Black Writers Tell It on the Mountain
During a period of racial tension and inequality, African American writers sought to find and express their identity and heritage.
In the early 20th century, Harlem absorbed a surge of African American civilians moving from around the country. Migrants from the Antebellum South, Black soldiers returning from World War I, and well-educated African Americans moved to Harlem in the same period, rapidly changing Harlem culture. Many African Americans in Harlem searched for acceptance within the post-war white establishment, and how to best fit into white society produced tensions within the Harlem literati. The literature of the Harlem Renaissance dramatically showcases these tensions and underscores the complex cultural issues African Americans faced during this period.
The early part of the Harlem Renaissance literary movement was initiated by the “Talented Tenth,” an elite group of well-educated Black professionals who argued that the mission of establishing Black identity and thus gaining social acceptance and economic and political stability would be vitally strengthened through arts and letters. Prevailing, at first, was the vision of W. E. B. Du Bois that art expression, and especially literature, could capture aspects of African American heritage, such as the visual patterns in African art, the uplifting emotional context of spirituality, and the rich narratives of folk tradition. An established Black identity that projected a noble, sophisticated persona would allow African Americans to operate effectively within the framework of the white establishment, meeting white society on equal terms.
A formal campaign to launch and support Black literary efforts was undertaken by the Talented Tenth. African American newspapers and magazines published Black manuscripts, created literary awards, courted white patrons, and initiated contacts with writers in the Greenwich Village crowd. (See On the Harlem Newsstand for more on the influence of New York publications.) The campaign was a success. Young African American writers mingled in the high culture of the salons of well-established Harlem professionals and interacted with well-known white writers and publishers.
Among the successful African American writers were Countee Cullen, Zora Neale Hurston, Jessie Fauset, Arna Bontemps, Jean Toomer, Claude McKay, and Langston Hughes. These artists had acquired degrees and accomplishments that showcased their talents and intellects. Cullen, a New York University Phi Beta Kappa graduate with an M.A. from Harvard, won a Guggenheim Fellowship. Hurston completed her degree from Barnard College on a scholarship. Fauset, a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Cornell University, wrote the first of the Renaissance novels and published several more. Bontemps won an Alexander Pushkin Award for poetry and eventually taught at Yale University. McKay, born in Jamaica, was also drawn to the Greenwich Village circles, and became co-editor of Max Eastman’s The Liberator. Hughes, a graduate of Lincoln University, became one of America’s most valued and celebrated writers of poetry and fiction.
The first part of the Renaissance movement generated a wealth of poetry, short stories, and novels. With little exception, these writings were shaped to support W. E. B. Du Bois’ goals for the Talented Tenth by projecting an image of what one scholar called the “representative” African American. Langston Hughes, in “The Negro and the Racial Mountain,” argued that these writings catered to African Americans who sought to fit into white society so much that they rejected aspects of their own heritage. With the publication of Jean Toomer’s Cane, however, it was obvious that something different was in the air. The semi-autobiographical Cane–layered in an innovative pattern melding of poetry, short stories, vignettes of prose, and drama–was unified by the story of an “alienated, questing” urban Black man seeking to find his “roots.” Toomer’s disturbing probe of “going home” in an attempt to find “home” helped ignite a whole new way of shaping a path toward recognition and acceptance.
Soon to follow was a large shift in the themes, narratives, diction, poetic images, and mission of the writers of the Harlem Renaissance. Langston Hughes’ essay “Mountain” crafted in impassioned prose, would serve as a clarion call: “Let the blare of Negro jazz bands and bellowing voice of Bessie Smith singing Blues penetrate the closed ears of the colored near intellectuals until they listen and perhaps understand. Let Paul Robeson singing ‘Water Boy,’ and Rudolph Fisher writing about the streets of Harlem and Jean Toomer holding the heart of Georgia in his hands and Aaron Douglas drawing strange black fantasies cause the smug Negro middle class ...[to] catch a glimmer of their own beauty. ...We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain, free within ourselves.” Hughes’ call for a new “honesty” in depicting the image of African Americans was heard.
Zora Neale Hurston, whose early work mirrored Hughes’ position, wrote Color Struck and Jonah’s Gourd Vine. Claude McKay wrote Home to Harlem and Banjo, and celebrated the tropical beauty of his homeland and the rhythms and dances of Harlem through vibrant poetic imagery. Countee Cullen, although still bonded to traditional form, would echo Hughes’ themes in his novel, One Way to Heaven. Langston Hughes built a compelling body of poetry capturing the nuances of blues, the rhythms of jazz, a glimpse of a nostalgic past, the frustration of a “dream deferred,” and a possibility for the future. He wrote a large collection of short stories, novels, operas, and dramas, celebrating the street-wise wit and humor of an array of “real” African American urban personalities, culminating (in the years after the “formal” end of the Renaissance) in the creation of the “authentic” Black personas Jesse B. Semple and Alberta K. Johnson.
The negotiation of denial and affirmation of Southern rural Black heritage would not be fully resolved within the context of the writings of the Harlem Renaissance, but the rich bank of writing generated in the confrontation would implant new structures, fresh rhythms, unforgettable images, inspirational stories of quest, courage, endurance and determination in the canon of American literature. In inheriting the vibrant, provocative voices of the Harlem Renaissance, mainstream America would be the winner.
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The individuals and works associated with the Harlem Renaissance continue to influence artists and writers beyond the 1930s.
Learn about artists inspired by Harlem in the following resources:
Bibliography
Print Resources
- Baym, Nina, et al., eds. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Fourth Edition. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1995.
- Bontemps, Arna Wendell. “The Negro Renaissance: Jean Toomer and the Harlem Writers of the 1920s.” Anger and Beyond: The Negro Writer in the United States, edited by Herbert Hill. New York: Harper And Row, 1966.
- Davis, Charles T., and Daniel Walden, eds. On Being Black. Greenwich, CT: Fawcett Publications, Inc., 1970.
- Foerster, Norman, et al., eds. American Prose and Poetry, Fifth Edition, Part Two. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1970.
- Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. Figures in Black: Words, Signs, and the “Racial Self.” New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.
- Lewis, David Levering, ed. The Portable Harlem Renaissance. New York: The Penguin Group, 1995.
- Toomer, Jean. Cane. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1988.
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