people, Locke, page 1, 1925) had found themselves seeing themselves through this distortion, instead of who they really were. He says ( Locke, page 4, 1925) that a new, more positive mentality was what was wanted.. He knew there were deep rooted feelings of racial identity there, the result of years of prejudice and proscription against them, but surely there were positives too. It was these positives which must be used to replace the defensiveness that had long been the mark of the Negro in America. Locke sees this as capable of being transformed into a move to become a positive contributor to American society. Locke goes on to describe how ,in his opinion, being full creative while at the same time being black, does not have to be a negative. He concludes on a positive note ( Locke, page 6, 1925, ):- “Certainly, if in our lifetime the Negro should not be able to celebrate his full initiation into American democracy, he can at least, on the warrant of these things, celebrate the attainment of a significant and satisfying new phase of group development, and with it a spiritual Coming of Age.”We see this in hindsight, in an era when many black Americans have been able to make such positive contributions, in literature, in sport and in dramatic and musical terms, without apparently compromising their particular negro culture. But even now, such people can perhaps be seen as the exceptions which prove the rule. Within the movement it was not only about creative expression. There were also important ideas of social justice and political ideals promulgated through a number of magazines and newspapers such as the ‘The Crisis’, which was published by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). ‘Opportunity’ was published by the National Urban League. There was also ‘The Messenger’, a socialist magazine which had links with the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, a black trade union (Encyclopaedia Britannica,2015). There was also Negro World, a newspaper produced by Marcus Garvey and his Universal Negro Improvement Association with its ‘Back to Africa’ message. All these included creative literature within their pages, but also carried an increasing political message, urging black Americans to stand up for themselves and fight for the rights that were theirs, at least in law. New York was the communications hub of the United States, so these locally produced papers and journals actually had a wide audience, far outside the city limits. As well as this there were books such as Locke’s ‘The New Negro’( 1925), an anthology of many black voices, allowing them to speak out, perhaps for the first time. Ellssel describes the book as a virtual manifesto. Books such as these describe the changing life of African Americans trying to describe and find their place in the new and ever changing sociocultural landscape of 1920s urban America. The publishers sought out and published black writers, who had become increasingly of interest to the white majority, many of whom had a fascination with the somewhat exotic and culturally different world of black Harlem. Other important figures included Jean Toomer, Rudolf Fisher, Wallace Thurman, Jessie Redmon Fauset, Nella Larsen, Arna Bontemps, Countee Cullen, and Zora Neale Hurston. James Weldon Johnson, Claude McKay and Charles S. Johnson came just a little later and served as mentors to new comers ( History , 2015). Some such as Countee Cullen were able to cross over from a purely black audience for his poems to a wider one, as he did not always deal with racial issues. Cullen’s work was originally published in The Crisis, and in Opportunity, a magazine of the National Urban League, both publications having black leadership and audience. Before long he was being published in Harper’s, the Century Magazine, a New York publication and also in Poetry, a Chicago based magazine ( Poets.org, undated). Ellssel ( 2008) considered the politics contained in Locke’s ‘The New Negro’ .He describes how new inventions could make daily life easier, but there was also the emergence of new ideas which were in contrast to long established social systems and ideas. Both the inventions and ideas played their part in the Roaring Twenties, especially within cities such as New York, and among all levels of society. Ellssel describes how, despite new ideas, strong racism was present and this led to isolationism. Ellssel (2008) sees the Harlem Renaissance movement as ‘not only an eruption of artistic thoughts and works, but had also a political imagination.’ So we have a mixture of factors - a new ability to be creative and to find a voice, but not only in artistic circles, but also in social and political life. As well as literature in its various forms, such as articles, essays, poetry, novels and more, there was also theatre. Clare Stalder (2013) describes how black entertainment, including theatre, boomed in the New York of the 20s and 30’s. She cites the Zeigfeld Follies of 1922 which included Gilda Gray singing ‘It’s getting dark on old Broadway.’ This reflects the idea that entertainment of black origin was achieving mainstream success. This however was not always seen as being a positive move. Many of the leading intellectuals of the Harlem Renaissance saw such success in a negative light. W. E. B. Du Bois, a campaigner for a new racial identity through cultural creation had actively tried to get talented artists of various types to make the move north ( Jim Crow Stories, 2002) and many had done so. Du Bois saw the acceptance the move towards white society as a form of betrayal of black ideals (Du Bois ,1926). Some in his audience might think :-“How is it that an organization like this, a group of radicals trying to bring new things into the world,---- how is it that an organization of this kind can turn aside to talk about Art?” They were asking the wrong questions Du Bois felt. Instead they should be thinking about climbing onward to better things. He points out that, as black Americans, they should be able to see things that white Americans just could not see. Du Bois says, and whether or not this fitted in with the American goals and ideals. Du Bois challenged his audience to see themselves as fully fledged Americans with the color line long forgotten. He says the members of the audience should ask themselves what it was that Negro Americans were capable of. They had to move away from the idea that if something is produced by a black person it was necessarily inferior, second rate. In this he seems to agree with Locke and his New Negro imagery. If there was a progress in ideas and ideals this could mean having the same values as white Americans including their desire for show. Changing might make them less capable of seeing what was of lasting value ‘a world where men realize themselves and where they enjoy life.’ Du Bois describes black Americans as being members of a race who was stirring themselves , becoming creative, awoken from a long sleep - so Renaissance – rebirth – is an ideal description for such a situation. As well as this new seeking for a black American culture , at that time there was also a move among a wider circle of American intellectuals and artists to define ‘American’ culture as being one which was distinctive from that of other western nations and of Europe. (Encyclopedia.com, 2015). However according to Du Bois, and also his co—worker at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, James Weldon Johnson , the only truly uniquely “American” expressions in the United States were those which had been developed among the African American community. It was believed that they, more than other groups within the population , had had to remake themselves in situations very different from those of their historic origins, whereas white Americans looked back to Europe and a very different history. Many of the well-known names of the Harlem Renaissance , were not those born in Harlem, but almost all of the creative and intellectual people , some who passed through it and others who stayed, found themselves inspired by it, and often achieved the height of their reputations, at least in part, because of their involvement with the movement. The Harlem Renaissance movement allowed Black Americans to value themselves and their artistic creativity highly, even if others did not necessarily share that view. This new high sense of self-worth would sow the seeds for later movements, such as Black Pride and the Civil Rights Movement of the middle years of the century. It would lead to black Americans towards being accepted as equals in society while still being recognizably distinct. By the close of the 1920s, Harlem had undergone a labor strike, as well as a campaign by tenants for more affordable rents, and, in 1935 it had its first race riot ( JF Ptak Scence Books Post 1255, 2010). This need to fight oppression, which came primarily from outsiders, produced a united black front and led to the raising of black consciousness and the gradual establishment of a distinctive black American identity, one very different from the one recognized during the years of slavery, and making Locke’s description of “The New Negro’ an apt one. Locke is cited in this article as believing that this riot led to the end of the period of Renaissance. Perhaps it would be true to say that while the riot played its part, society had moved on. A new era began in that positive communications with the mayor, Fiorello La Guardia, were established. King ( 2015) sees what occurred, in particular public forms of protest, as having played the part of a dress rehearsal for the far more widespread black mass mobilization in later years. Wide recognition came again with the Civil Rights movement and in the years afterwards. According to Wormser ( undated) the Renaissance of itself actually made little impact when it came to breaking down the rigid societal barriers that separated the races, although there was some relaxation of rigid racial attitudes among younger whites American. Wormser ( undated) feels that the most important impact was the way in which to reinforce racial pride among black Americans, something Hughes had wanted to happen and which he described. Conclusion The Harlem Renaissance can perhaps best be summed up as the emergence of voices, including of course the major ones of Locke and Hughes, from a group who had been silenced for far too long. As such it is part of a list of other such voices which have emerged in the years that have followed, such as that of homosexuals, battered wives, the handicapped, women in the churches and so on. These are all groups which were suppressed by the majority, but who have finally found their voices, in part because the world has changed around them, but also because of their own internal need to express themselves, and so their own efforts, as part of distinctively Black American culture. The Harlem Renaissance finally came to an end, but the ideas it produced, persisted and developed over a much longer period and continue into the 21st century. This idea of a Renaissance among black Americans was in the main initially considered to be centered around the arts and literature, but also about creating a unique culture which had its own self –confidence, and so had both sociological and political aspects which gradually became more prominent. The original mass movement move to the northern and western cities was dictated by politics - the end of slavery and the problems this left behind, a situation where Negro southerners were trapped into a state of perpetual poverty, very much stuck at the bottom of the social hierarchy, and, being landless, stuck apparently firmly in a situation where they were incapable of improving their lot , and where they were seen by their fellow Americans of being incapable of doing so. The move north had its difficulties of course, both for individuals and for the black people of Harlem as a group. New kinds of work had to be found, in many instances for those who had previously only ever been agricultural laborers. Then there were housing issues, racial prejudices to contend with, as well as the fact that they might be leaving loved ones behind. Nevertheless it was a new beginning with new possibilities. Previously these people had had almost no opportunities for improvement or self-expression, nor any time for purely creative matters such as art, theatre and novels, because almost every waking moment would have been concerned with survival. Once settled properly in the north , once accommodation had been found, together with the employment to pay for it, there were so many new expressive opportunities. In the newly created enclave of black Harlem, to the North of the lively and increasingly important city of New York, the new arrivals could see easily the creative efforts of other black Americans, and also enjoy and even interact with them , their fellows, and what they were capable of producing. This must have been a great encouragement and inducement to greater efforts. There were also, for their consideration, the many new publications, magazines and newspapers, aimed directly at a Negro audience. They were able to introduce themselves to new ways of thinking and of seeing who they really were and could become. The works of Locke and Hughes, as well of course as many others, were an important part of that shift in mental attitudes, a shift which led in time to great changes. References Bio, Langston Hughes, biography,2015, Web, 1st December 2015, Du Bois, W. Criteria of Negro Art, 1926, web, 1st December 2015, Ellssel, C. , Political Aspects in ‘The New Negro’, 2008, web, 1st December 2015, Encyclopedia .com, The Harlem Renaissance 2015, 1st December 2015, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Harlem Renaissance, 2015, web 1st December 2015, Graham, M., The New Negro Renaissance,2015, web, 1st December 2015, History, Harlem Renaissance, 2015, web, 1st December 2015, Hughes , L., 1924, We have tomorrow…., quoted by Locke, 1925, Hughes, L. , The black artist and the racial mountain, The Nation, 23rd June 1926, web, 3rd December 2015, http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/360.html Jim Crow Stories, The Harlem Renaissance 1917-1935, 2002, web, 1st December 2015, JF Ptak Scence Books Post 1255, The First American Race Riot: Harlem, 1935, 2010, web 1st December 2015, King, S. , Whose Harlem Is This, Anyway? : Community Politics and Grassroots Activism during the New Negro Era, 2015, web, 1st December 2015 Klein, C., 10 things you may not know about Rosa Parks, History in the Headlines, 2013, web, 1st December 2015, Lacayo, R., Their Eyes Were Watching God, All-TIME 100 Novels, Time, 2010, web 1st December 2015 < http://entertainment.time.com/2005/10/16/all-time-100-novels/slide/their-eyes-were-watching-god-1937-by-zora-neale-hurston/> Locke, A., Art or Propaganda , Harlem 1 vol 1, 1928, Web 9th December 2015 http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/maai3/protest/text10/lockeartorpropaganda.pdf Locke, A. The Concept of Race as Applied to Social Culture, 1924 in The Philosophy of Alain Locke: Harlem Renaissance and Beyond, L. Harris (ed.), Philadelphia: Temple University Press, pp. 188–199.2015, Philadelphia, Temple University. Locke, A., The New Negro, New York, Albert and Charles Boni Inc., 1925, book Locke, A., Enter the New Negro, National Humanities Center Resource Toolbox, The Making of African American Identity : Volume III, 1917 – 1968, web, 1st December 2015, Poem Hunter, Langston Hughes, undated, web, 1st December 2015, Poets.org, poet Countee Cullen, undated, web, 1st December 2015, Irving, Shae Nolo's Encyclopedia of Everyday Law: answers to your most frequently asked legal questions (7 ed.), California , Nolo, 2008, Book Stalder, C. It's getting dark on old Broadway". African American theatre of the Harlem Renaissance in search of the right direction. 2013, web 1st December 2015, https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Clare_Stalder_It_s_getting_dark_on_old_Broadway_Af?id=S-iHXv5ktgoC Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2012, Alain LeRoy Locke, web, 23rd March 2012, 9th December 2015, The Beginnings and the Growth of New York City, Chapter One, NYC subway.org, undated, web, 1st December 2015, Wormser, R., The Harlem Renaissance, 1917-1935, Jim Crow Stories, undated, web, 1st December 2015 Further reading Anderson, Paul Allen, Deep River: Music and Memory in Harlem Renaissance Thought. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2001, Book Baker, Houston A., Jr., Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987, Book Carroll, Ann Elizabeth. Word, Image, and the New Negro: Representation and Identity in the Harlem Renaissance. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005.Book Fabre, Genevieve, and Michael Feith, eds. Temples for Tomorrow: Looking Back at the Harlem Renaissance. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001.Book Hutchinson, George. The Harlem Renaissance in Black and White. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995., Book Lewis, David Levering. When Harlem Was in Vogue. New York: Knopf, 1981.Book Locke, Alain. The New Negro: An Interpretation. New York: Boni, 1925.Book Powell, Richard J., and Paul Finkleman, eds. Rhapsodies in Black: Art of the Harlem Renaissance. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.Book Wall, Cheryl. Women of the Harlem Renaissance. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995.Book Read More