The New Negro
Immigration and Migration
During the nineteenth century, the American racial dilemma had appeared
to be a regional problem. The Northern states had abolished slavery early
in the century, and the abolitionists self-righteously condemned Southern
slaveholders while remaining unaware of their own racism. However, the
twentieth century showed that racism was really a national issue.
Thousands of Afro-Americans moved from the rural South into the urban
North, creating a more even distribution of that population throughout
the country. At the same time, there was a fresh wave of voluntary
immigration into America by peoples with an African heritage. Most of
these newcomers also moved into Northern cities. As thousands of blacks
spread into the North and West, the inhabitants there developed
sympathies with Southern racists. Actually, this population shift only
unearthed attitudes which had been there all the time. This gigantic
migration of peoples was symptomatic of the change in the heart of the
black community. It signaled a new dynamism and a new aggressiveness.
The voluntary black immigration which occurred during the twentieth
century was a new and unusual phenomenon. Almost all blacks who had
previously come to America had been brought in chains. Those who came
voluntarily during this century came in spite of their knowledge that
racism would confront them. Their awareness of American racism, however,
was an abstraction and was only partially understood by them.
Nevertheless, they saw America as the land of prosperity and opportunity
at a time when, for many of them, social and economic conditions in their
homeland did not seem promising. While only a few came from Africa
itself, except as students staying for a limited period, there was a
swelling flow from the West Indies and the entire Caribbean area.
At the beginning of the 1920s, the United States imposed a new quota
system on new immigrants and this drastically slowed the influx of people
from South and East Europe. In spite of the racist and ethnic overtones
of this legislation, it failed to build significant barriers to movement
by blacks within the western hemisphere. During the 1920s large numbers
of blacks came to the United States from other parts of the Americas. By
1930 eighty-six percent of the foreign-born Negroes living in the United
States were born in some other country in this hemisphere. By far the
largest number of these, seventy-three percent, came from the West
Indies and most of them were from the British West Indies.
By 1940, there were some eighty-four thousand foreign-born Negroes living
in the country. As large as this total might appear, still less than one
percent of the twelve million Negroes were recorded in the 1940 census.
Most of these new immigrants went to live in large cities in the
Northeast, with by far the majority being concentrated in New York City
itself. At the point when the influx was at its highest, in 1930,
seventeen percent of the Negroes in New York City were foreign born.
An unusually high percentage of these newcomers had held white-collar
occupations--mostly young professionals with little hope of advancement
in the static economy of the Islands. Although they were aware of the
American racial situation, they were still unprepared to cope with it.
Most of them were accustomed to being part of the majority in their
homeland. They had experienced discrimination before, but it had not been
as uncompromising as what they found on arrival in America. Society, as
they knew it, was divided into whites, mulattoes, and blacks instead of
into black and white. Many mulattoes were not psychologically ready for
the experience of being lumped in with the Blacks. Moreover, the racism
they knew had been modified by an economic class system which left some
of the poor whites with less status than that of professional blacks.
Coming to America, for them, meant a loss of status although it might
also mean an increase in affluence.
James Weldon Johnson described the West Indian immigrants as being almost
totally different from the Southern rural Negroes who had moved into New
York City. He said that the West Indians displayed a high intelligence,
many having an English common-school education, and he noted that there
was almost no illiteracy among them. He also said that they were
sober-minded and had a genius for business enterprise. It has been
estimated that one-third of the city's Negro professionals, physicians,
dentists, and lawyers, were foreign born.
The West Indians had an ethos which stressed saving, education, and hard
work. The same self-confidence and initiative which enabled substantial
numbers of them to move into professional employment made others into
political radicals. Unaccustomed to the intensity of racial hostility and
harassment which they found in America, they reacted with anger. They had
not been trained since birth in attitudes of submission and
nonresistance. This was the phenomenon which created Marcus Garvey and
the United Negro Improvement Association. The West Indian community had
been gradually merging with the larger Afro-American society. It never
established a separate place of residence, and the second generation
became mixed with the larger Afro-American community. After the Second
World War, there was a fresh wave of emigration from the West Indies to
America, but the 1952 Immigration Act drastically reduced the West Indian
quota, thereby 'deflecting this stream of emigrants to Britain.
In contrast, the Spanish-speaking immigrants from the Caribbean did
establish separate communities. After the United States acquired Puerto
Rico, a sizeable number of Puerto Ricans moved to the mainland. This flow
began as a trickle at the beginning of the century, and it has grown
rapidly since. Most of the Puerto Ricans settled in urban centers in the
Northeast, and they established a large, Spanish-speaking community in
New York City. The migration of Cubans into America, while not as large,
has been important in both Miami and New York. The largest number of
Cubans came during the 1950s and 1960s.
In 1910, the Puerto Rican community in New York City numbered only five
hundred, but by 1920 it had grown to seven thousand. In 1940, the number
of New York residents who had been born in Puerto Rico reached seventy
thousand, and in 1950, it jumped to one hundred eighty seven thousand.
The 1960 census showed that the Puerto Rican community of New York City,
including those born in Puerto Rico as well as those born in America of
Puerto Rican parentage, had reached 613,000.
The Spaniards in Latin America had intermarried with both the Indians and
Africans to a far higher degree than had the Anglo-Saxons in North
America. For this reason, it is much more difficult to identify the
racial background of individual Puerto Ricans. Certainly, there was a
significant African influence on the entire population of the island. In
1860, it was estimated that almost 50 percent of the island's residents
were Negro. In 1900, the percentage had dropped to 40 percent, and, by
1950, it had dropped to 20 percent. The change in these statistics was
due to assimilation through intermarriage. Those who migrated to the
continent did not include many with dominant negroid characteristics. The
1960 New York City census listed only 4 percent of its Puerto Ricans as
being Negro. Nathan Glazer and Daniel P. Moynihan, in their study of this
community, believed that the Puerto Rican racial attitudes may alter the
racial views of the entire city and thereby have some effect on the
nation. Puerto Ricans are not as race conscious as are most Americans.
Most of them are not clearly either black or white. Intermarriage between
color groups is common. The Puerto Rican community in New York City is
more conscious of being a separate, Spanish-speaking community than it is
of being either a black or white one.
The other major Caribbean element in the American Spanish-speaking
community comes from Cuba. In 1960, the Cuban community in the United
States, including those born in Cuba as well as those born in America of
Cuban parentage, totaled 124,416. Only 6.5 percent of this community is
nonwhite, while 25 percent of the population in Cuba is nonwhite. The
Cuban community in the United States has almost 46 percent of its number
living in the Northeast, and it has another 43 percent living in Florida.
Almost the entire community is divided between the cities of Miami and
New York.
This immigration of foreign-born blacks into the cities of the North
and West was concurrent with a sizeable movement of American blacks
from the rural South into these same cities. Actually, this internal
migration was not new. As soon as the Northern states had begun to
abolish slavery, runaways from the slave states in the South began to
trickle into the North. As the underground Railway developed, this
trickle swelled into a sizeable flow.
Immediately after the Civil War, the flow reversed directions
for a short time. Many who had run away during the war returned home to
be with friends and family. Thousands of others, born in the North,
hurried south to help educate and rehabilitate their brothers. However,
this flow was short-lived. As the South moved from slavery into
segregation, hope slid into disillusionment and cynicism. In 1878-79
there was a wave of migration from the south into the West. "Pap"
Singleton, an ex-slave from Tennessee, had come to the conclusion that
the ex-slaveholder and the ex-slave could not live together in harmony,
and he believed that the best solution was to develop a separate society.
As a result, he formed the Tennessee Real Estate and Homestead
Association, but there was not enough land available in Tennessee for the
program. Finally, he decided that Kansas was the ideal location in which
to build a separate Negro society. Various transportation companies saw
this scheme as a way for them to make money, and they encouraged this
westward migration. Although the original migrants to Kansas were
welcomed, opposition grew as their numbers increased. Before his death
in 1892, Singleton became disillusioned with the possibilities of
developing a separate society anywhere in the United States, and he came
to favor a return to Africa. He believed that this was the only place
where his people could escape racial discrimination. Nevertheless,
Singleton took pride in his work, and he claimed, probably with some
exaggeration, to have been responsible for transporting some 82,000
Afro-Americans from the South into Kansas.
Another ex-slave, Henry Adams, called a New Orleans Colored Convention in
1879 to examine the condition of the ex-slave throughout the South. A
comittee was formed for this purpose. It found the situation discouraging
and recommended migration into other regions. Another convention held in
Nashville reached similar conclusions, and it requested funds from
Congress to assist in the process. Funds were not forthcoming. When
Congress did investigate this vast migration, Southerners assured the
comittee that their Negroes were really very happy, and they claimed that
"the migration was a myth."
In spite of this earlier migration, the 1900 census showed that 89.7
percent of the Afro-American community still resided in the South.
One-third of the Southern population was nonwhite. The real exodus still
lay ahead.
The migrants were moved both by forces within the South which pushed them
out and by those within the North which pulled them in. On one hand,
continuing violence and segregation drove many to leave their homes. When
the boll weevil spread across the Southern states like a plague, it wiped
out many poor farmers, and it drove them to seek other means of
livelihood elsewhere. On the other hand, the war had interrupted the flow
of immigrants from Europe into the Northern industrial centers, and at
the same time it created the need for even more unskilled labor in the
factories. After the war, the restrictive immigration laws which were
passed kept the flow of European immigration low, and Northern industry
continued to draw labor from the Southern rural pockets of poverty.
Between 1910 and 1920, some 330,000 Afro-Americans moved from the South
into the North and West. By 1940, the number of those who had left the
South since 1910 had soared to 1,750,000. Between 1940 and 1950, there
were another 1,597,000, and between 1950 and 1960, there were 1,457,000
more who left the South. The percentage of the Afro-American community
living still in the South had dropped from 89.7 percent in 1900 to 59
percent and for the first time, more than half of them lived outside of
the Deep South.
Another indication of the northward migration which had occured was that
a Northern state, New York, had acquired an Afro-American community which
was larger than that of any of the Southern states. Much of this
migration was also a move from the country to the city. In the South, 58
percent of the Afro-Americans lived in cities. In the West, there are 93
percent who live in the cities, and in the North, there are 96 percent.
In the first half of the twentieth century, the Afro-American community
had been transformed from a rural and regional group into a national one.
Harlem: "The Promised Land"
Alain Locke edited a volume of critical essays and literature entitled
The New Negro. In it, Locke heralded a spiritual awakening within the
Afro-American community. It was manifested by a creative outburst of art,
music and literature as well as by a new mood of self-confidence and
self-consciousness within that community. The center of this explosion
was located in Harlem. Famous personalities such as Claude McKay,
Langston Hughes, Paul Robeson, James Weldon Johnson, Duke Ellington, and
Louis Armstrong either moved to Harlem or visited it frequently in order
to participate in the vigorous cultural exchange which took place there.
The artists of the "Negro Renaissance", as important as they might be
themselves, were merely symbolic of the new life which was electrifying
the Afro-American community. This new life was also evident in the large
urban centers of the North and particularly in Harlem.
Locke pointed out the significance of the great northward migration when
he said that the Negro "in the very process of being transplanted," was
also being "transformed." This migration was usually explained either in
economic terms--jobs pulling Negroes northward--or in social
terms--discrimination pushing them out. In both cases, the Afro-American
was represented as the passive victim of external socioeconomic forces.
Locke insisted that, to the contrary, it was more accurate to understand
this migration as a result of a decision made by the Negro himself. For
the first time in history, thousands upon thousands of individual
Afro-Americans had made a basic choice concerning their own existence.
They refused to remain victims of an impersonal and oppressive system,
and, as the result, they deliberately pulled up their roots, left their
friends and neighbors and moved north to what they hoped would be "the
promised land."
From this decision emerged the new Negro. If he was less polite and more
aggressive than before, he was also more self-reliant and less dependent
on pity and charity. This change, however, did not occur suddenly. The
passive, well-behaved Negro, content to stay in his place, had largely
been a myth. In part, he, had been the product of a guilt-ridden white
stereotype which found this myth comforting. The Negro himself had also
contributed to this fiction by his custom of social mimicry, his habit of
appearing to fill the role which whites expected of him. By the end of
slavery, however, a spirit of individuality had been growing within the
Negro consciousness. The opportunity for industrial employment in the
North which had resulted from war and from the slowdown in European
immigration along with the increase of racism and segregation in the
South combined to open the way for the development of the growing spirit
of determination.
The new Negro was doing more than asserting his own individuality; the
entire Afro-American community was developing a new sense of solidarity.
The racist attitudes of mainstream America, both North and South, made
it almost impossible for a Negro to conceive of himself purely in
individualistic terms. Any Negro who thought of himself as an exceptional
or unique individual was brought sharply back to reality by this racism
which relentlessly and mercilessly depicted him as nothing more than a
"nigger."
In spite of the individualism which was preached as a basic part
of the American creed, the Afro-American community was forced to develop
a strong sense of group cooperation. In the face of growing racism and
segregation, the idealism of the new Negro was still based on the
American ideal of democracy, and his goal was still to share fully, some
day, in American life and institutions. The Afro-American's heightened
sense of racial consciousness was not an end in itself. This racial
self-consciousness gave him strength to withstand the daily injustices
which confronted him, and it provided him with faith in himself and hope
in the future. Locke believed that the new Negro was taking the racism
which had been forced upon him by white society and was turning it to
positive uses, transforming obstacles to his progress into "dams of
social energy and power."
The factor which prevented this new, energetic Afro-American from
becoming alienated from America was that its goals were identical with
the expressed ideals of the country. The racial discrimination and
injustice from which Afro-Americans suffered, though deeply entrenched in
national institutions, were themselves a contradiction to the American
democratic philosophy. The Afro-American, besides having justice on his
side, was comforted knowing that his goals were sanctioned and hallowed
by the nation's ideals. As Locke put it, "We cannot be undone without
America's undoing".
Thousands of Negro migrants poured north into Chicago. The factories in
Detroit attracted thousands more, and Harlem became the center of "the
promised land." James Johnson described the Harlem of the 1920s as the
"culture capitol of the Negro world." Its magnetism attracted Negroes
from all across America, from the West Indies and even some from Africa
itself. Harlem contained more Negroes per square mile than any other
place on earth. It drew a bewildering and energizing diversity of
peoples. Students, peasants, artists, businessmen, professional men,
poets, musicians, and workers; all came to Harlem. It combined both the
exploiters and the outcasts. Langston Hughes, in describing his first
entrance into Harlem from the 135th Street subway exit, said that he felt
vitality and hope throbbing in the air. In Black Manhattan, James Weldon
Johnson said that Harlem was not a slum or a fringe. Rather, he insisted
that it was one of the "most beautiful and healthful sections of the
city."
According to Johnson, the stranger traveling through Harlem would be
totally surprised by its appearance. Crossing 125th Street on his way up
Seventh Avenue, Johnson said, the visitor would not expect to find
himself in the midst of an Afro-American community. The character of the
houses did not change. For the next twenty-five blocks the streets,
stores, and buildings looked no different from those he had already
passed. With the exception of their color, the appearance of the people
on the streets was the same too. Moreover, Johnson insisted that Harlem
was an integral part of metropolitan New York and was not just a quarter
within the city in the sense that was true of the communities inhabited
by recent European immigrants. Its citizens were not aliens. They spoke
American; they thought American.
Harlem Negroes, claimed Johnson, were woven into the fabric of the
metropolitan economy. Unlike the Negroes in other Northern cities, they
did not work in "gang labor"; rather, they had individual employment here
and there scattered throughout the city. He believed that this
integration into the society as a whole made a difference in the kind of
race relations which existed there, and he said that it explained why New
York had not had a major race riot in the "bloody summer" of 1919. He
contended that Harlem was a laboratory for the race problem. Many had
argued that when Negroes moved north, the race problem would follow them.
Johnson pointed out that 175,000 Negroes had recently moved into Harlem
without any substantial racial friction and with no unusual increase in
the crime rate. Unfortunately, Johnson's views were not to be fulfilled.
Before long, crime rates rose in Harlem, and race riots occurred there as
well as in other parts of New York City.
Johnson was aware that there had been considerable racial tension at
earlier dates as Negroes first moved into Harlem. The community had been,
in turn, Dutch, Irish, Jewish, and Italian. Originally Negroes, living
in New York, worked for wealthy Whites and lived in the shadows of the
large mansions surrounding Washington Square. Several of the streets in
Greenwich Village had been almost entirely inhabited by Negroes. About
1890, the community shifted its focus northward into the 20's and low
30's just west of Sixth Avenue. At the turn of the century, it moved
again into the vicinity of 53rd Street. By this time, the city's
Afro-American community was developing a small middle class of its own,
and it contained its own fashionable clubs and night life. Visiting
Negro entertainers from across the country usually performed at and
resided in the Marshall Hotel. The "Memphis Students", probably the first
professional jazz band to tour the country, played at the Marshall.
Shortly after 1900, Negroes began to move to Harlem.
Harlem had been overbuilt with large apartments which the owners were
unable to fill. The Lenox Avenue subway had not yet been built, and there
was inadequate transportation into the area. As a result, most tenants
preferred to live elsewhere. Philip A. Payton, a Negro real estate
agent, told several of the owners, located on the east side of the
district, that he could guarantee to provide them with regular tenants if
they were willing to accept Negroes. Some of the landlords on East 134th
Street accepted his offer, and he filled their buildings with Negro
tenants.
At first, whites did not notice. However, when Negroes spread west of
Lenox Avenue, white resistance stiffened. The local residents formed a
corporation to purchase the buildings inhabited by Negroes and to evict
them. In turn, the Negroes responded by forming the Afro-American Realty
Company, and they too bought out apartment buildings, evicted the white
tenants, and rented the apartments to Negroes. White residents then put
pressure on lending institutions not to provide mortgages to prospective
Negro buyers. When one was able to buy a piece of property, regardless
of how prosperous or orderly he might appear, local whites viewed it as
an invasion, panicked, and moved out in droves. This left the banks,
still unwilling to sell to Negroes, holding a large number of deserted
properties. Eventually, they were compelled to sell these properties at
deflated prices. During and immediately after the First World War,
Negroes poured into Harlem, obtained high-paying jobs, and purchased
their own real estate. Johnson believed that Harlem Negroes owned at
least sixty million dollars worth of property, and this, he believed,
would prevent the neighborhood from "degenerating into a slum."
However, the great migration from the rural South had only just begun.
As thousands upon thousands more poured into Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee,
Newark, Boston, Harlem, and other Northern centers, housing became
increasingly scarce. Harlem, like the other Negro communities of the
North, became more and more crowded. At the same time, jobs became
harder to obtain. Poor "country cousins" streamed into "the promised
land" to share in the "milk and honey," but, unfortunately, there was not
enough to go around. As the Negro population of Harlem grew, white
resistance and discrimination also increased. Although Johnson had been
impressed with the wealth contained in Harlem, it was infinitesimal
compared to the great sums of money held by whites downtown.
Langston Hughes, who had also been impressed by the vitality of Harlem,
came to realize that Negro Harlem was, in fact, dependent on downtown
financing. As Harlem grew, downtown financiers became increasingly aware
that money could be made there. In the 1930s, in contrast to Johnson's
optimistic vision, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. and others pointed out that
almost all the stores on 125th Street, the major shopping district, were
owned by whites and that they employed whites almost exclusively. Harlem
soon became a center for both crime and exploitation.
However, in the 1920s Harlem throbbed with vitality and hope. Besides
attracting Afro-Americans from every walk of life, it became the focal
point for young intellectuals whose creativity resulted in the Negro
Renaissance.
The Negro Renaissance
In 1922, James Welden Johnson edited a volume of American Negro poetry,
and in the same year Claude McKay, who had come to Harlem from Jamaica,
published his first significant volume of poetry, "Harlem Shadows".
These twin events, however, were only the beginning of a vast outpouring
of cultural activity, and Harlem became, as Johnson called it, the
"culture capital" for this movement. Artists poured into Harlem from
across the country. Night clubs rocked with music and dance. Publishers
were besieged by poets and novelists, and, surprising to the young
writers, publishers were eager to see Negro authors. Besides the new
creative urge, thousands of Negroes and whites were hungry to consume the
fruits of this new renaissance. This artistic renaissance did not come
out of a vacuum. Negroes had been publishing poetry for over a century
and a half, since the time of Phillis Wheatley and Jupiter Hammon. Paul
Laurence Dunbar was the first Negro poet to gain nationwide recognition,
at the beginning of the twentieth century. While, on one hand, he
captured and depicted the spirit of the Negro folk, on the other hand, he
did it in such a way as to perpetuate black stereotypes and white
prejudices. Actually, this aided his popularity, and he later came to
regret it.
Negroes had also been dancing and creating music in America for over
three gundred years. Vaudeville and minstrelsy were their first
commercial products. Ironically, the first professional entertainers to
perform in minstrel shows were whites who were imitating plantation slave
productions. In the beginning, whites performed in blackface, and, only
later, did Negroes themselves perform commercially. The spirituals were a
religious manifestation of the Afro-American heritage. They appear to
have been on the verge of disappearing when the "Fisk University
Singers", late in the nineteenth century, took steps to preserve them. A
choral group from Fisk was touring the country in order to raise money
for the school. They received only polite appreciation. When, on one
occasion, they decided to offer one of their spirituals as an encore, the
audience was enthusiastic. Since then, spirituals have become a standard
part of American religious and concert music.
In short, even before the Negro Renaissance of the 1920s the
Afro-American community had made a basic contribution to American
culture, providing America with a peasant folk tradition of the greatest
importance. The social mobility in the American scene had permitted each
wave of European immigrants to move up the social ladder before it had
time to develop into an American peasant class. However, this mobility
was not extended to the Afro-American. Therefore, it was from the
Afro-American peasant class that an indigenous American folk culture was
to emerge. When minstrelsy and jazz spread around the world, they were
seen as American productions. They were, at the same time, Afro-American
creations.
The Afro-American folk culture must be seen as the product of the
African's experience in America rather than as an importation into
America of foreign, African elements. Although the content of the
Afro-American folk culture grew out of the American scene, its style and
flavor did have African roots. It was based on the artistic sense which
the slave brought with him--a highly developed sense of rhythm which was
passed from generation to generation, and an understanding of art which
conceived of it as an integral part of the whole of life rather than as a
beautiful object set apart from mundane experience. Song and dance, for
example, were involved in the African's daily experience of work, play,
love, and worship. In sculpture, painting and pottery, the African used
his art to decorate the objects of his daily life rather than to make
art objects for their own sake. The African could not have imagined going
to an art gallery or to a musical concert. Art was produced by artisans
rather than by artists. This meant that slave artisans in America could
continue to produce decorative work, and slave laborers in the field
could continue to sing. Art and life could still be combined, though in a
restricted manner.
However, while the African brought his feeling for art with him, the
content of his art was actually changed as the result of his American
slave experience. The dominant African arts were sculpture,
metal-working, and weaving. In America, the Afro-American created song,
dance, music, and, later, poetry. The skills displayed in African art
were technical, rigid, control disciplined. They were characteristically
sober, restrained and heavily conventionalized.
In contrast, the Afro-American cultural spirit became emotional,
exuberant, and sentimental. This is to say the Afro-American
characteristics which have been generally thought of as being African and
primitive--his naivety, his exuberance and his spontaneity--are, in
reality, his response to his American experience and not a part of his
African heritage. They are to be understood as the African's emotional
reaction to his American ordeal of slavery. Out of this environmental
along with its suffering and deprivation, has evolved an Afro-American
culture.
LeRoi Jones, the contemporary poet, playwright, and jazz critic, points
out in "Blues People" that the earliest Negro contributions to formal art
did not reflect this genuine Afro-American culture. It was only with the
emergence of the "New Negro" and the Negro Renaissance that this folk
culture entered the mainstream of the art world. Previously, those
Negroes who had gained enough education to participate in literary
creation generally strove to join the American middle class, and tried to
disavow all connections with their lower class background. In doing
this, they were only following the same route as that pursued by other
ethnic minorities in America. They were ashamed of slavery as well as of
everything African.
The folk culture, nevertheless, flourished within the music produced by
the Afro-American community. The spirituals and work songs were the
product of the slave. After Emancipation, work songs were replaced by the
blues. Work songs had been adapted to the mass labor techniques of
slavery, whereas the blues, which is a solo form, was the creation of a
lone individual working as a sharecropper on his own tenant farm. It
continued to express the earthy folk culture, and it, too, was woven into
daily life. It expressed the daily tribulations, weariness, fears, and
loves of the Afro-American after Emancipation. At the beginning of the
twentieth century, blues along with ragtime, became popular, although not
always respectable. They could be heard most often in saloons and
brothels--nevertheless, they were beginning to move out of the
Afro-American subculture and into the white society. W. C. Handy, while
by no means the father of the blues, became its best-known commercial
creator. He is still remembered for the "Memphis Blues" and the "St.
Louis Blues."
In New Orleans, the folk tradition and formal music came together for the
first time. There, the Latin tradition had permitted the Creoles to
participate in education and culture. They had developed a rich musical
tradition, and many of them had received training in French
conservatories. However, they preferred the sophisticated European music
to the more earthy sounds of their blacker brothers. With the growth of
Jim Crow legislation, the Creoles lost their special position in society,
and they found themselves forcibly grouped with the blacks, whom they had
previously shunned. Out of this fusion of technical musicianship and folk
creativity emerged a new, vigorous music which became known as jazz.
Jelly Roll Morton was one musician who had begun by studying classical
guitar but preferred the music of the street. He became a famous jazz
pianist and singer. Over the years, he played his way from night spots in
New Orleans to those in St. Louis, Chicago, Los Angeles, and scores of
smaller cities. The musical quality of jazz, instead of adopting the pure
tones of classical music, was boisterous and rasping. Instruments were
made to imitate the human voice, and they deliberately used a "dirty"
sound. Both the trumpet playing and singing of Louis Armstrong
illustrate this jazz sound particularly well. When Armstrong appeared in
Chicago with King Oliver as the band's second trumpeter, he was
immediately recognized as a jazz trumpet virtuoso, and his playing sent
an electric shock through the jazz world.
The most famous jazz musician and composer to appear in New York City
during and after the Negro Renaissance was Duke Ellington. His well-known
theme song "Take the A Train" made reference to the subway line which
went to Harlem. By the time jazz had reached Harlem the Negro Renaissance
was in full swing. This renaissance, unlike previous art produced by
Negroes, consciously built on the Afro-American folk tradition.
Langston Hughes, the most prolific writer of the renaissance, wrote a
kind of manifesto for the movement. He said that he was proud to be a
black artist. Further, he said that he was not writing to win the
approval of white audiences. At the same time he claimed that he and the
other young Negro artists were not attempting to gain the approval of
black audiences. They were writing to express their inner souls, and they
were not ashamed that those souls were black. If what they wrote pleased
either whites or blacks, Hughes said, they were happy. It did not matter
to them if it did not.
In "Minstrel Man", Hughes expressed the inner emotions of the
stereotyped, well-behaved Negro which white America thought it knew so
well:
Because my mouth
Is wide with laughter
And my throat
Is deep with song,
You did not think
I suffer after
I've held my pain
So long.
Because my mouth
Is wide with laughter
You do not hear
My inner cry:
Because my feet
Are gay with dancing,
You do not know
I die.
Claude McKay expresses an inner anger rather than a secret pain felt by a
contained and somewhat more sophisticated Negro responding to segregation:
Your door is shut against my tightened face,
And I am sharp as steel with discontent;
But I possess the courage and the grace
To bear my anger proudly and unbent.
In still more defiant tones, McKay expresses the aggressive response
which many Negroes made during the race riots of 1919:
If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain...
Nevertheless, Langston Hughes made it clear that his bitter hostility was
aimed at injustice and inhumanity and not at American ideals when he
wrote:
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be
An ever-living seed,
Its dream
Lies deep in the heart of me.
Besides articulating the Negro's emotional reaction to prejudice and
discrimination, the Negro Renaissance depicted other aspects of the
Afro-American culture. The flavor of its religious life was captured best
by James Weldon Johnson in his volume "God's Trombones: Negro Sermons in
Verse", which he published in 1927. Instead of resorting to the standard
technique of using stereotyped dialect to capture the flavor, Johnson
used powerful, poetic imagery to express its essence. In "The Creation"
Johnson depicted a Negro minister preaching on the opening verses of
Genesis:
And God stepped out on space,
And he looked around and said:
I'm lonely--
I'll make me a world.
And far as the eye of God could see
Darkness covered everything,
Blacker than a hundred midnights
Down in a cypress swamp.
Then God smiled,
And the light broke,
And the darkness rolled up on one side,
And the light stood shining on the other,
And God said: That's good!
The Negro Renaissance, besides losing its shame over its folk culture,
developed a fresh interest in its African heritage. One of the many
expressions of this was made by Countee Cullen:
What is Africa to me:
Copper sun or scarlet sea,
Jungle star or jungle track,
Strong bronzed men, or regal black
Women from whose loins I sprang
When the birds of Eden sang?
The Renaissance also included an outcropping of Negro novelists. There
had been Negro novelists before, and the best known of them were Charles
W. Chestnut and, to some extent, Paul Laurence Dunbar. Chestnut's novels
included "The Conjure Woman" and "The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories
of the Color Line", whereas Dunbar, who wrote mainly poetry, was best
known for his novel "The Sport of the Gods". Chestnut's writing, though
moving away from the plantation romanticism which had glorified slavery,
developed a more realistic flavor, and it emphasized intergroup relations
based on the color line rather than developing the interior lives of its
characters. Negro fiction came into its own in 1923 with Jean Toomer's
publication "Cane", and, in 1924, with Jessie Redman Fauset's "There is
Confusion". These works dealt with Negroes as people and not merely as
objects to be manipulated for racial propaganda. Langston Hughes, in
1930, published "Not Without Laughter", a novel to gain wide renown.
To catalog all the authors of the Negro Renaissance would become tedious.
However, all the poets and novelists listed within these pages are
generally accepted as having gained a place among America's significant
writers. They were more than products of an Afro-American subculture;
their work became part of the mainstream of American literature. These
authors, along with other Negro artists, gained the respect of American
art and literary critics. With them, the Afro-American folk culture made
its way into the formal art of the nation.
The Negro Renaissance of the 1920s, however, was more than a literary
movement. There was, as had been noted earlier, a vast outpouring of
musical creativity. Besides the jazz composers and performers, many made
their mark in classical concert music. The best known composer from the
Afro-American community was William Grant Still. Many operatic and
concert singers have been Negroes, and they include such well-known names
as Paul Robeson, Marian Anderson, Leontyne Price, and William Warfield.
The most famous of the Afro-American painters was Henry O. Tanner, who
had made his reputation before the Negro Renaissance. Tanner's paintings
had been widely acclaimed at the Paris Exposition in 1900, the
Pan-American Exposition in 1901, and the St. Louis Exposition in 1904.
Tanner avoided Negro subjects and concentrated on biblical themes. In the
field of sculpture, Meta Warrick Fuller was the first Negro to gain
attention. Augusta Savage became well-known for her head of Dr. DuBois,
and Richmond Barthe gained recognition for the bust of Booker T.
Washington.
In retrospect, the Renaissance of the twenties can be seen as the
beginning of a continuing, self-conscious cultural movement within the
Afro-American community. During the 1930s, however, the outpouring
diminished. The Depression affected the entire American scene,
businessmen, workmen, and artists, and its impact on the Negro
Renaissance was particularly severe. One of the New Deal measures which
alleviated the situation considerably was the Federal Writers Project.
Sterling Brown, literary critic and Howard University professor, headed
the Negro section. Two of the better known authors who were helped by the
Project were Arna Bontemps and Richard Wright.
Wright's novel "Native Son" was widely acclaimed. In it, he depicted the
inner anger and hatred felt by many young Negro men as dominating
characteristics of the hero's personality; eventually, his life was
destroyed. The first Negro to win a Pulitzer Prize was Gwendolyn Brooks,
who won it for her poetry. Later, Ralph Ellison was awarded a Pulitzer
Prize for his novel "Invisible Man".
Since the Second World War, innumerable Negroes have made significant
contributions to American culture through the mass media: radio,
television, and movies. Large numbers have also joined the ranks
of professional athletes in every field from tennis to football.
Nevertheless, complaints persist that prejudice continues in these areas.
While they are often included as performers, rarely do Negroes achieve
significant decision-making authority in their field. In the 1968
Olympics, several black athletes, especially Carlos and Smith, claimed
that instead of being accepted on an equal basis, they were being
exploited.
The decade of the 1960s has been marked by a militant spirit throughout
the Afro-American community; this spirit was reminiscent of the new Negro
of the 1920s although it appears to be more cynical and disillusioned.
LeRoi Jones and James Baldwin are only the best known of dozens of
contemporary black writers. Their bitterness, undoubtedly, springs
partly from the dashed hopes of the new Negro. Unfortunately, at the
very time that the Afro-American community was stepping forward with new
confidence, the nation was tottering on the brink of economic disaster.
The year 1929 brought a harsh end to the optimism of the 1920s.
Black Nationalism
Although Langston Hughes had been confident that the American dream could
be made to include his people, thousands upon thousands of other
Afro-Americans, especially among the lower classes, were extremely
dubious. In 1916, Marcus Garvey came to Harlem, and before long his
Universal Negro Improvement Association had opened chapters in urban
centers all across the nation. As mentioned previously, Garvey did not
believe that blacks could be taken into American society. Hundreds of
thousands, who apparently agreed with him, followed his banner. Whatever
was the actual number of members of the U.N.I.A., the movement gained
more grass-roots support than had any other organization in Afro-American
history. While the nation was willing to tolerate the Afro-American folk
spirit, the people, themselves, did not believe that they would be
accepted.
Although Garvey's movement was by far the largest black nationalist
organization in America, it was not the only one. In Chicago, Grover
Cleveland Redding was preaching a Back-to-Africa philosophy of his own.
He organized the Abyssinian Movement and urged Negroes living on the
south side of Chicago to return to Ethiopia. On Sunday, June 20, 1920,
Redding led a parade through the Chicago streets. He sat astride a white
horse and wore what he claimed was the costume of an Abyssinian prince.
At the corner, of East 25th Street and Prairie Avenue he stopped the
procession, poured a flammable liquid on an American flag, and burned it.
A Negro policeman, who attempted to break up the demonstration, was shot
by one of Redding's followers. In the course of the melee, a white
storekeeper and a white soldier were killed. Redding and another Negro
were later executed for their part in the affair.
In 1925 Noble Drew Ali came to Chicago and established the Moorish
American Science Temple. Actually, he had previously attempted to
organize other temples in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. He
claimed that American Negroes were of Moorish descent and, instead of
being really black, were olive-hued. His movement had a banner which
carried a Moorish star and crescent on a field of red. He also claimed
that American Negroes, being Moors, had an Islamic heritage rather than a
Christian one, and he endeavored to spread his particular version of that
faith throughout the Afro-American community. By 1927 Ali had established
branches in Pittsburgh, Detroit, Philadelphia, Kansas City, Lansing, and
elsewhere. He wrote his own version of the Koran which combined passages
from the Moslem Koran, the Christian Bible, and some of the writings of
Marcus Garvey.
Ali gave his followers a new sense of identity. Most of them wore a fez
which set them apart from the typical urban black. Many were also
bearded, and each one carried a membership card. Having a different
religion from that of the typical ghetto black contributed further to
their special sense of identity. Ali's teaching also made them feel that
they had a special and unique heritage of which they could be proud. His
emphasis on separatism instead of on integration struck a harmonious note
with their disillusionment. Instead of leaving them in despair, it
permitted them to face white America boldly.
In 1929 a power struggle broke out between Noble Drew Ali and Claude
Green, one of his organizers. When Green was found murdered, the
Chicago police charged Ali with the crime. While Ali was out on bond, he
too died under mysterious circumstances. While some claimed that he had
been beaten by the police, others said that he had been "mugged" by
Green's followers. Before he was released on bail Ali wrote a letter from
prison to his followers encouraging them to have faith in him and in
their future. His letter bore distinctly messianic overtones. After
assuring them that he had redeemed them, he concluded by extending to
them his peace and by commanding them to love one another. His movement
splintered after his death into innumerable competing factions.
In Detroit, sometime before 1930, a dark-skinned man appeared
selling silk and raincoats. He said that he was W. D. Fard and that he
had come from the Holy City of Mecca in order to save the American Negro.
People generally described him as being unusually light-skinned for a
Negro with perhaps an Oriental cast. Fard also taught that the American
Negro was Islamic in origin and that he should return to his ancestral
faith. Sometime in 1933 or 1934 he disappeared as mysteriously as he had
come. While many believed that Fard and his movement must have been
connected with Noble Drew Ali and the Moorish American Science Temple,
the Black Muslims have always denied it.
Fard founded, in Detroit, Muslim Temple Number One, and he acquired a
handful of devout followers. He insisted that the Muslims should refrain
from eating pork, should pray facing the East, and should practice a
daily washing ritual. Muslim members were reminded that their last names
had been imposed upon them by the white man whom Fard equated with the
Devil. It is the practice among Muslims to drop their Christian name and,
until their true names will be revealed to them, to substitute the letter
X for their last name symbolizing the unknown. Fard insisted that the
first man had been a black man and that whites were a corruption of
humanity. The days of the White Devil, he said, were numbered. Blacks
should deliberately withdraw from white society in order not to be caught
in its final destruction.
The Muslim's life was rigidly disciplined. There were temple services
almost every evening. Individual behavior and dress were carefully
dictated. Besides forbidding the eating of pork, devout Muslims were not
allowed to drink alcohol or smoke tobacco. Relationships between men and
women were extremely puritanical. Each temple had special groups to
prepare young men and women for manhood and womanhood. The Fruit of Islam
was the young men's group, and it was a semi-military defense corps aimed
at developing a sense of manhood and the ability for self-defense. The
common belief that the Fruit of Islam was preparing for racial aggression
has never been substantiated. The Muslim Girls' Training Classes taught
cooking, sewing, housekeeping, and etiquette.
After Fard's disappearance, the leadership passed on to Elijah Muhammed,
formerly Elijah Poole, whom Fard had been grooming as his successor.
Elijah Muhammed moved to Chicago and began Temple Number Two and
established his headquarters there. The "Black Muslims", as well as other
small, semi-religious, separatist groups, continued to exist unnoticed by
the general public. When Malcolm Little, better known as Malcolm X, was
converted to the "Nation of Islam", he gave the movement the
organizational skill and the eloquence which it previously lacked. This
brought it into national prominence.
Black Nationalism and the Negro Renaissance shared a strong sense of
racial consciousness and racial pride. However, while the writers who
expressed the spirit of the new Negro still believed in their future in
America, the black nationalists enunciated a mood of alienation and
despair. The Depression, which eroded the hopes of many Americans, hit
the Negro unusually hard. It served to increase the level of bitterness
in the Afro-American community as a whole.