Harlem Renaissance

1. Harlem Renaissance: This movement took place in America in the 1920s in the aftermath of World War I. It was centered on the theme that the African-American race could rise above the racism and prejudice of the era through literature, music, art, and intellect. This movement also promoted and publicized socialist and progressive political ideas. The belief was to uplift the African-American race and culture through different pieces of work and raise the spirits of all its followers. All of the art during this time done by African-Americans focused on the race as a great race and the tribulations they were facing at the time.

Civil Rights Movement: This movement took place in America in the 1950s and ‘60s. The motive and goal of this movement was to destroy racial discrimination in schools, work places, voting, and in every public place. On one side of this movement was the peaceful, non-violent protesting mainly promoted by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. but there was another side to this movement; a more violent one promoted by Malcolm X. Great advances for the African-American race were made during this era in the area of politics and the country as a whole. Such examples of these advances include, Brown v. Board of Education in which segregation in schools was outlawed, Greensboro sit-ins in which four African-American students refused to get up from a bar at a diner and received great media attention, and Rosa Parks refusing to get out of her seat in Montgomery acting as a catalyst for the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The art, all forms of art, of this time period focused on the liberation and struggles of the African-American race. They were attempting to come from underneath the White domination in all parts of the country.


2. Harlem Renaissance: This time period stood for a time of liberation and upheaval for African-Americans throughout the country. It aimed at creating a new style and new identity for Black artists and allowed them focus on their own lives and personal stories rather than a simple, general type of work. It gave a sense of freedom to these artists by providing for them a time in which they can write, paint, or sing about anything they wanted. This era helped African-Americans get in touch with their roots and connect with their ancestors. It was a time of collective identity finding.

Civil Rights Movement: This era provided a chance for freedom from the racial injustice the African-Americans were facing at the time. It allowed for artists to express themselves, whether it be in a violent (or showing of violent) way or a peaceful way. It was a time in which artists could truthfully express and describe what exactly was going on in America at this time through their painting, poetry, or songs. The Civil Rights Movement was a spark for artists that sent them on the path to explain the hardship African-Americans were going through with all the various types of art of the time.


3. These two time periods are similar because they both focus and revolve around the idea of empowering the African-American race. Both movements had a goal of liberation from the turmoil these people were facing in their respective times. Through art, people could tell stories; stories of struggle, stories of their ancestors, stories about a better future; however, they weren’t entirely the same. The Harlem Renaissance was an era of identity and a time of connecting with one’s ancestors. It was a time of raising the African-American race from a depth so low through the various works of art. The Civil Rights Movement was a time solely focusing on ending and abolishing racial segregation and discrimination throughout America. They wanted to end the injustice they were faced with through either peaceful or violent protesting and the art of the era represented and symbolized both those views respectively.




This piece by William Johnson entitled “Chain Gang” during the Harlem Renaissance clearly expresses the suffering of the African-Americans during the time period. It portrays three Black men all wearing prison uniforms working diligently in the fields with shovels and pick axes and various working tools. This is a representation of the race in the country during the era. These men are shown struggling with contorted limbs and bent over to symbolize the hardship the African-Americans were going through. They are shown with no facial mannerisms except for the man in the middle with two slightly, barely opened eyes which generalizes the race and therefore could be any Black person in the country at this time. This piece embodies the Harlem Renaissance to the core because it shows these black men as people obviously struggling through great affliction and great adversity. It is a prime example of the time period and the view of the African-American race through the eyes of a person being specifically affected by the time period.




This picture entitled “Freedom Now” by Reginald Gammon was done in 1965 and illustrates the protests of the people during the Civil Rights Movement. It brings faces to the movement and clearly shows how passionate and determined the protestors were. Interestingly enough, not just black faces are painted but white ones too. This shows that, although a majority was, not all white people during this time were indeed racist. White and black people stood together through troubles and protested for freedom for African-Americans. They were united for one cause and this picture perfectly expresses that message. It embodies the Civil Rights Movement because it illustrates the struggle and emotion of the united protestors. Their faces show their feelings clearly so everyone is provided with a sense of realism and realistic art. This piece is a wonderful example of art during the Civil Rights Movement.


Let America Be America Again

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

This poem written by Langston Hughes entitled “Let America Be America Again” describes a dream and desire for America to be what it was meant to be from the start—a place of freedom. He says countless times how people in America should be allowed to be free, all people, “the poor man’s, the Indian’s, the Negro’s, ME!” He wants the country to become a country of free of persecution of others and a country for all people to live in harmony with each other. Hughes expresses how America has never been America to him due to the injustices and inequity he has faced in his lifetime. This poem explains perfectly the era of the Civil Rights Movement because it accurately describes how African-Americans felt during this time by showing how they simply were not free people, even if legally slavery was abolished. It creates the sense of hope and promise for the future. The future will hold better things than the present and all people will actually become free rather than slaves in their own country.


SOLITARY CONFINEMENT
 
Even as the last bars clang
shut and I start to rub the purple ache
clubs left on shoulders, ribs,
and shins, my mind is fashioning
an invisible ladder.
lt's rungs an lifts of escape.

They've taken the SNCC pamphlets
but let me keep a book
of Keats — poems reminiscent
of my sad, adolescent affair
with the coffln-maker's daughter,
which taught me many things,
including carpentry.

And when, at dusk,
the trusty held for car theft brings
my tray of grits and fatback,
it won't matter so much that,
groaning and puking,
I'll be sick for hours.

Imagination is good wood; by midnight
I'll be high as that mockingbird
in the magnolia across the moonlit road.

This poem written by Gregory Orr in Hayneville, Alabama in 1965 entitled “Solitary Confinement” describes a personal experience of being arrested and imprisoned after a protest for Civil Rights. He details the injuries he receives from the police batons all over his beaten body. He imagines a way out or escape from this prison he has been put in but there is no hope. He is now recollecting on past times in his life while withering away in his cell. He is forced to do nothing but eat terrible food that will soon make him sick and sit in silence and read a book of John Keats a writer of the English Romantic movement in the late 18th and early 19th century. He is dreaming of freedom and the time when he gets out. This poem accurately symbolizes the time period in which Orr is referring to because thousands of people were imprisoned due to protesting and many of them went through similar trials while incarcerated. This poem adds a personal aspect to the era and serves as an example or representative of the suffering forced upon the African-Americans.


This song entitled “Backwater Blues” by Bessie Smith describes the trials a black girl is facing during the late 1920s. She is struggling to make her way with what little she has and nothing seems to be going her way. She cannot seem to overcome the obstacles in her life that are keeping her tied down and preventing her from achieving. It is a great example of this era due to its blues and jazz feel and tone, which was very common, especially in the African-American culture, at this time. This song is a wonderful representative for the Harlem Renaissance because it perfectly describes the difficulties of a young Black girl in America in the 1920s.

This song originally entitled “I Shall Overcome” and written by Rev. Charles Tindley in 1901 as a gospel hymn was adapted and updated by Pete Seeger and called “We Shall Overcome.” This song became so widespread that it actually became the anthem for the Civil Rights Movement. It clearly states how these people (therefore the African-Americans) will “stand hand-in-hand” and overcome the adversity being faced in their lives at this time. This song provided confidence and a sense of family to the protestors and connected them with one another even more for a common a cause. This song helped to unite the movement and make it something broad and far-reaching, and it did that. It embodies the era by describing how these people are not alone and not afraid and people will stand up for the cause in order to overcome and defeat these obstacles, like racial discrimination in America in the 1950s and ‘60s.


White Things

Most things are colorful things-
-the sky, earth, and sea.
Black men are most men;
but the white are free!
White things are rare things;
so rare, so rare
They stole from out a silvered
world--somewhere.


Finding earth-plains fair plains,
save greenly grassed,
They strewed white feathers of
cowardice, as they passed;


The golden stars with lances fine,
The hills all red and darkened pine,
They blanched with their want of power;
And turned the blood in a ruby rose
To a poor white poppy-flower.


They pyred a race of black, black men,
And burned them to ashes white; then,
Laughing, a young one claimed a skull,
For the skull of a black is white, not dull,
But a glistening awful thing


Made, it seems, for this ghoul to swing
In the face of God with all his might,
And swear by the hell that sired him:
"Man-maker, make white!"

This piece of poetry written by Anne Spencer entitled “White Things” describes the difference between black or colored things and white things. This poem serves as a symbol for the obvious differences between black and white people. The white things described and detailed in this poem are all free objects, free from the colored ones at least, while the colored ones are tied down. Not only are the white objects described as more free, they are also expressed as simply better. The end of the poem explains how G-d said “man-maker, make white!” as if to say that making anything less or colored would not have been as good. This poem represents the adversity all African-Americans were facing during the Harlem Renaissance period and symbolizes their lack of freedom compared to the white people.


All of these various artists in their respective arts embody their movements because they are either African-Americans being personally affected by the injustices in the country at their respective times or are white people witnessing these injustices and not standing by allowing it to happen but protesting through song. Every one of these artists has a story to tell; whether of the Harlem Renaissance era or the Civil Rights Movement. They each have an identity and that identity, although unique, share similar characteristics due to their united suffering and tribulations as people going through hardship.

Prominent Artists/Poets/Composers of the Harlem Renaissance:

1. Langston Hughes
   
2. Duke Ellington
3. Claude McKay
4. Bessie Smith
5. Louis Armstrong
6. William Armstrong
7. Zora Neale Hurston
8. Henry Ossawa Tanner
9. William Johnson
10. Archibald J. Motley

Prominent Artists/Poets/Composers of the Harlem Renaissance:

1. Bob Dylan
   
2. Bruce Springstein
3. Gregory Orr
4. Reginald Gammon
5. Pete Seeger
6. Joan Baez
7. Phil Ochs
8. Billie Holiday
9. James Weldon Johnson
10. Odetta