Harlem
Renaissance is
a book providing an extensive history of that age and its lasting legacy to
Black Americans, and their place in American history. It was written by NathanIrvin Huggins, a celebrated historian, educated at UC Berkeley and then
Harvard, where he became a Professor of History, and Director of the W.E.B.DuBois Institute for Afro-American Research. Today, Dr. Huggins is
synonymous with what academia calls Black Studies. As a history academic it
seemed odd that Huggins would author a book on the cultural phenomenon that was
the Harlem Renaissance. That choice proved perfect. The book begins by
reviewing the American history that led to the resettling of a New York City
neighborhood as an enclave of Black Americans.
Post-Civil
War and Emancipation, the American South, home to the vast majority of Black
Americans, was transformed into the political war zone known as the Jim Crow
era, and its birth of a white supremacy philosophy which still rages today. As
a result, many Blacks left the South in what is known as the Great Migration,
heading north to cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York, hoping for a
clean start away from Jim Crow laws. (An excellent book on the Great Migration
is Pulitzer Prize winning author Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns).
Many of these migrants landed in the NYC neighborhood of Harlem, transforming
it into what would become a Black “ghetto” – a word not used in Huggins’ book. In
sociology terms, ghettos are enclaves of like-people, not necessarily based on
economics, a prime example would be the Chinatowns that exist throughout the
country.
Important
to this migration history is that Blacks from the South were leaving a rural
economy for an urban one. In Harlem, the resulting enclave was comprised a bit
differently than the others. It was a mecca not only of migrants from the
South, but also a large contingent of Blacks from the Caribbean; and a small
though significant group of “Free Negroes” born and/or raised in the North, who
fought in both the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, and were educated (teaching Blacks was
forbidden in the South) and although they were aware of the dynamics of
slavery and Jim Crow, they had little direct exposure to it. It was, to use another sociology term, quite
the melting pot.
Assembling
in a neighborhood is distinctly different from forming a community, and that is
what the Harlem Renaissance is all about.
This
large influx of different peoples brought together a fusion of backgrounds and experiences:
the singing and oral folklore of the South, the musical and dancing traditions
of the islands, and a small, educated group who would by default assume the role played by the nation’s other “new” communities through the social
equivalent of what would become known as settlement houses. All of this was hampered by a majority-White
society, which, while much softer than the South, was still less helpful or
inviting than it could have been. Poverty or near poverty was an issue,
complicated by being new to an urban environment where employment options were
anything but rural.
Still,
the “freedoms to be” found in Harlem were cause for celebration, hence the soon
rapidly gained reputation for a good party. In the post-war era, followed by
the Roaring 20s, this meant Prohibition breaking booze, and prostitution (not
unlike elsewhere in the country). This party-like atmosphere created an unparalleled
creative energy, snowballing into a cultural renaissance new to Black Americans,
awakening literature that was by them, about their experiences, a
music scene decidedly different from the American mainstream, and a budding
arts & theater scene that grew from support roles to lead characters.
The literary survey in Huggins’ book is extensive. Associated with the Harlem Renaissance are such names as James Weldon Johnson, Claude McCay, W.E.B. DuBois, Zora Neale Hurston, Jean Toomer, Wallace Thurman, Langston Hughes and many, many others. Huggins connects the works, the authors, and even the characters in their works, providing a head-spinning commentary that left me gasping for air.
NOTE: the poster at the beginning of this blog post is not the cover of the book, it is a poster promoting a play opening on September 27, 2025, celebrating the centennial anniversary of the first publication of the Crisis, a Black owned and operated literary magazine.
The
book also includes significant biographical information on Carl Van Vechten, a White
author, which at first confused me. He is important because the publishing
business at the time had little interest in developing a market for Black
writers, or marketing to Black readers, so Van Vechten spent much of his time
introducing these authors to commercial publishers.
Van Vechten
played a second and equally significant role, that of a personal tour guide. Keep
in mind that Prohibition was in effect during the era, though only loosely
enforced in Harlem. Van Vechten, a fixture in New York’s upper class “society” which
gave public face to following the Prohibition law would frequently invite them to accompany
him on trips to the nightclubs of Harlem, where they would witness Jazz music
and performers, and party along. Eventually sponsoring performers in the
Manhattan crowd.
Huggins
gives this same in-depth treatment to the Arts Scene and ends with a lengthy
and fascinating chapter about the evolution of Black theater from blackface to minstrel
shows.
The
only aspect of the Harlem Renaissance left out of this extensive survey, is the
role of the Black church – a survey that would have to wait for the publication
of James Baldwin’s first novel Go Tell It On The Mountain.
Recommendation: Highly recommended.
