The
Circle Association's Weblinks to
The HARLEM RENAISSANCE
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visitors to the Circle's
African American Links pages. Last update 9/12/2001.
INTRODUCTION
Outside of the art world, people rarely think
of the renaissance period describing the written word. This habit
has extended, as well. to the Harlem Renaissance; however, the
written word was a very important part of this period. There had
been Negro writers for at least 140 years. Perhaps, the best known
were Charles W. Chestnutt and Paul
Laurence Dunbar. Chestnutt's novels included The Conjure
Woman and The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the
Color Line , whereas Dunbar, primarily a poet, was best known
for his novel The Sport of the Gods . Chestnut's writing,
though moving away from the plantation romanticism which had glorified
slavery, possessed realistic flavor, and it emphasized relations
based on the divisions of the black and white races rather than
developing the interior lives of its characters.
At the same time, and to some extent today,
most African Americans found positive value in the stereotypical
puritan compulsions to order, frugality, temperance, decorum,
and frigidity which had always served to distinguish the civilized
(i.e., whites) from the darker peoples they enslaved or colonized
who had to be tutored because they embodied just the opposite
of many of these characteristics. With Jean
Toomer's publication Cane , and, in 1924, with
Jessie Redman Fauset's There is Confusion . Unlike
their predecessors, these works dealt with our people as people
and not as objects to be manipulated for some or other racial
propaganda. Langston
Hughes, in 1930, published Not Without Laughter ,
the first Harlem Renaissnce novel to gain wide reknown. Writers
such as Claude McKay,
created fictional characters who were heroes because they were
primitives and free from the Puritan ethic. Painters, sculptors,
and musicians were "uplifted" by the popularity of Africa
forms of Picasso and Matisse and the adoption of jazz by heralded
european composers.
In the 1920's African-Americans seemed to have
passed through some rite of passage. As if for the first time,
we began, in significant numbers, to be self-assertive and racially
conscious. A popular, at the time, term describing such people
was "The New Negro" expressed movement from the world
of Booker T. Washington to that of W.E.B. duBois and Marcus Garvey.
More than anything else, the Harlem Renaissance was a marker of
the shift of the Black intellectuals from the South to the urban
North. Thus, the Harlem Renaissance expresses a time, an orientation,
a spirit, and more than a location, for its representatives can
be found outside of New York City; for example, Philadelphia and
Chicago both possessed reflections of the Harlem scene.
Timeline
of the Harlem Renaissance
1919
- 369th Regiment marched up Fifth Avenue to
Harlem, February 17.
- First Pan African Congress organized by W.E.B.
Du Bois, Paris, February.
- Race riots in Washington, D.C., Chicago,
Charleston, Knoxville, Omaha, and elsewhere, June to September.
- Race Relations Commission founded, September.
- Marcus Garvey founded the Black Star Shipping
Line.
- Benjamin Brawley published The Negro in
Literature and Art in the United States.
1920
- Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA)
Convention held at Madison Square Garden, August.
- Charles Gilpin starred in Eugene O'Neill,
The Emperor Jones, November.
- James Weldon Johnson, first black officer
(secretary) of NAACP appointed.
- Claude
McKay published Spring in New
Hampshire.
- Du Bois's Darkwater is published.
- O'Neill's The Emperor Jones, starring
Charles Gilpin, opens at the Provincetown Playhouse.
1921
- Shuffle Along
by Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake, the first musical revue written
and performed by African Americans (cast members include Josephine
Baker and Florence Mills), opened, May 22, at Broadway's David
Belasco Theater.
- Marcus Garvey founded African Orthodox Church,
September.
- Second Pan African Congress.
- Colored Players Guild of New York founded.
- Benjamin Brawley published Social History
of the American Negro.
1922
- First Anti-Lynching legislation approved
by House of Representatives.
- Publications of The Book of American Negro
Poetry edited by James Weldon Johnson;
- Claude
McKay, Harlem Shadows.
1923
- Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life is founded
by the National Urban League, with Charles S. Johnson as its
editor.
- National Ethiopian Art Players staged The
Chip Woman's Fortune by Willis Richardson, first serious play
by a black writer on Broadway, May.
- Claude
McKay spoke at the Fourth Congress
of the Third International in Moscow, June.
- The Cotton Club opened, Fall.
- Marcus Garvey arrested for mail fraud and
sentenced to five years in prison.
- Third Pan African Congress.
- Publication of Jean
Toomer's Cane
- Publication of Marcus Garvey, Philosophy
and Opinion of Marcus Garvey. 2 vols.
1924
- Civic Club Dinner, sponsored by Opportunity,
bringing black writers and white publishers together, March 21.
This event is considered the formal launching of of the New Negro
movement.
- Jesse Fauset not only edited (from
1919 to 1926) the literary section of The
Crisis, she also hosted evening gatherings for the black
intellectuals of Harlem: artists, thinkers, writers. Dorothy
Randolph Peterson, a teacher and arts patron, used her father's
Brooklyn home for literary salons.
- Paul Robeson starred in O'Neill's All
God's Chillun Got Wings, May 15.
- Countee
Cullen won first prize in the
Witter Bynner Poetry Competition.
- Publication of Du Bois, The Gift of Black
Folk
- Publication of Jessie Fauset, There is
Confusion
- Publication of Marcus Garvey, Aims and
Objects for a Solution of the Negro Problem Outlined
- Publication of Walter White, The Fire
in the Flint.
1925
- Survey Graphic issue, "Harlem: Mecca
of the New Negro," edited by Alain Locke and Charles Johnson,
devoted entirely to black arts and letters, March.
- In the spring Jean
Toomer lectured on Gurdjieff's methods in Harlem. Toomer's
appearance and his new attitude toward life and art, were treated
with curiosity if not awe. The lectures attracted stars of the
Harlem Renaissance including writers Langston
Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Wallace Thurman,
Nella Larsen, Harold Jackman (a teacher and activist),
Rudolph Fisher, Dorothy West (writer), Dorothy
Peterson (teacher and arts patron who remained close to Toomer
for 10 years), and Aaron Douglass (the painter). Langston Hughes
writes in his Gurdjieff in Harlem (a chapter in The
Big Sea), "He had an evolved soul and that soul made
him feel that nothing mattered, not even writing."
- American Negro Labor Congress held in Chicago,
October.
- Opportunity holds its first literary awards
dinner; winners include Langston
Hughes, Countee
Cullen, and Zora Neale Hurston.
- The first Crisis awards ceremony is held
at the Renaissance Casino; Countee
Cullen wins first prize.
- Publication of Countee
Cullen, Color
- Publication of Du Bose Heyward, Porgy
- Publication of James Weldon Johnson and J.
Rosamond Johnson, eds. The Book of American Negro Spirituals
- Publication of Alain Locke, The New Negro
- Publication of Sherwood Anderson, Dark
Laughter (a novel showing Black life).
1926
- Countee
Cullen becomes Assistant Editor
of Opportunity; begins to write a regular column "The Dark
Tower."
- Savoy Ballroom opened in Harlem, March.
- Publication of Wallace Thurman, Fire!!
- Publication of Langston
Hughes, The Weary Blues
- Publication of Carl Van Vechten, Tropic
Death
- Publication of W. C. Handy, Blues: An
Anthology
- Publication of Walter White, Flight.
1927
- In Abraham's Bosom by Paul Green, with an
all-black cast, won the Pulitzer Prize, May.
- Ethel Waters first appeared on Broadway,
July.
- Marcus Garvey deported.
- Louis Armstrong in Chicago and Duke Ellington
in New York began their careers.
- Harlem Globetrotters established.
- Charlotte Mason decides to become a patron
of the New Negro.
- A'Lelia Walker opens a tearoom salon called
"The Dark Tower."
- Publication of Miguel Covarrubias, Negro
Drawings
- Publication of Countee
Cullen, Ballad of the Brown Girl
- Publication of Countee
Cullen Copper Sun
- Publication of Countee
Cullen Caroling Dusk
- Publication of Arthur Fauset, For Freedom:
A Biographical Story of the American Negro
- Publication of Langston Hughes, Fine Clothes
to the Jew
- Publication of James Weldon Johnson, God's
Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse
- Publication of James Weldon Johnson The
Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (reprint of the 1912 edition)
- Publication of Alain Locke and Montgomery
T. Gregory, eds. Plays of Negro Life.
1928
- Countee
Cullen marries Nina Yolande, daughter
of W.E.B. Du Bois, April 9; described as the social event of
the decade.
- Publication of Wallace Thurman, Harlem: A
Forum of Negro Life
- Publication of Du Bois, The Dark Princess
- Publication of Rudolph Fisher, The Walls
of Jericho
- Publication of Nella Larsen, Quicksand
- Publication of Jessie Fauset, Plum Bun
- Publication of Claude
McKay, Home to Harlem.
1929
- Negro Experimental Theatre founded, February;
Negro art Theatre founded, June; National Colored Players founded,
September.
- Wallace Thurman's play Harlem, written
with William Jourdan Rapp, opens at the Apollo Theater on Broadway
and becomes hugely successful.
- Black Thursday, October 29, Stock Exchange
crash.
- Publication of Countee
Cullen, The Black Christ and Other Poems
- Publication of Claude
McKay, Banjo
- Publication of Nella Larsen, Passing
- Wallace Thurman, The Blacker the Berry
Voices from the Harlem Renaissance , edited by Nathan Irvin Huggins [Oxford University
Press $16.95] is a fine collection of over 120 selections from
the political writings and arts of the Harlem Renaissance. The
above paragraphs were adapted from the 8 page introduction in
Huggins' book.
Thus, the Circle Association presents, for
your interest, web links to pages devoted to the general Harlem
Renaissance.
Links in the order we find them.
= NEW to all our pages!!!
Resources
for Harlem Renaissance -
Phat
African American Poetry Book contains
works of the Harlem Renaissance
poets: Arna Bontemps, Langston Hughes, Georgia Douglas Johnson,
Helene Johnson, Claude McKay.
The Library of Congress' African American Mosaic Exhibition
A complete Harlem Renaissance site at the university
of colorado
Historical
Photographs photographs and captions
provided by Bettie Cole, and are being used in the book she is...
A Jean
Toomer Page: Five web pages consisting
of a biography, samples of his work, a bibliography, and photos.
Marcus Garvey.
Zora
Neal Hurston page
Voice of the Shuttle: Minority
Studies page
Harlem Renaissance book The
Garden Thrives
Harlem Renaissance painters
Harlem Renaissance: New York in the Twenties
Harlem Renaissance Bibliography
The Harlem Renaissance: A
Selected List
The Black Experience in America, Chapter09
Harlem:
Mecca of the new Negro
Harlem Renaissance1
Harlem Renaissance2
Harlem Renaissance Links
Harlem's
Schomberg Center for Research in black culture
Altavista search turned
up 4000+ links (I only checked 50)
Infoseek search turned up
2000+ links
Lycos search turned up 500+
links
Yahoo search turned up 17
links
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