Building a Broad-based Curriculum with Harlem Renaissance … a broad-based... · 2017-01-13 · Art Tatum Noted for “speed and clarity” and “dazzling harmonic variations”

Building a Broad-based Curriculum with Harlem Renaissance Material

A Presentation by Trent Tomengo

Professor of HumanitiesSeminole State College of Florida

Harlem Renaissance

1. As Simply a Time Period

2. As a Cultural Movement of Educated Elite Blacks

1917-1935

The Black ExperienceClaims of Congenital Negro Inferiority

In Religion – The Negro A Beast: Image of God by Charles Carroll (1900)

“The Negro a beast, but created with articulate speech, and hands, that he may be of service to his master—the White man.”


In Politics – Notes of the State of Virginia by Thomas Jefferson(1782)

“I advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind.”


In Science – On the Natural History of the Caucasian and Negro Races by Josiah C. Nott

(1844)“I set out then with the proposition, that there is a Genus, Man, comprising two or more species — that physical causes cannot change a White man into a Negro, and that to say this change has been effected by a direct act of providence, is an assumption which cannot be proven, and is contrary to the great chain of Nature's laws.”


In Popular Culture – Comical Coons by Edward Kemble(1898)

A Few Themes Within The Harlem Renaissance

1. Hi Brow- Low Brow (Class differentiation)

2. Counteracting Stereotypes

3. Aesthetic vs. Political Role of Art

4. The New and Modern

5. Integration – The Merging of Disparate Cultures

Integration – The Merging of Disparate Cultures

Politics

NAACP

W.E.B. DuBoisEditor of Crisis Magazine

Charles S. JohnsonEditor of Opportunity Magazine

National Urban League


Literature

Countee Cullen

Harvard Graduate

Area of specialty was English Romantic Poets

Merged the Black experience with Eurocentric references

Yet do I marvel1925

I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kindAnd did He stoop to quibble could tell whyThe little buried mole continues blind,Why flesh that mirrors Him must some day die,Make plain the reason tortured TantalusIs baited by the fickle fruit, declareIf merely brute caprice dooms SisyphusTo struggle up a never-ending stair.Inscrutable His ways are, and immuneTo catechism by a mind too strewnWith petty cares to slightly understandWhat awful brain compels His awful hand.Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:To make a poet black, and bid him sing!


Stage

Florence Mills

Shuffle Along (1921)

First play written, directed, and starring Blacks on Broadway

Art Tatum

Noted for “speed and clarity” and “dazzling harmonic variations”

Mixed Black vernacular traditions with Eurocentric classical training


Music

Tea for Two (1933)

Merged Art Deco Style with Egyptian-like silhouettes

Blended new and modern with black historical /vernacular themes


Visual ArtAaron Douglas

Studied with German artist Winold Reiss

Aaron Douglas Aspirations 1936

Aaron Douglas, Aspirations, 1936. Oil on canvas

Documents

Building a Broad-based Curriculum with Harlem Renaissance … a broad-based... · 2017-01-13 · Art Tatum Noted for “speed and clarity” and “dazzling harmonic variations”