Harlem Renaissance

 

The next meeting of the Genre Reading Group will be Tuesday, February 23rd at 6:30pm on Zoom and the topic up for discussion is “Art in Fiction.” 

Register here: https://emmetoneal.libnet.info/event/4597966

This week, GRG met to talk about the Harlem Renaissance, one of most preeminent cultural movements in US history, which took place from the mid-1910s through the mid-1930s. 

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Explore more Harlem Renaissance information at these sources:

Library of Congress: https://guides.loc.gov/harlem-renaissance

Top 5 Songs that Embody the Harlem Renaissance and the Roaring Twenties: https://blackmusicscholar.com/elementor-14713/

Josephine Baker, taking the Harlem Renaissance to Paris in film: Zouzou (in French, no subtitles) https://archive.org/details/ZouzouAkaZouZoudecember211934

New York Public Librarian Regina Anderson was at the heart of the Harlem Renaissance and spent time with many of its superstars: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/harlem-renaissance-librarian-regina-anderson

The Cotton Club of Harlem: https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/cotton-club-harlem-1923/

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Books, films, and music that we discussed:

Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick: Stories from the Harlem Renaissance by Zora Neale Hurston

Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick is an outstanding collection of stories about love and migration, gender and class, racism and sexism that proudly reflect African American folk culture. Brought together for the first time in one volume, they include eight of Hurston’s “lost” Harlem stories, which were found in forgotten periodicals and archives.Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

One of the most important and enduring books of the twentieth century, Their Eyes Were Watching God brings to life a Southern love story with the wit and pathos found only in the writing of Zora Neale Hurston. Out of print for almost thirty years—due largely to initial audiences’ rejection of its strong black female protagonist—Hurston’s classic has since its 1978 reissue become perhaps the most widely read and highly acclaimed novel in the canon of African-American literature.  In the audiobook version, acclaimed actress Ruby Dee performs a simply transcendent narration.

Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” by Zora Neale Hurston

A major literary event: a newly published work from the author of the American classic Their Eyes Were Watching God, with a foreword from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker, brilliantly illuminates the horror and injustices of slavery as it tells the true story of one of the last-known survivors of the Atlantic slave trade―abducted from Africa on the last "Black Cargo" ship to arrive in the United States.

Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington by Terry Teachout

Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington was the greatest jazz composer of the twentieth century—and an impenetrably enigmatic personality whom no one, not even his closest friends, claimed to understand. The grandson of a slave, he dropped out of high school to become one of the world’s most famous musicians, a showman of incomparable suavity who was as comfortable in Carnegie Hall as in the nightclubs where he honed his style. He wrote some fifteen hundred compositions, many of which, like “Mood Indigo” and “Sophisticated Lady,” remain beloved standards, and he sought inspiration in an endless string of transient lovers, concealing his inner self behind a smiling mask of flowery language and ironic charm.

Not Without Laughter by Langston Hughes

When first published in 1930, Not Without Laughter established Langston Hughes as not only a brilliant poet and leading light of the Harlem Renaissance but also a gifted novelist. In telling the story of Sandy Rogers, a young African American boy in small-town Kansas, and of his family—his mother, Annjee, a housekeeper for a wealthy white family; his irresponsible father, Jimboy, who plays the guitar and travels the country in search of employment; his strong-willed grandmother Hager, who clings to her faith; his Aunt Tempy, who marries a rich man; and his Aunt Harriet, who struggles to make it as a blues singer—Hughes gives the longings and lineaments of black life in the early twentieth century an important place in the history of racially divided America.      

An American Odyssey: The Life and Work of Romare Bearden by Mary Schmidt Campbell

By the time of his death in 1988, Romare Bearden was most widely celebrated for his large-scale public murals and collages, which were reproduced in such places as Time and Esquire to symbolize and evoke the black experience in America. As Mary Schmidt Campbell shows us in this definitive, defining, and immersive biography, the relationship between art and race was central to his life and work -- a constant, driving creative tension. Campbell's book offers a full and vibrant account of Bearden's life -- his years in Harlem (his studio was above the Apollo theater), to his travels and commissions, along with illuminating analysis of his work and artistic career. Campbell, who met Bearden in the 1970s, was among the first to compile a catalogue of his works. An American Odyssey goes far beyond that, offering a living portrait of an artist and the impact he made upon the world he sought both to recreate and celebrate.

Passing Fancies by Marlowe Benn

When stylish young bibliophile Julia Kydd returns to 1920s New York, she’s determined to launch her own private press. Julia’s aspirations take her into the heart of the Harlem Renaissance, a literary movement unlike any she’s known—where notions of race, sexuality, and power are slippery, and identities can be deceptively fluid.

At a risqué soiree, Julia befriends singer Eva Pruitt, whose new book is rumored to reveal lurid details about the Harlem nightlife. But Leonard Timson, a local nightclub owner, is furious when he suspects he’s the inspiration for a violent character in the book. By morning, Timson is dead, and both Eva and her manuscript are missing.

Julia finds herself immersed in a case as troubling as Jazz Age race relations. More questions than answers surface about Eva’s mysterious world, and powerful interests conspire to protect dangerous secrets. Still, no man can stand between Julia and the truth: appalled by violent injustice, she must use her wit and guile to find the killer.

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom: A Play in Two Acts by August Wilson

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Fences and The Piano Lesson comes the extraordinary Ma Rainey's Black Bottom—winner of the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Play.

The time is 1927. The place is a run-down recording studio in Chicago. Ma Rainey, the legendary blues singer, is due to arrive with her entourage to cut new sides of old favorites. Waiting for her are her Black musician sidemen, the white owner of the record company, and her white manager. What goes down in the session to come is more than music. It is a riveting portrayal of black rage, of racism, of the self-hate that racism breeds, and of racial exploitation.

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (requires a subscription to Netflix)

Tensions and temperatures rise at a Chicago music studio in 1927 when fiery, fearless blues singer Ma Rainey joins her band for a recording session. Starring: Viola Davis, Chadwick Boseman, Glynn Turman

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom: A Legend Brought To Screen (requires a subscription to Netflix)

Viola Davis, Denzel Washington, George C. Wolfe and more share the heart, soul and history that brought August Wilson’s timeless play to the screen.

T’Ain’t Nobody’s Bizness: Queer Blues Divas of the 1920s (Kanopy, available for Birmingham, Homewood, Hoover, Irondale, Pinson, and Mountain Brook residents only, requires a valid library card)

Cultural historian Brian Keizer puts the early blues scene in its social context, pointing out that these women, alienated from mainstream society by race and cultural practice (the blues being regarded as the devil's music), created a space for themselves that presaged the freedom later claimed by the civil rights movement and, by example, gay liberation. Taking its title from a popular song of the day (written by gay musician Porter Grainger), T'Ain't Nobody's Bizness introduces contemporary audiences to the transgressive practices of the distaff side of the early blues. It wasn't all about cheating men and low times. To quote from the song, _"If I go to church on Sunday/Then shimmy down on Monday/_T'ain't nobody's bizness if I do."

Mother of the Blues: A Study of Ma Rainey by Sandra Lieb

Briefly portrays the life of the influential blues singer, Ma Rainey, discusses the development of her music, and analyzes the theme of love in her music.

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (music CD)

The classic blues belter had been singing for two decades before she ever put her voice on record, and it shows on these recordings from the mid- to late '20s. The archetypal blues shouter, Rainey had a voice whose depth and strength is startling and sometimes alarming, even on these scratchy old recordings--one can only imagine what she must have sounded like in real life. Her backup musicians include such notables as pianist Fletcher Henderson, trombonist Charlie Green, guitarist Tampa Red, and trombonist Kid Ory, all performing fairly straightforward 12-bar blues. It's not the material here that's notable, so much as Rainey's voice, a voice that has informed the work of female blues singers ever since. --Genevieve Williams

Self Made: Inspired by the Life of Madame C.J. Walker (requires a subscription to Netflix)

An African American washerwoman rises from poverty to build a beauty empire and become the first female self-made millionaire. Based on a true story. Starring: Octavia Spencer, Tiffany Haddish, Carmen Ejogo

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GENERAL DISCUSSION:

Duke Ellington: Music is My Mistress by Duke Ellington and Edward Kennedy Ellington

The celebrated musician and entertainer discusses his life and travels and presents profiles of personalities he has come to know as friends.

Zora and Langston: A Story of Friendship and Betrayal by Yuval Taylor

They were best friends. They were collaborators, literary gadflies, and champions of the common people. They were the leading lights of the Harlem Renaissance. Zora Neale Hurston, the author of Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Langston Hughes, the author of “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” and “Let America Be America Again,” first met in 1925, at a great gathering of black and white literati, and they fascinated each other. They traveled together in Hurston’s dilapidated car through the rural South collecting folklore, worked on the play Mule Bone, and wrote scores of loving letters. They even had the same patron: Charlotte Osgood Mason, a wealthy white woman who insisted on being called “Godmother.”

Paying them lavishly while trying to control their work, Mason may have been the spark for their bitter and passionate falling-out. Was the split inevitable when Hughes decided to be financially independent of his patron? Was Hurston jealous of the young woman employed as their typist? Or was the rupture over the authorship of Mule Bone? Yuval Taylor answers these questions while illuminating Hurston’s and Hughes’s lives, work, competitiveness, and ambition, uncovering little-known details.

The 2019 HBO Watchmen series

Set in an alternate history where masked vigilantes are treated as outlaws, WATCHMEN, from executive producer Damon Lindelof (Lost, The Leftovers) embraces the nostalgia of the original groundbreaking graphic novel of the same name, while attempting to break new ground of its own. WATCHMEN reunites Lindelof with The Leftovers’ Regina King, leading the cast as Angela Abar, who wears two masks; one as a lead detective in The Tulsa Police Force and another as wife and mother of three. The cast also includes Jeremy Irons as the aging and imperious Lord of a British Manor; Don Johnson as the Tulsa Chief of Police; Jean Smart as FBI Agent Laurie Blake; Tim Blake Nelson as Detective Looking Glass; Louis Gossett Jr. as Will Reeves; Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Cal Abar; Tom Mison as Mr. Phillips; Frances Fisher as Jane Crawford, Sara Vickers as Ms. Crookshanks and Hong Chau as the mysterious trillionaire, Lady Trieu.

Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, AL

The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which opened to the public on April 26, 2018, is the nation’s first memorial dedicated to the legacy of enslaved Black people, people terrorized by lynching, African Americans humiliated by racial segregation and Jim Crow, and people of color burdened with contemporary presumptions of guilt and police violence. 

Books about Josephine Baker for kids/young people

Madame C.J. Walker: The Making of an American Icon by Erica Ball

Madam C. J. Walker—reputed to be America’s first self-made woman millionaire—has long been celebrated for her rags-to-riches story. Born to former slaves in the Louisiana Delta in the aftermath of the Civil War, married at fourteen, and widowed at twenty, Walker spent the first decades of her life as a laundress, laboring in conditions that paralleled the lives of countless poor and working-class African American women. By the time of her death in 1919, however, Walker had refashioned herself into one of the most famous African American figures in the nation: the owner and president of a hair-care empire and a philanthropist wealthy enough to own a country estate near the Rockefellers in the prestigious New York town of Irvington-on-Hudson. In this biography, Erica Ball places this remarkable and largely forgotten life story in the context of Walker’s times. Ball analyzes Walker’s remarkable acts of self-fashioning, and explores the ways that Walker (and the Walker brand) enabled a new generation of African Americans to bridge the gap between a nineteenth-century agrarian past and a twentieth-century future as urban-dwelling consumers.

Madam C.J. Walker’s Gospel of Giving: Black Women’s Philanthropy During Jim Crow by Tyrone McKinley Freeman

Tyrone McKinley Freeman's biography highlights how giving shaped Walker's life before and after she became wealthy. Poor and widowed when she arrived in St. Louis in her twenties, Walker found mentorship among black churchgoers and working black women. Her adoption of faith, racial uplift, education, and self-help soon informed her dedication to assisting black women's entrepreneurship, financial independence, and activism. Walker embedded her philanthropy in how she grew her business, forged alliances with groups like the National Association of Colored Women, funded schools and social service agencies led by African American women, and enlisted her company's sales agents in local charity and advocacy work.

Jacob Lawrence exhibit at the Birmingham Museum of Art through February 7, 2021

One of the greatest narrative artists of the twentieth century, Jacob Lawrence (1917–2000) painted his Struggle series to show how women and people of color helped shape the founding of our nation. Originally conceived as a series of sixty paintings, spanning subjects from the American Revolution to World War I, Struggle was intended to depict, in the artist’s words, “the struggles of a people to create a nation and their attempt to build a democracy.”

Ossawa Tanner, Paris

Ma Rainey in newspapers, archived by the Library of Congress

Ma Rainey arrangements featuring Louis Armstrong

Poems about Ma Rainey:

A Dance for Ma Rainey by Al Young

Ma Rainey by Sterling Allen Brown

During her vaudeville and singing career, Ma Rainey visited theater venues in Bessemer and one in downtown Birmingham, the Frolic Theater, which was demolished in the 1950s and is now the parking lot for the Hugo Black Federal Courthouse.