Written by Edie Christian
The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural and intellectual movement in the 1920s-30s that aimed to celebrate and amplify the African American experience and consciousness. Although centred around the New York neighbourhood of Harlem, the movement had significant ramifications, both for establishing civil rights in 1960s America, as well as internationally. Its ideology has informed and inspired civil rights movements in colonised countries such as Dutch Suriname, therefore making it a foundational movement for global black consciousness and anti-colonial resistance.
Upon its construction in the 1880s, Harlem was initially intended to be an upper-class white neighbourhood, although rapid overdevelopment left most of these buildings empty. This coincided with a worsening situation in the South of the United States: African Americans were disenfranchised and segregated through oppressive Jim Crow laws. As a result, approximately six million people migrated from the American South to elsewhere in the US in the period between 1910 and 1970 in an attempt to escape racial violence and persecution. This coalescence of people who had lived through the Reconstruction era following the Civil War (1861-65), and whose parents were likely enslaved, led to a cultural evolution that simultaneously focused upon both criticising and celebrating the African American experience. This period also saw the emergence of literary modernism, with figures such as T. S. Eliot and Gertrude Stein focusing upon experimentation and subjectivity. Many of the themes and motifs throughout modernism are products of the hopelessness and metaphysical malaise felt by many who were disenchanted by the First World War, whom Stein designated the ‘lost generation’. Although the Harlem Renaissance and modernism are not identical in their literary techniques and ideology, they can both be understood as being influenced and informed by volatile domestic and global relations.
Claude McKay’s poem, “If We Must Die” (1919), epitomises his position as a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance. Written in response to the Red Summer of 1919, denoting the exponential rise of racial riots and white supremacist violence across the US, McKay utilises the Shakespearean sonnet form, whilst describing a murderous mob, to imbue European literary forms with a message of resistance and civil rights. Its focus on self-assertion has led it to be described as the “inaugural address” of the Harlem Renaissance and has remained as an inspiration to global anti-colonial movements. Furthermore, the movement can be understood as a precursor for the civil rights movements of the 1960s; however, it is also evidently influenced by previous civil rights leaders, particularly the conflicting figures of W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington. Both active around the turn of the twentieth century, Du Bois highlighted the importance of education and reformation to the system to achieve racial equality and integration. By contrast, Washington supported social segregation and emphasised the need for vocational skills and stability within the black community. Du Bois’ theory of ‘double consciousness’ – the idea of African American identity being constantly defined through the eyes of the racist society in which they live – articulated the psychological impact of attempting to reconcile these identities. Washington’s views were particularly controversial, and he was accused of accommodating white supremacy. Langston Hughes’ poem “Ballad of Booker T” (1941) explores both his contentious reputation and his pragmatic economic philosophy, particularly in light of the many legislations of the New Deal era. Hughes’ poems are viewed as one of the earliest instances of blues and jazz poetry, a use of rhythm within literary works that is also apparent in the Beat generation of the 1950s. Another of Hughes’ poems, “The Weary Blues” (1925), employs the structure and form of blues music through the use of onomatopoeia and apostrophe, speaking to the music itself. Moreover, the growth and development of jazz music also reverberated within the Harlem Renaissance. Jazz musicians such as Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington fused European and American musical traditions to represent the black experience in America. Although these styles of music had evolved from the work songs of enslaved populations, the Harlem Renaissance opened jazz to a growing white market. Its defiance of musical conventions, by focusing on improvisation and syncopated rhythms, reflected a defiance of the conventions of white society, and therefore underscored the importance of African American self-determination.
Although ostensibly concerned with the plight of African Americans, the significance of the Harlem Renaissance extends internationally. Activists throughout the twentieth century, including those during the Harlem Renaissance, were drawn to communist ideology due to its centering of equality. In June 1932, 22 African Americans, including Langston Hughes, travelled to the Soviet Union to act in a film surrounding racial relations in the American South. Louise Thompson, whose involvement with the Soviet Union led her to be dubbed ‘Madame Moscow’, organised the trip and described the film as ‘an opportunity to counter the distorted and stereotypical depictions of the African American experience’. Hughes was targeted throughout the Second Red Scare and was forced to testify before Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, although notably not the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee, to defend himself against allegations of communism, which he had always denied. The importance of communist sentiment to cultural movements such as the Harlem Renaissance is also apparent in global anti-colonial movements. For instance, married political activists Otto and Hermina Huiswoud – Surinamese and Guyanan, respectively – were members of an international anti-imperialist network, the resistance of which relied on Marxist-Leninist ideology and contacts within the Communist International (Comintern). Furthermore, Anton de Kom’s book We Slaves of Suriname (1934) sparked the Surinamese independence movement through its indictment of Dutch colonialism and slavery. De Kom utilises communist ideology in his criticism by highlighting the inherently capitalist structure of plantations, as well as the compensation given to plantation owners following the abolition of slavery in 1863 (although many claim slavery was not truly abolished until the abolition of indentured labour in 1873). This is also apparent in American movements such as the Harlem Renaissance, which criticised the capitalist underpinnings of slavery plantations and their role in American wealth. Therefore, the influence of communist ideology, as well as the social and cultural movements it has inspired, is often central to global anti-colonial movements in their campaign for equality.
The Harlem Renaissance embraced African American literature, music, and art to reconfigure their identities outside of the conceptions of white America. Harlem provided the perfect space through which to develop this cultural awakening and connections to the African American experience. Beyond this, the Harlem Renaissance had an undoubtedly significant impact globally, particularly in their invocation of communist ideology and role in shaping and growing black consciousness and the cultural canon worldwide.
Bibliography
Anton De Kom. We Slaves of Suriname. Translated by David McKay, Cambridge, Uk ; Medford, Ma, Polity Press, 2022.
Hughes, Langston. “Ballad of Booker T.” 1941, edu.lva.virginia.gov/ocapi/uploads/1644440651520_hughes-ballad-transcription.pdf.
—. “The Weary Blues.” Poetry Foundation, 1925, http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47347/the-weary-blues.
McKay, Claude. “If We Must Die.” Poetry Foundation, July 1919, http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44694/if-we-must-die.
“The Great Migration (1910-1970).” National Archives, The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, http://www.archives.gov/research/african-americans/migrations/great-migration.
“The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/the-harlem-renaissance-and-transatlantic-modernism.
Featured Image Credit: Guests at breakfast party for Langston Hughes hosted by Regina Anderson and Ethel Ray at 580 St. Nicholas Avenue, Harlem, May 1925. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Guests_at_breakfast_party_for_Langston_Hughes_hosted_by_Regina_Anderson_and_Ethel_Ray_at_580_St._Nicholas_Avenue,_Harlem,_May_1925.jpg
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