September 1, 2006
The Harlem Renaissance
The Harlem Renaisssance occurred during the 1920s, a result of the confluence of black American writers and artists in a district which was already fashionable among the white smart set as the music-and-entertainment capital of New York. The early years of the century had seen the publication of works such as W. E. B. DuBois’s The Souls of Black Folk and Booker T. Washington’s Up From Slavery, indicating the future role of black people in America. In 1925, Alain Locke, a professor at Howard University, brought together a collection of short stories, poems, and prose by divers hands, under the title The New Negro. As the abstraction was held to characterize the ‘spiritual Coming of Age’ of the black race, so the volume itself could be seen as a mark of its cultural maturity.
Major figures in the Harlem Renaissance were Langston Hughes, Arna Bonte
mps, James Weldon Johnson, Nella Larsen, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, and Zora Neale Hurston, many of whom treated the themes of black life in a way that felt modern, while borrowing elements from the folk literature of black tradition. Visual artists of the Renaissance, including Aaron Douglas and William H. Johnson, incorporated African and primitive motifs into their work. Among the magazines founded at the time which devoted themselves to ‘Negro studies’ were Crisis (edited by DuBois), Opportunity, and the Messenger.
These magazines were not exclusively literary, but the significance of the Harlem Renaissance did not lie solely in its literary impact. Although much that was produced from Harlem in the 1920s is of greater historical than artistic importance, the Renaissance made white America aware for the first time of the modern art of a people it had not long before kept in slavery.
For an account of this development see Harlem Renaissance, by Nathan Irvin Huggins (New York, 1971). When Harlem Was in Vogue, by David Levering Lewis (New York, 1981) is a study of broader scope, with less emphasis on the literary life of the 1920s.
This aesthetically appealing site provides lesson plans focused around the “Harlem: 1900-1940” photo exhibition at the Schomburg Center. Lessons are geared towards middle or high-school age students, although this material could also supplement a college-level course. In addition to teacher resources, this site also provides and overview of the photo exhibition, including historical material on each photo displayed.
“Rhapsodies in Black” Art Exhibition and Book
This site includes photos from “Rhapsodies in Black” a traveling art exhibition designed by Richard J. Powell and David A. Bailey that toured London, the University of Warwick, Bristol, San Francisco and Washington D.C. in 1997-1998. The site also features selections from scholarly articles in the exhibition’s accompanying book. There is excellent material here on the art, music and culture of the Harlem Renaissance.
Yale-New Haven Teachers Institue Harlem Renaissance Unit (Gr.9-12)
This is a curriculum guide for a 9 week high school English unit on the Harlem Renaissance. It was designed by Caroline Jackson who works for the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute. It includes an excellent historical background, a sequence of lessons, a student reading list and a bibliography for teachers.