What is the Harlem Renaissance?

Harlem Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance was a time period where African American culture grew.  The Harlem Renaissance was the most influential movement in African American literary history. During this time African Americans tried to change the view of themselves. Instead of having the negative stereotype that whites have portrayed on them they wanted people to see them as the creative human beings they were.

The Harlem Renaissance was not strictly confined to the district of Harlem in New York but Harlem was considered the symbolic capital. Harlem was considered the symbolic capital because out of everywhere this movement was happening Harlem was the most concentrated area that brought in intellect and talent.

The Harlem Renaissance took place in the 20^th Century. Also during this time the Great Migration took place that was when African Americans moved from rural areas to urban areas. Basically they moved from the south to the north. While doing that the literacy rate drastically increased, also groups for civil rights movements started to form.

W.E.B. Du Bois

W.E.B Du Bois his full name is William Edward Burghardt Du Bois. He was born in Massachusetts on February 23, 1868. He first went to college at Fisk University in Nashville Tennessee. There he got his bachelor’s degree. Du Bois then went to Harvard where he was the first African American to earn a doctorate degree. He then became a professor at Atlanta University where he taught history, sociology and economics. He also was an editor and writer. Du Bois was also one of the co-founders of the NAACP; which is the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1909. He was also a civil rights activist. W.E.B Du Bois died on August 27, 1963.

W.E.B Du Bois wrote many works including: The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States (1896), The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Dusk of Dawn (1940), Du Bois also wrote a number of essays and speeches that were very influential. They were about of a number of issues he dealt with in his life including schooling with segregation, black soldiers in the First World War and also black history, culture, and art.

Du Bois says, "It dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil." He said this quote in his piece Strivings of the Negro People. What this quote is saying is that since he is black he is different from the whites, he has the same wants and needs as them but he is in his own world because he is shut out by a veil that is his skin color.

Countee Cullen

Countee Cullen was actually born as Countee LeRoy Porter in March 30, 1903. Although there is little to no information about his childhood, it is believed he went to live with his grandmother in Harlem at the age of nine. Unfortunately, Countee’s grandmother died in the year 1918, and he had just turned 15. Countee was then adopted by a minister of the Salem Methodist Episcopal Church named Reverend Frederick Cullen, thus Countee adopted his widely known last name - Cullen.

Countee Cullen had an incredibly successful academic career during his lifetime. Cullen attended DeWitt High School where he graduated as an honor student in 1922 with special distinction in the subjects of math, Latin, French, and Greek. It was also then that Cullen’s teachers noticed his gift for poetry and outstanding speaking skills. Cullen then attended New York University where he won second place in both 1923 and 1924, and then first place in the year 1925 for the Wittier Bynner Poetry Contest. Cullen furthered his education by earning his Master’s Degree in English at Harvard University. While at Harvard, Cullen published some of his most famous poems such as: “Color”, “Heritage”, “Incident”, and “Yet do I Marvel”.

Cullen’s poem, “Incident”, contains all the elements that are characteristic of Harlem Renaissance poetry. In this poem, the narrator reflects on his trip to Baltimore as child. Maryland was a slave state during the Civil War. Baltimore had a primarily white population, then in 1968  - Martin Luther King's assassination -there was a riot which then lead to the town being primarily populated by African-American's (Bettye). Cullen's poem was written during a time when slavery was over, however there was still a lot of tension between the black and white peoples of Baltimore (Bettye).

“Cullen was young, Black, handsome and brilliant. He was one of Harlem's brightest stars. He moved easily between Black and white cultures and believed that art was bigger than race and could, in fact, be used to bring the races closer together” (Williams). Countee Cullen had everything in his advantage because he was extremely intelligent and possessed the Black experience of life.

Cullen went on to write for an African American journal where his column the “Dark Tower” became popular. “Dark Tower” is significant because it is the name of the home belonging to A’lelia Walker, who would invite the “crème de la crop” of the Harlem Renaissance to her home as sort of a nightclub. This is home was torn down in 1941, but is now a library named after Countee Cullen.

In 1928 Countee Cullen married W.E.B Du Bois’s daughter, Nina Yolanda Du Bois; they divorced two years later.

Throughout the rest of his life, Cullen published a wide range of writings, from children’s books to a musical, but he spent most of his time as a French teacher at Frederick Douglass Junior High.

“Cullen wanted to be known as a poet, not defined by race, despite race being a recurring theme in his work. He clarified his point in the Brooklyn Eagle, Feb. 10, 1924: ‘If I am going to be a poet at all, I am going to be POET and not NEGRO POET. This is what has hindered the development of artists among us. Their one note has been the concern with their race’” (Williams).

Countee Cullen died January 9, 1946 from high blood pressure problems.

Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neale Hurston was born January 7, 1891. She was the daughter of John Hurston, carpenter and Baptist preacher, and Lucy Potts Hurston, a former schoolteacher. She was also the fifth of eight siblings. Zora obtained the high school credits she needed at Morgan Academy in Baltimore, but she spent a lot of her time as manicurist in a black-owned barbershop that catered to whites only by day and a nightclub waitress by night.

Over the course of her life, she was in two marriages, both of which ended in divorce, but that didn’t stop her from leading an exciting life!

Zora then went on to Howard University for her Associates degree, then to Barnard College to study anthropology, and finally receive a PhD in anthropology from Columbia University. Over this course of time in school, Hurston published many, many different works and received several awards and distinctions during her life time.

Zora also had an extensive number of careers aside from publishing vast amounts of her own work such as: writing for Opportunity, creating her own published journal, creating collaborative works with other famous Harlem Renaissance writers (Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, are just a couple of those she worked with ), being a librarian and a substitute teacher, teaching a drama class at the North Carolina College for Negros, establishing her own school of dramatic arts at Bethune-Cookman College, and even being a story consultant to Paramount Pictures.

Alongside her many career endeavors, Zora traveled to Haiti and Jamaica for her own leisure and to write in a relaxing environment. Zora also spent a great amount of time collecting folklore from Florida, South Carolina, and other Southern states.

Sadly, Zora Hurston suffered from a stroke in October 1959 causing to live the remainder of her life in St. Lucie County Welfare home where she would die on January 28, 1960. Hurston was buried in an unmarked grave that was discovered by Alice Walker in August 1973. Walker wrote about her discovery causing a spike of interest in Hurston to rise during the spring of 1975.

Hurston reflects upon her life in “How it Feels to Be Colored Me” in which she describes how she didn’t realize how her skin color would ostracize until she began to travel outside of her cozy Eatonville, Florida home that was a colored-only town. Eatonville was formed shortly after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed and was one of the first all-black towns in the history of the United States (Eatonville). Eatonville was named after the Union Army Captain Josiah Eaton who sold the land to a group of African-Americans that wanted to start the town (Eatonville). Presently, the town has an annual festival to celebrate Zora Neale Hurston (Eatonville). She reflects on her curiosity and openness to have relationships with white people, and the different reactions she received from blacks and whites in different parts of the country. Her reflection of the black experience in this piece is very characteristic of the Harlem Renaissance.

Some of her published works include:

1921	Publishes her first story, "John Redding Goes to Sea," in Stylus, the campus literary society's magazine.
December 1924	Publishes "Drenched in Light," a short story, in Opportunity.
1925	Submits a story, "Spunk," and a play, Color Struck, to Opportunity's literary contest. Both win second-place award; publishes "Spunk" in the June number.
January 1926	Publishes "John Redding Goes to Sea" in Opportunity.
Summer 1926	Organizes Fire! With Langston Hughes and Wallace Thurman; they publish only one issue, in November 1926. The issue includes Hurston's "Sweat."
August 1926	Publishes "Muttsy" in Opportunity.
September 1926	Publishes "Possum or Pig" in the Forum.
September - November 1926	Publishes "The Eatonville Anthology" in the Messenger.
1927	Publishes The First One, a play, in Charles S. Johnson's Ebony and Topaz.
October 1927	Publishes an account of the black settlement at St. Augustine, Florida, in the Journal of Negro History; also in this issue: "Cudjo's Own Story of the Last African Slaver."
May 1928	Publishes "How It Feels to be Colored Me" in The World Tomorrow.
1931	Publishes "Hoodoo in America" in the Journal of American Folklore.
February 1931	Breaks with Langston Hughes over the authorship of Mule Bone.
1933	Writes "The Fiery Chariot."
August 1933	Publishes "The Gilded Six-Bits" in Story.
1934	Publishes six essays in Nancy Cunard's anthology, Negro.
May 1934	Publishes Jonah's Gourd Vine, originally titled Big Nigger; it is a Book-of-the-Month Club selection.
September 1934	Publishes "The Fire and the Cloud" in the Challenge.
September 1937	Returns to the United States; Their Eyes Were Watching God published, September 18.
February - March 1938	Writes Tell My Horse; it is published the same year.
1939	Publishes "Now Take Noses" in Cordially Yours.
November 1939	Moses, Man of the Mountain published.
July 1941	Publishes "Cock Robin, Beale Street" in the Southern Literary Messenger.
July 1942	Publishes "Story in Harlem Slang" in the American Mercury.
September 5, 1942	Publishes a profile of Lawrence Silas in the Saturday Evening Post.
November 1942	Dust Tracks on a Road published.
May 1943	Publishes "The 'Pet Negro' Syndrome" in the American Mercury.
June 1944	Publishes "My Most Humiliating Jim Crow Experience" in the Negro Digest.
March 1945	Publishes "The Rise of the Begging Joints" in the American Mercury.
December 1945	Publishes "Crazy for This Democracy" in the Negro Digest.
1947	Publishes a review of Robert Tallant's Voodoo in New Orleans in the Journal of American Folklore.
October 1948	Seraph on the Suwanee published.
March 1950	Publishes "Conscience of the Court" in the Saturday Evening Post, while working as a maid in Rivo Island, Florida.
April 1950	Publishes "What White Publishers Won't Print" in the Saturday Evening Post.
November 1950	Publishes "I Saw Negro Votes Peddled" in the American Legion magazine.
June 1951	Publishes "Why the Negro Won't Buy Communism" in the American Legion magazine.
December 8, 1951	Publishes "A Negro Voter Sizes up Taft" in the Saturday Evening Post.
1957 - 1959	Writes a column on "Hoodoo and Black Magic" for the Fort Pierce Chronicle.