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.”
The Black ExperienceClaims of Congenital Negro Inferiority
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.”
The Black ExperienceClaims of Congenital Negro Inferiority
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.”
The Black ExperienceClaims of Congenital Negro Inferiority
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
Integration – The Merging of Disparate Cultures
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!
Integration – The Merging of Disparate Cultures
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
Integration – The Merging of Disparate Cultures
Music
Tea for Two (1933)
Merged Art Deco Style with Egyptian-like silhouettes
Blended new and modern with black historical /vernacular themes
Integration – The Merging of Disparate Cultures
Visual ArtAaron Douglas
Studied with German artist Winold Reiss
Aaron Douglas Aspirations 1936
Aaron Douglas, Aspirations, 1936. Oil on canvas