Harlem Stomp!
Page 11
This breakthrough, however, did not last long. In fact, it hardly lasted twenty-four hours because the day after the plays opened, the United States declared war on Germany. It took three years and the end of World War I for another play involving blacks to be produced. White playwright Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones opened at Greenwich Village’s Provincetown Theatre in November 1920, and with it came the opportunity for blacks to portray complex characters. Charles Gilpin, who starred in The Emperor Jones, was hailed by The New Republic as one of the finest performers on the American stage. As well, he was awarded the 1921 Spingarn Medal for his outstanding performance.
In the 1920s, dramatic roles on the stage exploded for African Americans. The actor who epitomized the decade-long expansion of opportunities for black actors was Paul Robeson. In April of 1922 he made his first stage appearance in the play Taboo. Two years later Robeson starred in Eugene O’Neill’s play All God’s Chillun Got Wings, which is about an upper-class black man married to a poor white woman. When word got out that Robeson would be kissing a white actress on stage, an uproar arose with demands to ban the play for fear of riots. Nevertheless, the show went on, and nothing happened. Robeson went on to reprise Gilpin’s role in the revival of The Emperor Jones in 1925, and he appeared in the Broadway musical Showboat (1928), singing the spiritual “Ol’ Man River.”
PAUL ROBESON, 1898–1976
One of the most accomplished Americans of any race, Paul Robeson was a successful singer, actor, civil rights activist, lawyer, world-class athlete, scholar, and author. Born on April 9, 1898, in Princeton, New Jersey, Robeson excelled in both scholastics and athletics as a youth. He won a scholarship to Rutgers University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa as a junior and was chosen valedictorian in his senior year. He was also an All-American football player. In the 1920s after graduating from law school, Robeson became one of the most celebrated and recognized African-American performers. He first joined the Provincetown Players and starred in a number of O’Neill’s plays, including The Emperor Jones and All God’s Chillun Got Wings; then he went on to earn international accolades for his performances. In 1925, however, Robeson embarked on a career as a solo vocal performer in which he sang spirituals and work songs to audiences of common citizens all over the world. He became best-known for his powerful, soothing rendition of “Ol’ Man River” in the Broadway musical and subsequent film adaption of Showboat. Later in life, his achievements became overshadowed by his support of communism. At one point he was blacklisted in the United States and had his passport revoked. He spent the final years of his life as a pariah to much of the American public, but beloved in Europe. While overseas, Robeson wrote his now-acclaimed autobiography, Here I Stand, which major publications, including the New York Times, refused to review.
The stage set of Porgy.
“[White artists] cry for freedom in dealing with Negroes because they have so little freedom in dealing with whites. DuBose Heyward writes Porgy and writes beautifully of the black Charleston underworld. But why does he do it? Because he cannot do a similar thing for the white people of Charleston, or they would drum him out of town. The only chance he had to tell the truth of pitiful human degredation was to tell it of colored people.”
— W. E. B. Du Bois, the Crisis, October 1926
During the decade numerous plays were written and produced by whites that gave blacks an unprecedented opportunity to perform respectable, serious drama in downtown theaters. Some of the more celebrated plays included Paul Green’s Abraham’s Bosom, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1926; Edward Sheldon and Charles MacArthur’s Lulu Belle (1926); Torrence’s Granny Maumee (1927); DuBose Heyward’s Mamba’s Daughter (1927); and DuBose and Dorothy Heyward’s Porgy (1928), which was the inspiration for George Gershwin’s acclaimed opera Porgy and Bess. The decade ended with the greatest commercial success — Marc Connelly’s The Green Pastures (1930). However, perhaps more than any other production, The Green Pastures epitomized the white playwright’s stereotypical portrayal of black naïveté.
In 1898, A Trip to Coontown was the first theatrical show to be organized, written, produced, and managed by blacks.
“If, north of 116th Street, conditions are as disorderly as William Jourdan Rapp and Wallace Thurman paint them, the white man’s burden is, if possible, even heavier than it seems.”
Many black intellectuals were disappointed by these productions. First, these plays were written exclusively by whites about African-American life and were produced by whites for white audiences. Second, the portrayals of blacks in these productions were not as complex as they purported to be. Many of the roles were limited to the stereotype of childlike sentimentality that seemed no better than the minstrel stereotypes. Nevertheless, Harlem residents came to accept these shows at least for economic reasons. The plays featured large casts, which offered job opportunities much more rewarding than the usual labor jobs. In fact, such Harlem Renaissance luminaries as Wallace Thurman and Richarch Bruce Nugent were among the many extras hired for Porgy.
The only black-authored drama to make it to Broadway during the decade was Wallace Thurman and William Rapp’s Harlem in 1929. The African-American community, however, was a much harsher critic of its own, expecting black playwrights not to stoop to the tastes of white audiences. A critic for the Chicago Defender cracked, “If, north of 116th Street, conditions are as disorderly as William Jourdan Rapp and Wallace Thurman paint them, the white man’s burden is, if possible, even heavier than it seems.” The play Harlem explored the theme of prejudice against West Indians, but also continued to focus on the working-class elements of black culture, to the exasperation of W. E. B. Du Bois and other prominent middle-class African Americans.
“The funniest man I ever saw.”
— comedian and film star W. C. Fields
BERT WILLIAMS, 1875–1922
Born on March 11, 1875, in Antigua, West Indies, Egbert “Bert” Williams moved with his family to California when he was ten. As a young man he attended Stanford University, but he dropped out to perform in saloons in San Francisco. In 1893 Williams met George Walker, and together they formed the most famous comedy duo of the turn of the century. By 1901 they were the first African-American artists to record on disk. Their 1902 musical In Dahomey was a hit on Broadway and across Europe. By 1909, however, Walker had died, and Williams went on to a celebrated career as the only African American to star with the Ziegfield Follies on Broadway. Williams was noted for performing “blacked up,” but somehow he transcended the “darkie” stereotype. In 1918 Williams described his theory behind comedy: “All the jokes in the world are based on a few elemental ideas. . . . Troubles are funny only when you pin them down to one particular individual. And that individual, the fellow who is the goat, must be the man who is singing the song or telling the story.” Williams died in 1922 at the age of 47.
“It is no disgrace to be a Negro, but it is very inconvenient.”
— Bert Williams
SHUFFLING ALONG
WHILE WHITES CONTROLLED the legitimate theater, African Americans made headway in musicals — writing, producing, and performing them. The most important of these musicals was Shuffle Along (1921), which opened off Broadway on May 23, 1921, and was a huge box-office success. The music and dance in Shuffle Along set the tone for the Roaring Twenties. A New York Herald critic explained, “It is when the chorus and the principles . . . gets going in the dances that the world seems a brighter place to live in. They wriggle and shimmy in a fashion to outdo a congress of eels, and they fling their limbs about without stopping to make sure they are securely fastened on.”
On the whole, Shuffle Along was hardly different from the old minstrel shows with darkie skits, blacked-up comedians, and mammy songs. The only difference was that blacks profited along with whites now because black actors were used. But the play was progressive in its music and dance. Written and scored by Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle, the music featured hot jazz and such classic songs
as “I’m Just Wild About Harry” and “Love Will Find A Way,” which became illustrative of the Jazz Age. The show also launched the careers of a number of future stars, including Florence Mills and Josephine Baker. Paul Robeson even made an appearance in the revue as a replacement cast member. Shuffle Along was emblematic of how the system had both changed for the better and the worse.
Fats Waller, one of the finest jazz composers and musicians of the era, is reputed to have dashed off “Ain’t Misbehavin’” in forty-five minutes. But, almost always broke, he sold it even faster. In a moment of desperation, he sold his rights to it, and to eighteen other songs, for $500 ($5,260 in today’s dollars). Louis Armstrong introduced “Ain’t Misbehavin’” in a 1929 Broadway revue, Hot Chocolates. It showed up again on Broadway in 1978 in Ain’t Misbehavin’, a show composed of music associated with Waller.
Jazz Musicals of the Twenties
Shuffle Along (1921)
Strut Miss Lizzie (1922)
Seven-Eleven (1922)
Liza (1923)
Runnin’ Wild (1923)
How Come? (1923)
Dixie to Broadway (1924)
In Barnville (1924)
Chocolate Dandies (1925)
Lucky Sambo (1925)
My Magnolia (1926)
Blackbirds of 1926 (1926)
Africana (1927)
Rang Tang (1927)
Bottomland (1927)
Keep Shufflin’ (1928)
Blackbirds of 1928 (1928)
Bamboola (1929)
Hot Chocolates (1929)
HARLEM DRAMA
THOSE CLOSEST TO the “New Negro” movement hungered for an authentic African-American theater that didn’t play to stereotypes. These intellectuals recognized how on Broadway black identity was merely a projection of white perception and white needs — not their own. In these “stage negroes” they could not recognize themselves or their neighbors. Consequently, New Negro supporters became committed to establishing a theater experience constructed by, for, and about African Americans.
One of the earliest to speak out for a legitimate black theater was African-American playwright Willis Richardson. He wanted to see plays that captured the richness, diversity, and beauty of his race. As early as 1919 Richardson issued a call for a national Negro theater “able to send a company of Negro Players with Negro Plays across our own continent [and] . . . to the artistic peoples of Europe.” During the twenties Richardson wrote six one-act plays anchored in a realism that represented ordinary blacks who suffered from their own weaknesses or society’s shortcomings.
Richardson mapped out a program for creating serious African-American drama in four essays for Opportunity magazine. In “The Negro and the Stage” (October 1924), he argued that “theater should always, and seriously, be considered as an educational institution side by side with the school.” His next essay, “The Negro Audience” (April 1925), spelled out the key criteria necessary “if the Negro drama is to prosper and become ‘a thing of beauty and a joy forever’; whether the characters are well drawn, whether the dialogue is natural, whether the ending is consistent and whether the whole thing is interesting and logical.” In “Characters” (June 1925), Richardson proposed that “the peasant class of the Negro group” contained that element that was sufficiently “different and interesting” to make good theater. Finally, in “The Unpleasant Play” (September 1925), he spoke directly to black writers and urged them to “make his audience hear the truth, or nothing.”
AIN’ T MISBEHAVIN’
Lyrics for the stage show Hot Chocolates, 1929. Words by Andy Razaf. Music by Thomas “Fats” Waller and Harry Brooks.
No one to walk with.
All by myself.
No one to talk with,
But I’m happy
On the shelf.
Ain’t misbehavin’,
I’m savin’ my love for you.
I know for certain
The one I love.
I’m through with flirtin’,
It’s you that I’m thinkin’ of.
Ain’t misbehavin’,
I’m savin’ my love for you.
Like Jack Horner
In the corner.
Don’t go nowhere.
What do I care?
Your kisses
Are worth waitin’ for,
Believe me.
I don’t stay out late,
Don’t care to go.
I’m home about eight,
Just me and my radio.
Ain’t misbehavin’,
I’m savin’ my love for you.
Playbill for Willis Richardson’s play, The Chip Woman’s Fortune.
W. E. B. Du Bois echoed Richardson’s beliefs in a July 1926 article in the Crisis, in which he laid out the four principles for a “Negro Theatre”:
Negro theatre must be:
I. About Us. That is, they must have plots which reveal Negro life as it is.
II. By us. That is, they must be written by Negro authors who understand from birth and continual association just what it means to be a Negro today.
III. For us. That is, the theater must cater primarily to Negro audiences and be supported and sustained by their entertainment and approval.
IV. Near Us. The theater must be in a Negro neighborhood near the mass of ordinary Negro people.
Out of Du Bois’s call came the Krigwa Players and the Harlem Experimental Theater — stock companies that performed plays in the basement of the 135th Street Branch Library. The Krigwa Little Negro Theatre Movement was founded in 1925 by Du Bois and a group of writers, some from the Crisis. The group, originally called the Crigwa, or Crisis Guild of Writers and Artists, was assembled from those who sent in manuscripts for the Spingarn Prizes in literature and art. Krigwa branches were also formed in other cities, including Washington, D.C. Although short-lived, the Krigwa Little Negro Theatre Movement helped to stimulate the formation and activity of many other small theater groups. Two years later, the Harlem Experimental Theater was formed. Cofounders included Rose McClendon, Dorothy Peterson, Regina M. Andrews, Benjamin Locke, and Jessie Fauset. Performances were held at St. Philips
Krigwa Players productions in Harlem:
The Broken Banjo
Compromise
Foreign Mail
Her
The Fool’s Errand
Blue Blood
Harlem Experimental Theater productions of plays by black playwrights:
Plumes
A Sunny Morning
Duchess Says Her Prayers
The No Count Boy
Little Stone Ladder
Prodigal Son
Rider of Dreams
Climbing Jacob’s Ladder
LIVING THEATER
Perhaps more than anywhere else the best theater in the black community could be found in Harlem’s churches. In these places black men took orthodox Christian theology and Old and New Testament stories and transformed them into original and powerful oratory performances.
“The [Negro playwright’s] audience is more than a double audience. His audience is always both white America and black America. . . . The Negro author can try the experiment of putting black America in the orchestra chairs, so to speak, and keeping white America in the gallery, but he is likely at any moment to find his audience shifting places on him, and sometimes without notice.”
— James Weldon Johnson, “The Dilemma of the Negro Author,” American Mercury, December 1928
Episcopal Church and the 135th Street Branch Library. In 1929 the Negro Art Theatre was born at the Abysinnian Baptist Church, as were the Harlem Community Players at the 135th Street Branch (now known as the Countee Cullen Regional Branch). During these years African-American stock companies produced good plays and developed some excellent actors, a number of whom later performed on Broadway or in the movies. These companies, however, could not compete with the lure and financial power of Broadway and vaudeville, so they found themselves constantly wantin
g for performers.
Young Man in a Vest, William H. Johnson, c. 1939-1940.
AGAINST ALL ODDS
VISUAL ARTISTS AND THEIR STRUGGLE FOR RECOGNITION
My aim is to express in a natural way
what I feel both rhythmically and spiritually,
all that has been saved up in my family
of primitiveness and tradition.
— Painter WILLIAM H. JOHNSON
BEATING THE ODDS
BEFORE 1920, if you were black and wanted to create art, America was not the place to do it. Europe, on the other hand, welcomed African-American artists. Galleries and museums displayed their work, and investors purchased it. Two famous black artists before the Harlem Renaissance — Henry Ossawa Tanner and Edmonia Lewis — both made their living across the Atlantic.
In the United States, African Americans were not simply discouraged from the visual arts; they were frozen out. Most art schools refused to accept blacks, while libraries, art galleries, and museums did not display their work and made black visitors feel unwelcome. White organizations that did focus on black issues believed that African Americans needed to devote their energies toward uplifting their economic status, not wasting their time in the trivial pursuit of fine arts.
Meta Warrick FullerEthiopa Awakening, 1914.
“Let us train ourselves to see beauty in ‘black.’ ”
The first to break from the exile tradition and to return to the United States was sculptor Meta Warrick Fuller. She left Europe, where she had been studying with Auguste Rodin. After she made her home in the United States, she created sculptures that resonated in African heritage, ethnic pride, and folk background. By exploring African-American and African culture, Fuller’s work became a blueprint for black artists of the next generation. Her two finest works, Ethiopia Awakening (1914) and Mary Turner: A Silent Protest Against Mob Violence (1919), are among the earliest examples of American art to reflect an influence from African sculpture. The sculptures also challenged the racist political and social climate of the period. Based more on Egyptian traditions than West African, Ethiopia Awakening resembles a funerary statue but breaks from the stiff profiles of Egyptian art by portraying the woman’s head in movement, as if awakening from the deep sleep of the past to glimpse a new beginning for black people in America. She followed this sculpture with her more politically explicit work, Mary Turner: A Silent Protest Against Mob Violence. This sculpture was inspired by the lynching of Mary Turner in Valdosta, Georgia, after she was accused of plotting with her husband and a friend to murder a white man. Fuller’s powerful portrayal depicts Mary Turner emerging from a mass of indistinct bodies to symbolize the rising defiance in African Americans.