HARLEM RENAISSANCE

Harlem Renaissance: translation

   Embracing all of the arts—literature, painting, music, dance, and theatre (in all of its forms)—the African American cultural flourishing first known as "The New Negro Movement" and later renamed "The Harlem Renaissance," is usually identified with the decade of the 1920s, although purists would situate it more precisely between 1917 and 1935. A number of factors converged to generate the extraordinary outpouring of African American arts, beginning with the return of black soldiers who had participated in World War I in France, followed by the "great migration" of southern blacks bringing their rural songs and stories into northern cities.

   The death of Booker T.Washington in 1916 left the way open for W. E. B. DuBois's more militant leadership and commitment to the arts. His activist predilection for didactic drama was balanced by Alain Locke's emphasis on the aesthetic qualities of work that was integral to a self-defined black culture. As the author of several seminal essays, Locke emerged as a strong, nurturing influence on African American artists like poet-playwrights Langston Hughes and Georgia Douglas Johnson. He also encouraged Negro folk dramas like those of white playwright Ridgely Torrence, whose three one-acts—Granny Maumee, The Rider of Dreams, and Simon the Cyrenian—were both published (as Plays for a Negro Theatre) and performed (by Emily Hapgood's company of Negro Players at the Garden Street Theatre) in 1917. Interest in black culture was taken up by white intellectuals like Carl Van Vechten and by socialites, who frequented Harlem night spots like the Cotton Club and helped make jazz rhythms so prevalent in the 1920s. Zora Neale Hurston invented the term "Niggerati" for talented blacks who were suddenly fashionable among whites.

   In theatre, the all-black musical Shuffle Along (1921), written by Eubie Blake, Noble Sissle, Flournoy Miller, and Aubrey Lyles, ran for 484 performances on Broadway. It ushered in a second blossoming of African American musicals (the first had been in the 1890s with works by Cole and Johnson, Williams and Walker, and others): Put and Take (1921), Strut Miss Lizzie (1922), The Chocolate Dandies (1924), and many others. Anita Bush founded the Lafayette Players to perform legitimate drama; among the actors who worked there were Charles Gilpin, Paul Robeson, Evelyn Preer, and Abbie Mitchell. Other theatre groups followed: Raymond O'Neil's Ethiopian Art Theatre in Chicago (1922), Gilpin Players in Cleveland (1922, later at Karamu House), KRIGWA Players (1926), New Negro Art Theatre (1927), Harlem Experimental Theatre (1928), and many others. African American legitimate drama came to Broadway with Garland Anderson's Appearances (1926). Actress Rose McClendon earned acclaim in In Abraham's Bosom (1926) and in Porgy (1927). Academic theatre participated in the renaissance led by African American educators, including Randolph Edmonds (1900-1983), Owen Dodson (1914-1983), and cofounder of Howard Players with Alain Locke, Montgomery Gregory (1887-1971).