TOPIC 7.8: Culture of the 1920s

Harlem & The New Negro Movement

KC-7.2.I.B - Migration gave rise to new forms of art and literature that expressed ethnic and regional identities, such as the Harlem Renaissance movement.

Objective: Students will be able to explain how the New Negro Movement challenged mass media portrayals of Black culture and identities.

“Art must discover and reveal the beauty which prejudice and caricature have overlaid. And all vital art discovers beauty and opens our eyes to that which previously we could not see.” - Dr. Alain Locke

This Key Concept in an Antiracist classroom:

“Let the blare of Negro jazz bands and the bellowing voice of Bessie Smith singing the Blues penetrate the closed ears … We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, it doesn’t matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly too…We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain, free within ourselves.” - Langston Hughes, 1926

Dr. Alain Locke described the years after WW1 as a revolution that reclaimed and liberated Black identity. Locke understood that race is NOT hereditary but it is very real in American society and culture. “Blackness” had always been a sign of lower status. According to Locke and the artists, leaders, and visionaries in Harlem, that had changed, and because of that, America would change as well. APUSH exploration of 1920s culture should begin by centering on Black culture. It’s called the “Jazz Age” for a reason.

The American Pageant textbook accurately describes the Harlem Renaissance as a time of “vibrant, creature culture” that reflected a “new racial pride” in northern Black communities; however, scant details are provided, and the movement is only mentioned at the end of a section called the “Dynamic Decade.” The Harlem Renaissance receives only one paragraph and is listed after the flappers and treated as if it was just another aspect of changing culture in the era. However, the New Negro Movement was the revolution at the heart and soul of the 1920s, after all, just what were the flappers doing? Imitating Josephine Baker of course! Marcus Garvey gets the most attention (4 sentences) but his failed business is the topic with the most lines. This is certainly the central fact that the F.B.I. wanted to be attached to Garvey’s legacy, but it is not the reason his messages were read in over 40 different countries, or why Gandhi regularly published his speeches in India, and certainly not why he was able to build the largest Black liberation organization between Reconstruction and WW2 (the UNIA had far more Black members than the NAACP in the 1920s).

Also neglected in the standard history text is Langston Hughes’ revolutionary words on black identity. Dr. Farah Jasmine Griffin describes “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” as “a beautiful hand grenade” rolled out into Black culture, which would change the direction of Black artistic expression, and therefore the foundation of American popular culture, forever. In American Pageant, Hughes is mentioned as an important poet, but nothing of his message finds its way into the text. This is a grave oversight in a chapter that gives a paragraph each to H.L. Mencken, the Fitzgeralds, Hemingway, Sherwood Anderson, Faulkner, and Ezra Pound. Later in the chapter, “The New Negro” finally gets a reference next to a listing of Claude McKay, Langston Hughes (again), and Zora Neale Huston, all within the framing that these people lived in the same city as playwright Eugene O’Neill who is given a brief biography, a list of accomplishments, and description of his work. Eugene O’Neill is an important American, but, you really have to be trying hard to devalue the influence and legacy of Black culture by giving his life 3 times the attention as McKay, Hughes, and Zora Neale Hurston combined.

“The world ought to understand that the Negro has come to life, possessed with a new conscience and a new soul. The old Negro is buried, and it is well the world knew it.” - Marcus Garvey, 1921

Notes

This lesson is simple but powerful and leads to authentic student engagement.

You can do this in 30 minutes or extend it for a full hour (use the Langston Hughes poem “Let America be America Again” which is found at the end of the lesson plan document.)

There are 13 pieces of paper to tape up around the room before class begins (I use the hallway as well).

As Langston Hughes writes, let us blare Bessie Smith. I play music while students rotate, starting with “Tain’t Nobody’s Biz-ness if I do.”

Warning: do not go past the suggested time frame on the YouTube link to the 13th documentary. Just a few moments later are photographs from lynchings.