By the 1920s, Fuller’s sculptures had inspired both W. E. B. Du Bois and Alaine Locke to champion African-American and African art. Locke more than Du Bois wrote extensively on the subject. In an essay in The New Negro titled “The Legacy of the Ancestral Art, Locke wrote:
[T]he Negro is not a cultural foundling without his inheritance. Our timid and apologetic imitativeness and overburdening sense of cultural indebtedness have, let us hope, their natural end in such knowledge and realization . . . If the forefathers (Africans) could so adroitly master these mediums . . . why not we?
Art was not only a way to express the “New Negro” identity, but it also served as a response to patronizing whites who felt blacks either could not create art or had no business creating it. Locke went even so far as to declare: “[T]he Negro may well become what some have predicted, the artist of American life.” Around the same time, James Weldon Johnson asserted that “through artistic efforts the Negro is smashing [an] immemorial stereotype faster than he has ever done . . . impressing upon the national mind the conviction that he is a creator as well as a creature . . . helping to form American civilization.”
Because pervasive racism in America denied blacks a chance to be artists, most creative African Americans found their only venues to be in churches and state fairs, where their work was often displayed with the occupational crafts, such as needlework, made by the handicapped.
These influential figures saw art as an important propaganda tool for shaping American consciousness about blacks. W. E. B. Du Bois described his hopes for the creation of new images of African Americans in the following excerpt from a 1920 editorial in The Crisis.
It is not that we are ashamed of our color and blood. We are instinctively and almost unconsciously ashamed of the caricatures done of our darker shades. Black as caricature is our half-conscious thought and we shun in print and paint that which we love in life. . . . We remain afraid of black pictures because they are cruel reminders of the crimes of the Sunday ‘comics’ and ‘Nigger’ minstrels. Off with these thought chains and inchoate soul-shrinkings, and let us train ourselves to see beauty in ‘black.’
Meta Warrick Fuller was the first to realize their desires in her sculptures. During the renaissance, prominent blacks sought to discover and influence the work of other artists who could depict African-American pride.
Edwin Augustus Harleston’s portrait of Aaron Douglas, 1899-1979; Douglas’s mural Aspects of Negro Life was commisioned by the 135th Street Branch of the New York Public Library in 1934.
FATHER OF BLACK AMERICAN ART
WHILE META WARRICK FULLER set the stage for the artistic renaissance by exploring African and African-American themes, a young artist who moved from Kansas City to Harlem in 1924 became the emblem of the “New Negro” possibility. His name was Aaron Douglas.
Douglas was often called the “official” artist of the Harlem Renaissance, or the “Father of Black American Art.” Alain Locke dubbed him a “pioneering Africanist.” Though these titles are perhaps exaggerated, Douglas was without question the most celebrated and successful of Harlem’s visual artists in the 1920s. He was lured to New York by James Weldon Johnson, editor of the Urban League’s Opportunity and one of the era’s most tireless boosters. Soon after arriving, Douglas met German artist Winold Reiss, who challenged Douglas to shed his academic style and look at the design and compositional elements of African art. Around the same time, Douglas also met white Philadelphia art collector Albert Barnes. Barnes, who had contributed to Alain Locke’s anthology The New Negro, was one of the first Americans to collect Modern European artists, such as Picasso, Matisse, and Gaugin, as well as West African sculpture. Through Barnes, Douglas studied African and modern art up close when few in America were even aware of either. From his exposure, Douglas borrowed the modernist’s shallow depth of field, the monochromatic palette of Analytic Cubism, and the simple and stylized lines of African sculpture. The work that resulted came to embody all that the Harlem Renaissance stood for — the culturally rich aspects of African-American life and heritage.
Aaron Douglas illustrated many books during the 1920s. Perhaps the most celebrated of Douglas’s works were his illustrations for James Weldon Johnson’s book of poems, God’s Trombones, 1926. Right, Douglas drew Listen, Lord — A Prayer for the opening poem of the collection.
Douglas’s exploration of African aesthetics and his use of black themes brought him to the attention of many of the era’s movers and shakers. Du Bois hired him often to illustrate covers and interior pages of the Crisis. James Weldon Johnson did the same at Opportunity. He also contributed to such national magazines as Harper’s, Vanity Fair, and Theater Arts Magazine. The 135th Street Branch invited him to create a mural in its lobby. And major book publishing companies asked him to illustrate a number of important books, including Carl Van Vechten’s notorious Nigger Heaven.
THREE ARTISTS DEFY THE ODDS AND DEFINE THE TIMES
DESPITE AARON DOUGLAS’S seeming corner on the artistic market of the 1920S, a number of other artists also came of age during the period. Three artists of note who emerged from the era to make their names in the decades that followed were sculptor Augusta Savage and painters Palmer C. Hayden and William H. Johnson. They epitomized the struggle African Americans still faced in order to market their art. To make ends meet, Augusta Savage found herself working as a laundress, Palmer C.
HARMON FOUNDATION
The Harmon Foundation, formed in 1923 to support African-American achievement, held its first art competition in 1926. It was the first and only organization of the era to offer recognition to black visual artists. At the time, the Harmon exhibitions were the largest and most publicized effort to encourage African-American artists and show what they were creating. The foundation often came under criticism for lumping together all types of art by artists of all levels of ability and presenting them as “Negro art” simply because the artists were black. Still, the Harmon Foundation was influential in launching the careers of Palmer C. Hayden, the winner of its first contest, and William H. Johnson, who came in second place. Both used their prize money to travel to Paris to study art.
Hayden stinted as a janitor, and William H. Johnson had a number of menial jobs. In spite of these hardships, they persevered, and nearly every hour that they weren’t working they spent sculpting and painting. Because they spent what little free time they had in their studios, these artists essentially missed the renaissance. They did not socialize at Dark Tower soirees, attend Broadway musicals, or dance the night away at the Savoy Ballroom. Their dedication and persistence, however, made it easier for the next generation’s black artists, such as Romare Bearden and Jacob Lawrence, to garner public recognition and patronage.
AUGUSTA SAVAGE, 1892–1962
A popular image of the Harlem Renaissance was the African-American youth, because he or she embodied all the hope wrapped up in the “New Negro” philosophy.
SAVAGE SPENT HER days working hard in Manhattan steam laundries to support her infirm parents and extended families, and spent her nights absorbed in the advocacy of black people by creating powerful art. She made her name by sculpting a bust of W. E. B. Du Bois in 1923. She went on to create small clay portraits of ordinary African Americans that portrayed their quiet dignity. Her ability to capture the energy of everyday black life extended Meta Warrick Fuller’s efforts to illustrate African-American culture with large social and political symbols.
Green Apples, Augusta Savage, 1930.
PALMER C. HAYDEN, 1890–1973
HAYDEN CAME TO prominence as the first winner of the Harmon Foundation art competition in 1926. At the time, Hayden was the Foundation’s janitor, which raised protests of nepotism and amateurism in the organization. Hayden’s winning painting, Fetíche et Fleurs (1926), embodied Alain Locke’s belief that African art was crucial as the foundation for creating original African-American art. The majority of Hayden’s work, however, was typically centered on black-American life, legends
, and folk heroes. His canvases often portrayed Harlem street life or recounted customs, love, and small-town folks from his native Virginia and West Virginia, where he worked on the railroad before going to war. He was criticized for lapsing into a portrayal of blacks that seemed rooted in cultural stereotypes. His insistence on portraying blacks with the masks of minstrels was an ever-conscious reminder that no matter how isolated they were from white culture, blacks were performing for a white audience.
Fetíche et Fleurs, Palmer Hayden, 1926.
WILLIAM H. JOHNSON, 1901–1970
JOHNSON BEGAN HIS career as an academic painter, but as his art matured he shed his learned realism for a deliberate primitivism. His conscious creation of a naïve, childlike style painted in bright colors often seemed crude and awkward, as if he had not been trained at all, but in fact his paintings were deeply influenced by the work of Vincent Van Gogh, Edvard Munch, and Chaim Soutine. His work contained the Expressionist quality of broad, emotional paint strokes and bright colors that was very much informed by his exposure to European Modernism. Many African-American critics, however, were put off by Johnson’s technique because he seemed to them to be reinforcing cultural stereotypes of the ignorant, unskilled Negro rather than the cultured “New Negro” they were so committed to promoting.
Shortly after winning the 1930 Harmon gold medal for his painting Jacobia Hotel, which depicted a building in his hometown of Florence, North Carolina, Johnson was arrested by the local police. No one knows whether it was owing to the embarrassing fact that the Jacobia Hotel was a brothel or to the backlash at Johnson’s achieving national recognition.
Above, Self Portrait, William H. Johnson, 1930; left, Jacobia Hotel, 1930.
THE PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE
JAMES VANDERZEE’S PHOTOGRAPHS epitomized everything that the “New Negro” stood for. His work in a sense legitimized black urban immigrants’ pride in their identity. African Americans from all walks of life entered VanDerZee’s studio to record the important events of their lives. For his part, VanDerZee made sure that each photograph captured the extraordinary sense of self-esteem, style, and optimism that emanated from Harlemites in the 1920s.
VanDerZee, 1886-1983, would go to great lengths to create a portrait that embodied an orderly, prosperous bourgeois life, far removed from the indignities and injustices of the past. To this end, VanDerZee attended to every detail. He followed certain social rules in each photograph: Women’s legs were crossed, their backs straight. Then, he would add touches to convey an almost defiant confidence: the collar of a coat turned up or a hat pulled stylishly over one eye. Most important, his subjects had to be flawless even if in real life that were not the case. To ensure this, VanDerZee would touch up the photographs so that a frayed collar or missing button did not show. He would smooth out skin color, straighten teeth, or even sketch in a few extra pieces of jewelry.
When not in his studio, VanDerZee roamed the streets of Harlem and bore witness to the entire renaissance. In his photographs he captured Harlem’s weddings, funerals, and parades, as well as bridge clubs, fraternities, school groups, and church functions. He photographed Harlem’s sights: famed patron A’Lelia Walker’s Dark Tower, a chic salon of artists and socialites; the Reverend Adam Clayton Powell Sr.’s Abyssinian Baptist Church; the elaborate, complex ceremonies of Marcus Garvey’s UNIA; or the Theresa Hotel, which in the days of segregated residences was one of the country’s finest black hostelries. VanDerZee ensured Harlem’s denizens and locations were memorialized for posterity.
His subjects had to be flawless even if in real life that were not the case.
Though the visuals arts could be considered a stepchild of the renaissance, clearly the advances in recognition and respect that visual artists achieved was unprecedented in the white, elistist world of modern art at the time. Through their art, these artists put America on notice that black themes — the lives, activities, and portraits of African Americans — were a legitimate, valuable, and unique part of American life, and that black artists deserved recognition and patronage equal to any other artist.
A 1930s demonstration in Harlem.
RAGE IN THE STREETS
THE WANING OF THE RENAISSANCE AND THE BEGINNING OF THE HARLEM RIOTS
I’ve lived a life
but nothin’ I’ve gained.
Each day I’m full
of sorrow and pain.
No one seems to care
enough for me
to give me a word
of sympathy.
Oh, me! Oh, my!
Wonder what will
the end be?
Oh, me! Oh, my!
Wonder what will
become of poor me?
— “Wasted Life Blues,” words and music by BESSIE SMITH
BLACK TUESDAY
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1929, marked the end of the Roaring Twenties and the beginning of the Great Depression. This was the day the stock market crashed. In the weeks afterward, it seemed as if only investors in the market would be affected. Uptown, Harlemites looked upon the crash from a bemused distance. Since most African Americans had not invested in stocks and bonds, they viewed the crash as a white problem. When newspapers began calling October 29 “Black Tuesday,” African Americans only saw irony. Now whites would learn what it was like to be black in America — poor.
In the 1930s, 24 international unions barred blacks from membership. Below, a line for unemplyment registration.
Uptown, with Prohibition still in full swing, the speakeasies and nightclubs of Harlem continued to draw crowds. On Broadway, musicals such as Fats Waller’s Hot Chocolates and plays like Wallace Thurman’s blockbuster Harlem opened to packed houses. On the literary front, 1927 and 1928 were boom years, and the future appeared just as promising. But by the end of 1930 that optimism had expired. The nail in the coffin, however, did not come until two years later, when Prohibition was repealed and whites no longer had to travel uptown to drink alcohol. Stride pianist Willie “the Lion” Smith said it was legal liquor that did to Harlem what scarcer tips and shuttered warehouses had failed to do.
“It was legal liquor that did to Harlem what scarcer tips and shuttered warehouses had failed to do.”
— Stride pianist Willie “the Lion” Smith
“LAST HIRED, FIRST FIRED!”
THE FIRST TO feel the effects of the Great Depression were the laborers and kitchen mechanics who worked low-wage jobs and paid high rents to live in Harlem. The phrase “Last Hired, First Fired” came to mean that black workers would lose their jobs long before whites would join in the unemployment lines. Many of these people could not find new jobs. A February 1930 edition of the New York Herald Tribune reported that the stock market crash had “produced five times as much unemployment in Harlem as in other parts of the city.” By 1932 the median family income in Harlem had plummeted 43.6 percent, from $1,808 to $1,019 ($13,379 in today’s dollars), while unemployment reached nearly 50 percent. As well, a new kind of slave market arose at the corner of 167th Street and Jerome Avenue in the Bronx, where African-American women waited to be “rented” at day rates for housework. These women worked for ten to twenty cents an hour, considerably less than the fifty cents an hour they’d been earning prior to the Depression. Under these dire economic conditions, Harlem changed from an oasis of black pride into a slum, where two and three families lived in a single apartment and buildings became run-down from the stress of so many tenants.
HOT BEDS
The term “hot bed” came into use to describe a bed that was rented out in shifts. A night worker slept in the bed during the day, while a day laborer rested in it at night — the same room, the same bed, the same sheets, the same bedbugs.
MINORITY EMPLOYMENT FROM 1930–1935
COMPANY WHITE EMPLOYEES BLACK EMPLOYEES
Consolidated Gas Company 10,000 213 porters
New York Edison Company 10,000 65 porters, cleaners, and hall men
New York Telephone
Company 10,000 65 laborers
IRT Subway Company 10,000 580 messengers, porters, and cleaners
HARLEM CHURCHES HELP
WHEN THE GOVERNMENT failed to meet the needs of all the hungry, the homeless, and the jobless, many African-American churches stepped in to help. Adam Clayton Powell Sr. preached from the pulpit of his Abyssinian Baptist Church, “We clothe God by Clothing men and women. . . . When you give men and women coats, shoes, and dresses, you are giving clothes to God.” He went on to “give one thousand dollars of [his] salary during the next three months to help relieve this terrible unemployment situation.” In the first three months of 1931, the Abyssinian Baptist Relief Bureau served 28,500 free meals and distributed 525 food baskets, 17,928 pieces of clothing, and 2,564 pairs of shoes. Other churches helped out as well, running employment agencies, shelters, and soup kitchens for the needy.
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