The New Negro Renaissance: African American Culture Between Slavery and the Civil Rights Movement
James Weldon Johnson, The Book Of American Negro Poetry
The literary and artistic explosion that occurred in black America from roughly 1910 to 1940 is often referred to as the “Harlem Renaissance.” Although Harlem was indeed the cultural epicenter during the renaissance, creative African American literature and art blossomed from all over the country.
The “New Negro Renaissance” would be a more accurate name for this period because the renaissance was not limited to artists and writers in Harlem, or themes relating to Harlem. The New Negro Renaissance began to take form between 1909 and 1910, around the time of W.E.B. Du Bois’ revolt against Booker T. Washington and the “Tuskegee Machine,” the formation of the National Association For The Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the publication of the first issues of The Crisis. The era began to wind down around 1940 when black and white America faced new issues with the impending war.
The New Negro Renaissance was a period of heightened creativity in the intellectual Black community. This creativity was spurred by the social conditions of the United States at the time; it was an affirmation of dignity and humanity in the face of racism and poverty (Gates 929). African Americans used poetry, fiction, essay, drama, music, dance, painting and sculpture to express newfound confidence and purpose. A new sense of achievement emerged among African Americans.
Although there was a new sense of achievement during the New Negro Renaissance, black American literature had roots in the United States before the twentieth century. The New Negro Renaissance both built on these roots and rebelled against them. Slave poet Jupiter Hammon was published as early as the 1760s. Hammon’s poems were almost entirely religious exhortations. Phillis Wheatley, a slave girl born in Africa, wrote poetry modeled after Alexander Pope (Johnson 31). Wheatley addressed many of her poems to people of prominence, such as her patriotic Ode to General Washington (1775).
Her poems were published throughout the late 1700’s, but because of her inferior education and the social conditions at the time, Wheatley never had an opportunity to learn life – to figure out her true relation to life and her surroundings (Johnson 31). George M. Horton, born three years after Wheatley, expressed strong complaints about the conditions of slavery and a longing for freedom:
Alas! and am I born for this,
To wear this slavish chain?
Deprived of all created bliss,
Through hardship, toil, and pain?
Come, Liberty! Thou cheerful sound,
Roll through my ravished ears;
Come, let my grief in joys be drowned,
And drive away my fears. (Johnson 32)
Frances E. Harper and Alberry A. Whitman also wrote poetry around this time infused with a sense of wrong and injustice (Johnson 33).
In the mid to late 1800’s African Americans were producing quality literature, but much of this literature affirmed existing stereotypes of blacks in America. These writings are often referred to as writings of the “Old Negro” (Locke 3). In 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe published Uncle Tom’s Cabin. This novel portrayed the African American as an unequal, unintelligent member of society. The “Uncle Tom” was dramatized by blacks and whites by the turn of the century (Davis xxii).
In the late 1800’s, Paul Laurence Dunbar emerged as the first black poet in the United States to show mastery over poetic material and poetic technique (BANP 35). He used the Negro dialect as a way to interpret Negro character and psychology. Black writers such as Dunbar found it both expedient and humorous to write comic and sentimental poetry that served to reinforce stereotypes (Davis xxi).
Booker T. Washington, writing in the early 1900’s, urged African Americans to seek limited educational goals and to accept separate social development. Washington believed blacks would improve their standing in society through compromise with white America. Washington’s acceptance of the “separate but equal” state of society sparked anger among many writers of the New Negro Renaissance as they came to reject his approach.
The New Negro Renaissance had roots not only in literature, but in art, music, and dance as well. The Fisk Jubilee Singers made public slave songs, or “spirituals.” The cakewalk, an African American form of dance, and ragtime, an African American form of music, became popular in the early 1900’s. The popularization of blues, a form of ragtime, and jazz, influenced African American poetry.
The New Negro Renaissance reacted to the prose and poetry of the “Old Negro,” but it also a reacted to the social and political circumstances of the time. In 1896, the United States Supreme Court set the precedent for “separate but equal” education, transportation and public facilities in Plessy v. Ferguson. Legal segregation, widespread lynching and increased racial violence were enough to convince black Americans to migrate north. African Americans fled the violence, segregation and poverty of the South in hopes of finding a better situation in the North.
During the Great Migration, which reached its peak in 1915, nearly 2 million African Americans moved north (Davis xxii). The Great Migration was a search for new opportunity, social and economic freedom, and a chance for an improvement in conditions (Locke 6).
African Americans migrated north for separate motives, but the greatest and most important experience was finding one another and building a community. The chief bond between African Americans had previously been the common condition of slavery and oppression, but during the renaissance the chief bond became a common consciousness (Locke 7).
African Americans began to see a necessity for truer self-expression. They saw a need to end the social segregation that had been segregating them mentally (Locke 9). At this point in time, for the most part, the public did not know there were American Negro poets and writers saying important things. During the New Negro Renaissance, this all changed. W.E.B. Du Bois led the way, calling for a new, radical approach from artists and writers.
In his essay, Returning Soldiers, Du Bois sets forth a new tone of militancy: “We stand again to look America squarely in the face and call a spade a spade. We sing: this country of ours, despite all its better souls have done and dreamed, is yet a shameful land” (Davis 385).
Constructive channels were created to release the social feelings of the American Negro during the New Negro Renaissance. Between 1909 and 1910, W.E.B. Du Bois and others, both black and white, came together to form the NAACP. The NAACP was a sign that the black community would no longer stand passively by (Davis xxiii). Many other organizations emerged expressing the militancy of the New Negro. These organizations included the National Urban League (1911); Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association, which numbered close to 4 million people by 1922; the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (1925); and the Nation of Islam (1930).
Important organizational periodicals also emerged and worked hard to stimulate a cultural awakening. These magazines were dedicated to social and political progress, uplift for black Americans, and the development of literary and artistic traditions (Gates 931). Crisis, edited by W.E.B. Du Bois for the NAACP, debuted in 1910; Garvey’s Negro World in 1917; The Messenger in 1918; and in 1923, Opportunity, edited by sociologist and cultural entrepreneur Charles S. Johnson of the National Urban League, began publication (Gates 931). In 1919, Claude McKay’s poem, If We Must Die, appeared in The Liberator, a periodical similar to those previously mentioned.
The militancy of this poem was typical of works in these publications. The poem never alludes directly to race, but black readers believed it sounded a note of defiance against racism, and racist violence (Gates 931). The tone of the poem is indeed defiant, as shown in the second stanza:
O, kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered, let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back! (Davis 382)
Such a statement like this had not been put forth in black literature for many years. Another source of literature during the New Negro Renaissance was the mass publication of new books. In 1922, James Weldon Johnson’s book The Book Of American Negro Poetry was published. In the preface of this book, and through the collection of poetry, the promise of young black writers is emphasized and the terms of the emerging movement are set forth.
Alain Locke’s book The New Negro, published in 1925, established the importance of racial awareness and a desire for literary and artistic excellence. This book conveys a sense of confidence in the black world emerging from generations of repression in the United States and recognizes and relates the New Negro Renaissance to other movements that combined ethnic pride with a desire for fresh achievement in art, culture and politics (Gates 932).
Jean Toomer’s 1923 book Cane was the first piece of fiction published by a black author since Charles Chestnutt’s book The Colonel’s Dream in 1905. Young writers such as Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes saw Cane as a challenge to create new literature. Cullen responded with Color, a book of verse published in 1925. Color was the first book of poetry written by an African American to be published by a major American house (Harper & Brothers) since Dodd, Mead published Paul Laurence Dunbar’s books in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. Hughes responded to this challenge with The Weary Blues, a collection of verse published in 1926.
The New Negro Renaissance was a black movement, but it is important to recognize that the movement’s success, due to the social circumstances in the United States at the time, was not based solely on merit (Gates 933). The New Negro Movement benefited greatly from white patronage, and the new venues resulting from this patronage.
Whites and blacks began working cooperatively at the Niagara Conference, in founding the NAACP and the National Urban League (Davis xxiv). White authors such as Ridgley Torrence, Eugene O’Neill and DuBose Heyward attempted new and fresh interpretations of life in black America (Davis xxiv). Literary contests and dinners were sponsored by Crisis and Opportunity, and included prominent white writers, editors and publishers. White publishing houses started to seek out materials by or about the Negro and helped diminish the barriers between black writers and publication in the United States (Gates 934).
The many new venues, from black periodicals to traditionally white publishing houses, created a new sense of community among black intellectuals. With the emergence of many new venues, the New Negro could be studied like never before:
In the intellectual realm a renewed and keen curiosity is replacing the recent apathy; the Negro is being carefully studied, not just talked about and discussed. In art and letters, instead of being wholly caricatured, he is being seriously portrayed and painted (Locke 9).
The genius of black America was proven to the rest of the world, especially white Americans, but just as importantly, the genius of black America was proven to black America.
A new voice arose from the new community built around the New Negro Renaissance. The younger generation of black writers believed they possessed something new. They believed the problem, until the renaissance, was a lack of self-understanding. The Old Negro used to be “more of a formula than a human being” (Locke 3-4). The New Negro writer believed self-understanding stems from self-respect and self-dependence:
With this renewed self-respect and self-dependence, the life of the Negro community is bound to enter a new dynamic phase, the buoyancy from within compensating for whatever pressure there may be of conditions from without (Locke 4).
In order to achieve self-respect and self-despondence, writers and artists believed it was necessary to shed the Old Negro roles. The New Negro wanted to be known for what he is; he is tired of seeming to be something he is not (Locke 11). They attempted to break the literary and artistic traditions of insulting black humanity. They believed it was crucial to shed the image of the Negro as a pathetic figure (Johnson 40-41). The New Negro writer revolted against the traditions of Negro dialect poetry and old subject matter – possums and watermelons only perpetuated stereotypes (Johnson 40). The New Negro writer believed the Negro dialect was incapable of expressing the varied conditions of Negro life in America (Johnson 42). As the New Negro Renaissance took form, James Weldon Johnson wrote, “[The colored poet] needs to find a form that will express the racial spirit by symbols from within rather than by symbols from without, such as the mere mutilation of English spelling and pronunciation” (Johnson 41).
Alain Locke called the New Negro Renaissance a “spiritual emancipation” and a “spiritual coming of age” (Locke 4-10). Along with this spiritual awakening, the New Negro was attempting to achieve some kind of mutual understanding between cultures – to bring intelligent people of different races together. Locke went on to say, “The American mind must reckon with a fundamentally changed Negro” (Locke 8). Through poetry and prose of protest, rebellion and despair, the New Negro writer forced America to recognize a Negro who is no longer in agreement with the stereotypes of old.
The art and writing that came out of the New Negro Renaissance was incredible in its own right, but when one considers the fact that African Americans were hardly more than fifty years removed from slavery and still in the midst of segregation and dehumanization, the achievements are even more amazing (Gates 936). Writers such as Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay and Zora Neale Hurston created a body of literature to which future generations could reflect upon and see black life portrayed accurately and fairly. These writers, along with artists and musicians such as Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith, laid the foundation for representation of their people in the modern world.
The American Civil Rights Movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s was not the first time African Americans asserted themselves as equals in a society that did not see them as such. The New Negro Renaissance served as a precursor to the Civil Rights Movement.
Bibliography
Davis, Arthur P., and Peplow, Michael W., eds. The New Negro Renaissance:
An Anthology. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1975.
Gates Jr., Henry Louis, ed. The Norton Anthology of African American Literature.
New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1997.
Johnson, James Weldon, ed. The Book of American Negro Poetry. New York:
Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1922.
Locke, Alain, ed. The New Negro. New York: Atheneum, 1925.
Miller, Ruth, ed. Backgrounds to Blackamerican Literature. Scranton: Chandler
Publishing Company, 1971.
Patton, Venetria K. and Honey, Maureen, eds. Double-Take: A Revisionist Harlem
Renaissance Anthology. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2001.
