Transcript Harlem Renaissance

Harlem Renaissance
The Big Apple with soul
Yet do I marvel at this curious
thing:
To make a poet black, and bid
him sing!
- from "Yet Do I Marvel" by Countee
Cullen
Poetry flourished during the 1920s in
Harlem
Langston Hughes was
one of the most prominent
poets of the literary
movement in Harlem
"Beautiful, also, are the souls of my people."
-Langston Hughes
Dream Deferred
by Langston Hughes
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore-And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over-like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
One Way Ticket
I pick up my life,
And take it with me,
And I put it down in
Chicago, Detroit,
Buffalo, Scranton,
Any place that is
North and East,
And not Dixie.
I am fed up
With Jim Crow laws,
People who are cruel
And afraid,
Who lynch and run,
Who are scared of me
And me of them
I pick up my life
And take it on the train,
To Los Angeles, Bakersfield,
Seattle, Oakland, Salt Lake
Any place that is
North and West,
And not South.
I pick up my life
And take it away
On a one-way ticketGone up North
Gone out West
Gone!
The art of Jacob
Lawrence
They arrived in Pittsburgh, one
of the great industrial cities of
the North, in large numbers.
In every town Negroes were leaving by
the hundreds to go North and enter into
Northern industry.
Claude McKay was another poet of the
movement
America
by Claude McKay
Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger's tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate.
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state,
I stand within her walls with not a shred
Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
And see her might and granite wonders there,
Beneath the touch of Time's unerring hand,
Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.
Countee Cullen
(1903-1946)
A young poet
writing of the life
he knows
Incident
Once riding in old Baltimore,
Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,
I saw a Baltimorean
Keep looking straight at me.
Now I was eight and very small,
And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out
His tongue, and called me, "Nigger."
I saw the whole of Baltimore
From May until December;
Of all the things that happened there
That's all that I remember.
Zora Neale Hurston
(1891-1960)
“I am not tragically
Colored”
Author of short stories
about life in small
towns and African
Americans who live there
Publications in
Harlem
were featuring
African
American writers
and poets
W.E.B. Du Bois
As founder and editor of The Crisis,
the flagship publication of the
National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP), W. E. B. Du Bois helped
publicize the achievements of
countless African-American writers
and other intellectuals.
The official
monthly magazine
of the NAACP
Created in 1923 by
theNational Urban League (a
group devoted to empowering
African Americans
economically and socially),
Opportunity was edited by
scholar Charles S. Johnson.
Wallace Thurman
"...a strangely brilliant black
boy, who had read everything
and whose critical mind could
find something wrong with
everything he read."
-Langston Hughes
The Big Sea
In collaboration with Zora
Neale Hurston and
Langston Hughes,
Thurman started the
Harlem
publication “Fire!”
Fire!! was too cutting
edge and a financial
failure. Thurman took
work as a journalist, a
reader, an editor and a
ghostwriter in an effort to
pay the bills.
Artists flourished in Harlem as well as
poets
Painters,
sculptors and
photographers
found root in
Harlem
James VanDerZee (1886-1983)
Photographer
Van Der Zee showed a sophisticated life lived in
Harlem.
Photographs show
life on the streets
of Harlem.
Lois Mailou Jones
Women as well as men
were a part of the
renaissance
Totem Poles
1928
Tempera
17x17
Fishing Smacks,
Menemsha,
Massachusetts,
1932
Watercolor, 20 1/4 x
26 1/2 in.
Negro Shack I, Sedalia, North
Carolina, 1930
Watercolor
15x20
Grogrette, 1928
Cretonne textile
design, 40 1/4 x 30 in.
Notre-Dame de Paris, 1938
Oil on canvas, 20 x 23 in.
William H. Johnson
William H. Johnson
Self-Portrait, 1929
Young Pastry Cook
Chain Gang
Mount Calvary
Still Life
Palmer Hayden
Nous Quatre a Paris
Watercolor on
paper
Jeunesse
Watercolor
On paper
Aaron Douglas
(1898-1979)
Muralist and painter
Aaron Douglas
Study for
God’s Trombones
Music was part of the
scene
Musicians gathered in
Harlem to play at clubs
like the Cotton Club
Big
Jim Europe
was a Harlem
hero of
The Great
War
White New Yorkers began to flock to
Harlem for the music and entertainment
"The Negro is in the
ascendancy," said Carl
Van Vechten, a white
devotee of black
culture.
"Everybody is trying to
dance the Charleston or
to sing spirituals."
The Charleston was the
hot new dance, but to
be a customer at one of
the best Harlem clubs,
like the Savoy or the
Cotton Club, you had
to be white.
The Lindy Hop
The original
swing dance
was the Lindy
Hop, developed
in Harlem
The Lindy Hop was
named after Charles
Lindbergh's flight to
Paris in 1927
You could dance the
Lindy Hop to music
other than swing, but as
Duke Ellington puts it,
why would you? “It
don’t mean a thing if it
ain’t got that swing”.
The Cotton Club wasn’t the only club
in town
Talk that jive!
At the Savoy you could collar a hot (eat
something). Dog it (show off) when you did the
Charleston (a hot dance craze). Meet a frail eel
(pretty girl), if she’s not too hincty (snooty), or
thinks you are oscar (stupid).
Or maybe you can just slip in the dozens (joke
with your friends).
Bessie Smith
This lady could
really sing the
blues
Bessie Smith
Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out
Once I lived the life of a millionaire
Spending my money, I didn't care
I carried my friends out for a good time
Bying bootleg liquor, champagne and wine
Then I began to fall so low
I didn't have a friend, and no place to go
So if I ever get my hand on a dollar again
I'm gonna hold on to it till them eagle's green
Nobody knows you when you down and out
In my pocket not one penny
And my friends I haven't any
But If I ever get on my feet again
Then I'll meet my long lost friend
It's mighty strange, without a doubt
Nobody knows you when you down and out
I mean when you down and out
Mmmmmmmm.... when you're down and out
Mmmmmmmm... not one penny
And my friends I haven't any
Mmmmmmmm... Well I felt so low
Nobody wants me round their door
Mmmmmmmm... Without a doubt,
No man can use you wen you down and out
I mean when you down and out
Duke Ellington
The fact remained that in
much of the country,
segregation kept whites
and blacks apart. But after
dark, when the music
began to play, the whole
world seemed to cross the
color line at 110th Street.
Louis
Armstrong
Known as Satchmo,
he was one of the
world’s great jazz
musicians
Ain't Misbehavin'
Andy Razaf and Thomas 'Fats' Waller
No one to talk to ....all by myself
No one to walk with.....I'm happy on the shelf
Ain't misbehavin'......savin' all my love for you
I know for certain......the one I love
I'm through with flirtin'......it's just you that I've
been thinkin' of
Ain't misbehavin'.......savin' all my love for you
Like Jack Horner.....in that ole corner
Don't go nowhere.....what do I care?
Your kisses are worth waitin' for......believe me
I don't stay out late.......no where to go
I'm home about eight......just me and my radio
Ain't misbehavin'.......savin' all my love for you
(instrumental break)
Like Jack Horner.....in that ole corner
Don't go nowhere.....what do I care?
Your kisses are worth waitin' for......believe me
I don't stay out late.......no where to go
I'm home about eight......just me and my radio
Ain't misbehavin'.......savin' all my love for you
Ain't misbehavin'......I'm savin all my love for you
In 1929 Fats Waller scored a
Broadway musical called 'Connie's
Hot Chocolates'
which featured this song performed
by 'Satchmo'
He recorded the song with his
Orchestra in 1929 and 1938
and with the All Stars in 1947 and
1955
Ethel Waters
Ethel Waters was the first black Superstar...an
innovator who opened all the theatrical doors
hitherto closed to black performers of her day, to
attain the towering position she reached as a
headliner.
In 1929, she made her film debut in the new
talking films, singing "Am I Blue?" and
"Birmingham Bertha" in On with the Show,
remade a few years later as Forty-Second Street
Am I Blue?
It was a morning, long before dawn
Without a warning I found he was gone
How could he do it
Why should he do it
He never done it before
Am I blue
Am I blue
Ain’t these tears, in these eyes telling you
How can you ask me am I blue
Why, wouldn’t you be too
If each plan
With your man
Done fell through
There was a time
When I was his only one
But now i’m
The sad and lonely one...lonely
Was I gay
Untill today
Now he’s gone, and we’re through
Am I blue
Eubie Blake
Last of the great
ragtime pianists
he was a Harlem
personality
Eubie Blake was a ragtime jazz pianist,
dancer, and composer. Born in Baltimore,
Maryland in 1883, Eubie Blake went on to
become a jazz legend across the U.S. and
around the world. His jazz hits include
"Memories of You," "I'm Just Wild About
Harry," and "Tricky Fingers." Eubie Blake
died in New York in 1983.
.
Memories of You
Writer(s): Razaf/Blake
Waking skies - at sunrise
Every sunset too
Seems to be - bringing me
Memories of you
Here and there - every where
Scenes that we once knew
And they all - just recall
Memories of you
(Oh) How I wish I could forget those, (those) happy yesteryears
That have left a rosary of tears
Your face beams - in my dreams
(In) Spite of all (that) I do
(And) Everything - seems to bring
Memories of you
Politics were also a part of Harlem
Leader of the first
movement of the black
working class,
Jamaican-born Marcus
Garvey galvanized
African Americans
with his inspiring
speeches and his
newspaper, Negro
World.
Garvey's "back to Africa"
movement aimed to
instill a sense of black
pride—and to empower
those of African descent to
defy European
domination and
oppression.
Universal Negro Improvement
Association (UNIA)
Its goal: to promote self-reliance among African
Americans and solidarity among blacks worldwide.
In August 1920, hundreds of delegates from all over the
globe packed Liberty Hall for UNIA's first International
Convention of the Negro Peoples of the World. On
August 3, some 25,000 people marched from Harlem to
Madison Square Garden for a rally led by Garvey.
Harlem Renaissance
The Big Apple with soul