Leon Metz Southwest Chronicle Edu©Educational.Dual Language. Leon Metz 8th Anniversary Limited Edition | Page 11

Their Hate Made Us Stronger

SW CHRONICLE EDU©

BLACK VOGUE DEFINING DIRECTION

The very oppression that African Americans had suffered had
made them the prophets and artistic vanguard of “American”
culture. It sparked a “Negro Vogue” in cities like Paris and New York.
■ The SWChronicle EDU© The Collegian • 1920s The Truth • Harlem Renaissance

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According to Du Bois and his
colleague at the NAACP, James
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only uniquely “American” expressive traditions in the United States
had been developed by African
Americans because they, more
than any other group, had been
forced to remake themselves in
the New World, while whites continued to look to Europe, or sacriÀFHGDUWLVWLFYDOXHVWRFRPPHUFLDO
ones. The very oppression that
African Americans had suffered
had made them the prophets and
artistic vanguard of “American”
culture. This judgment was reinforced by the immense popularity
of African American music, especially jazz, worldwide. The popularity of jazz among whites was
shaped in part by interest in the
“primitive and exotic” and helped
spark a “Negro Vogue” in cities
like New York
and Paris in
the mid to late
1920s. Simultaneously, European dramatists extolled
the body language of African American dance and
stage humor
(descended
from blackface min-

strelsy, America’s most popular
and original form of theatrical
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white man to bring attention to
the “Harlem” Renaissance was
undoubtedly Carl Van Vechten
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cism extolled jazz and blues and
whose provocatively titled novHO 1LJJHU +HDYHQ  KHOSHG
spread the Negro Vogue, serving
virtually as a tourist guide to Harlem and capitalizing on the supposed “exotic” aspects of black
urban life, even while focusing,
primarily, on the frustrations of
black urban professionals and asSLULQJ ZULWHUV 9LOLÀHG E\ PDQ\
but defended by the likes of
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James Weldon Johnson, and Nella
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became a key contact for several
black artists and authors because
of his interracial parties and pub-

lishing connections. By the mid
1930s, the optimism of the “renaissance” was wearing thin as the
Great Depression clamped down
and Marxist orientations (never abVHQWIURPWKHUHQDLVVDQFHJDLQHG
dominance. Black writers—above
all, Langston Hughes, who had
emerged as one of the stars of the
“renaissance” and began working in numerous genres—began
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contrast to the renaissance of the
1920s, describing the work of the
earlier decade as too “racialist” in
orientation (as opposed to MarxLVWDQGFODVVFRQVFLRXVDQGDVWRR
dependent on wealthy white “patrons.” The characterization was
reductive, as most such attempts at
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be. Today it is clear that the Harlem Renaissance marked a turning
point in black cultural history and
helped establish the authority of
black artists
over the representation of
black culture
and
experience,
while
creating
a
semi-autonomous aesthetLF ÀHOG LQ WKH
realm of “high
culture” that
has continuously expanded. -End

PART 2

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HARLEM
RENAISSANCE

■ The SWChronicle EDU© • 1020s Harlem Renaissance

A cultural, social and artistic explosion
in Harlem, New York.

The Harlem Renaissance

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can creative arts associated with the larger New Negro
movement, a multifaceted phenomenon that helped
set the directions African American writers and artists would pursue throughout the twentieth century.
The social foundations of the movement included the
Great Migration of African Americans from rural to
urban spaces and from South to North, dramatically rising levels of literacy, and the development of
national organizations dedicated to pressing African
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