The Harlem Renaissance
The Harlem Renaissance emerged during turbulent times for the world, the United States, and black Americans. World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 had left the world in disorder and stimulated anticolonial movements throughout the third world. In America, twenty years of progressive reform ended with the red scare, race riots, and isolationism throughout 1919 and led to conservative administrations through the twenties. While blacks were stunned by racial violence near the end of the decade and were frustrated by the lack of racial progress that progressivism had made, they were now armed with new civil rights organizations and confronted the approaching decade with new hope and determination. Education and employment opportunities had led to the development of a small black middle class. Few blacks thought that their future lay in the economically depressed rural South and hundreds of thousands migrated to seek prosperity and opportunity in the North. As these more educated and socially conscious blacks settled into New York's neighborhood of Harlem, it developed into the cultural and political center of black America. The 1910s also marked the rising of a political agenda advocating racial equality throughout the bl
Unite to raise the blood-red flag that Until the Red Armies of the International Proletariat 9 Garvey, Marcus, "The Future as I See It," in ibid., 21. 12 Du Bois, W. E. B., "How Shall We Vote," in Crisis, October 1924, 247. A major link between the Harlem Renaissance and politics can be found by looking at how major black rights organizations reacted to political issues of the 1920s and early 1930s. Crisis, the periodical of the NAACP, edited by Du Bois, and Opportunity, the journal of the National Urban League (NUL), edited by Charles S. Johnson. Both publications spoke out on political issues of the time that affected black Americans. Opportunity chronicled the long struggle against black disenfranchisement in the South, discussing at length events such as the legal struggle against the white primary in Texas. The NUL also gave much support to blacks trying to seek national political office. Near the end of the 1920's, Crisis described a five-pronged political agenda that it would pursue. These included the continuation of the struggle against residential segregation in Southern cities and against the white primary in Texas, combating school segregation in the North and the segregation of government workers in the nation's capital, improving the image of blacks by countering false reports of black violence and rioting, eliminating legal barriers against interracial marriage, and taking the struggle for civil rights into the South itself.11 Thus, the periodical took a firm stand against the injustices faced by blacks in the United States and helped to set the stage for the Civil Rights Movement in the middle of the 20th century. The major difference between the two periodicals was that while Opportunity tended to focus more on the alignment of black Americans within the traditional two party system while Crisis often told black voters to look not inside the two major parties, but rather to third parties for candidates which would best advance the African American political agenda. Du Bois, for instance wrote in one issue of Crisis in 1924, "I shall vote for LaFollette."12 as an indication of his support for the Progressive candidate for President over the two major parties. The latter provided a forum for Socialist and Communist candidates, as well as for Republicans and Democrats. Certainly, however, neither publication can truly be considered radical in that the issues they pursued were well in the American political mainstream. Far more radical than either were the flirtations of several Harlem Renaissance writers with revolutionary communism. 2 Locke, Alain, "Foreword," in The New Negro, ed., Alain Locke (NY: Atheneum, 1969), xvii.
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 3175
Approximate Pages = 13 (250 words per page double spaced)
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