February in the United States means celebrating Black History Month.  What better way to celebrate this very vital part of our society by paying homage to an extremely pivotal historical event in our cultural history: The Harlem Renaissance?

Just what is the Harlem Renaissance, you ask?  If you are like me, you faintly remember discussing it briefly in high school English class, forced to read a few poems but not understanding the significance or the finer points of the discussion.  Thankfully, the Classics Circuit is here to enlighten you about what you (and I) might have failed to learn in high school.

This historical precedence for the Harlem Renaissance begins with a refresher on black history after the Civil War.  While the end of the Civil War initially brought about better economic conditions via greater employment and education opportunities for the former slaves, Southern blacks were dealt a huge setback by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1896 (via Biography, The Harlem Renaissance) when Plessy v. Ferguson declared segregation constitutionally acceptable.  The subsequent harsher living conditions, caused by whites hoping to put their former slaves back into their “rightful” place and the economic depression caused by a massive boll weevil infestation among the cotton crops, forced millions of black Americans to migrate North, a place considered to be more tolerant of race, to hold better education and job opportunities, and most importantly, the right to vote for every man.  In all, roughly seven million African-Americans migrated north during this Great Migration (via Biography, The Harlem Renaissance).

Harlem was originally developed as a place for white workers to live while commuting into the city for work.  However, due to an overabundance of housing and not enough available transportation to allow the commuting originally planned for the community dwellers, the housing market collapsed as more and more white workers found houses in the city of New York itself.  Developers, in order to sell these abandoned housing developments, started to sell them at lower-than-anticipated prices to African-American real estate agents and renting them to African-American tenants.  Combined with a re-development of the city, which pushed many African-Americans out of downtown New York, the establishment of Harlem as the Black Mecca was established (via Biography,  The Harlem Renaissance).  It is estimated that in twenty years, between 1900 and 1920, the black population in Harlem doubled.  This population included some of the best black advocates, artists, intellectuals, and entrepreneurs of the time, who all helped create the businesses and institutions that earned Harlem the title of “the black capital of America” (via Biography, The Harlem Renaissance).

It was during this time that the ever-increasing African-American middle class started politicizing the need for racial equality.  In fact, the three main civil rights movements had their headquarters in New York City, establishing it as the center of this political agenda.  These three civil rights movements include the National Association of Advancement for Colored People (NAACP), founded by W.E.B. Du Bois; the National Urban League (NUL), founded by Ruth Standish Baldwin and Dr. George Edmund Hayes; and the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL), founded by Marcus Garvey. Together, these three organizations promoted African-American rights, but more importantly, they promoted African-American pride.  Their weapons in this fight included not politicians but rather artists and writers, who used their works to bring attention to a cultural group previously ignored and even disenfranchised by society.  This very absorption of jazz music, fine art, and literature into the mainstream culture became known as the Harlem Renaissance (via Biography, The Harlem Renaissance).

This burgeoning of African-American pride first became prominent in the publishing industry.  Through the help of the NUL’s publication, Opportunity, and the NAACP’s publication, Crisis, black writers and poets were featured in print.  Not only that, but the editor of Opportunity, Charles S. Johnson, helped organized the Civic Club, dinner parties held to help introduce emerging African-American artists to wealthy white patrons.  These parties helped launch more than one prominent Harlem Renaissance writer.  Alain Locke, black philosopher and Harvard professor, also helped promising African-American artists through his anthology, The New Negro, which helped create intense interest in African-American writers (via Biography, The Harlem Renaissance).

At this same time, the end of the First World War brought about an economic boom and a change in societal mores.  The Roaring Twenties brought about a driving need to shake off the frugality and hardship known during the war.  Americans everywhere sought to celebrate the excess and reject those wartime ideologies.  Night clubs helped fill this need, and with the Prohibition making alcohol difficult to legally obtain, speakeasies became the country’s hot spots.  In Harlem, one of the most famous speakeasies was the Cotton Club.  Designed to have the general feel of a Southern plantation, it employed only African-American artists and entertainers while its clientèle was strictly white.  However, this allowed the various celebrities who frequented the establishment to be exposed to these very talented musicians and entertainers, like Lena Horne, Duke Ellington, and Cab Calloway (via Biography, The Harlem Renaissance).

Not only that but frequenting nightclubs in Harlem allowed patrons to fulfill the theme of the Roaring Twenties – rebellion and excess.  Patrons rebelled against previous social norms by mixing with African-Americans, enjoying their music and their culture.  Because these nightclubs also doubled as speakeasies, the patrons could find the alcohol they wanted to use to celebrate life and all its excesses.  Eventually, African-American music played in such night clubs, also known as jazz, became the symbol for the decade.  Hence, the nickname The Jazz Age was born (via Biography, The Harlem Renaissance).

In essence, Harlem, jazz, and everything African-American became the anti-thesis of Main Street America, everything the Twenties was trying to ignore.  Unfortunately, the Great Depression struck the country and forced people to cut back on excess.  Not only that but the Depression itself hit African-Americans hard, causing layoffs and the subsequent housing foreclosures that eventually caused Harlem to decline into an urban ghetto.  The night clubs closed, and the publications that so prominently displayed black writers folded.  The country’s collective interest focused on survival rather than pleasure.  Race riots shattered a community that had once harbored the peaceful coexistence of the two different cultures.  The Harlem Renaissance had come to an end (via Literary History, Harlem Renaissance 1914 – 1940).

Its lasting impact on our society, however, is monumental.  The American landscape was changed forever as a direct result of the Harlem Renaissance.  Music, literature, drama, and even political events that followed in the decades after the Renaissance all had their roots from what was happening in Harlem during the 1920s.  Because of its importance on the arts, focusing on Renaissance writers, entertainers, musicians, poets, and other contributors is fitting for Black History Month and deserves its own place among the Classics Circuit tour.

Come back later this week to sign up to join the tour!

Note: The question of the week is “When will sign up open?” The answer is, when we’re ready! Thanks for your patience. With the holidays and sicknesses and other things, we are as busy as you are. We’ll leave the sign up open for a longer period of time than we have previously, due to the holiday busy-ness. I hope that will allow you time to sign up when it is open.