Harlem Renaissance: Opposing Perspectives

Finding purpose in life drives everyone to search for their identity. How can someone know what to do without first knowing who they are? It seems simple, to know who a person is based on where they come from; but the way the past influences decisions in the present is what makes finding someone’s identity difficult. The cliché saying, “You are not defined by your past” is only true because the present provides choices; however, in some ways the past does define a person. It is the past that shapes worldview, and worldview dictates decisions. Throughout American history, black men and women fought within themselves and against others. They did not want their past to define them, yet they realized how influential their past had become to who they were in the present. Black Americans, when faced with choices, had to determine why they wanted to make a decision about who they are. Was it because of their past or because of who they were in the present? What motivated their choices? During the Harlem Renaissance, authors sought to answer these questions and others alike. It was time to accept the past and shape the future. Identity became the focus of black literature.

The New Generation of Male Authors

Authors like Du Bois and Alan Locke comprise the Old Generation of Black Male Authors. They were both prescriptive in their writing. While Du Bois focused on how blacks could find their place in society through political means, Locke focused on how blacks needed to transcend race by breaking racial stereotypes (Gates & Smith, 2014). The events of the Reconstruction Era greatly impacted the perspectives, and therefore writing, of the older generation. It was this generation of authors that allowed the next generation to explore black Americans’ heritage differently.

The difference between the Old Generation and the New Generation of Black Male Authors hinges on progress. The era known as the Harlem Renaissance earned the name “renaissance” because authors sought to start anew with black culture in America. No longer would the focus be on bondage and freedom, slavery, or fighting for equal rights through education or politics. Instead, the focus of black literature shifted to expressing emotions, reminiscing over the past, ultimately to find their new identity. Because of authors like Du Bois, these new authors recognized the need to embrace “twoness” (Gates & Smith, 2014, p. 687) and decide how to move forward with that reality, that new revelation.

Langston Hughes

Sometimes in order to start new, it is wise to revisit the past. Because the past directly influences the present, reflection and review should be valued. Hughes believed the past held value for black Americans, which is why he wrote predominately about black heritage. He chose to celebrate his past, his people’s past, and embrace that part of himself.

In addition to poems and short stories, Hughes wrote essays and critiques. He once wrote a piece for The Nation in 1926. In this piece, Hughes tells a story of a young poet who told him that he wanted to be a poet, just not a Negro poet. In his reflection and critique, Hughes wrote, “An artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he might choose” (1926). Hughes believed that this young man feared being a black poet, so he let fear make the decision to remove that part of his identity. What was he afraid of? An artist, like Hughes observed, should be called an artist based on his work, not his background or skin color. Among the Old Generation of authors, James Weldon Johnson had made the same observation about Phillis Wheatley and her works (Gates & Smith, 2014, p. 880-881). It bothered Hughes to see his own people reject their identity, to be racist towards themselves. He realized that blacks began to equate educated, moral, beautiful and virtuous with being white. Black artists abandoned jazz music or colored faces in artwork. Black churches even replaced spirituals with hymns. It was as if there was an “institutionalization of the Renaissance” that “came in the form of the social gospel movement” (Michael, 1996, p. 453-454) encouraging blacks to change every aspect of their culture in order to be welcomed into society, all because they wanted to be more refined, more accepted, more American.

What does it mean to be American? Who is American? Reviewing the past, the origin of America, reveals the answer. Separatists and Pilgrims originally settled in the New World for freedom of religion. Colonists fought in the Revolutionary War for representation in England. America is the country that fights for the people’s voice. If blacks had been freed from slavery in the mid 1800s, Hughes made a legitimate argument. The voice of black Americans should be heard, but it should be their authentic voice, not them sounding like white Americans. Hughes’s famous poem, “I, Too” does just that. He boldly proclaims that “I, too, sing America” even though the “darker brother” (2) is currently sent to “the kitchen / When company comes” (3-4). He is confident that one day “They’ll see how beautiful I am / And be ashamed—” because “I, too, am America” (16-18). To be American is to be free to express. So by making the blacks feel as though they could not express themselves authentically, it was as if blacks were told that they are not truly Americans. The fact that black Americans had come to accept this ideology, in fact prefer it, is what truly motivated Hughes’ bold writing.

Because it bothered Hughes to see his fellow black Americans losing their sense of self, he believed a revival of heritage and tradition was necessary. In order to establish someone’s identity in the present, they need to know where they came from. Oral tradition holds special significance in the African-American culture. In Africa, culture was preserved through oral tradition, and slaves were limited or completely prohibited from obtaining an education and learning to read. In black churches, call and response characterizes many spirituals (Bernard, 2019, p. 125-126). It was common for the song leader to preface the next line during a different line to help the people know what to sing next, unlike the white Americans who could read from their hymnals. Hughes, therefore, incorporates musical elements from spirituals, the blues and jazz into his poetry. One of his more famous poems, “Weary Blues,” celebrates the black musician. Hughes uses syntax and his use of vowels to convey the melancholy tone the way a song’s sound communicates a mood. Words like “Droning” and “drowsy” or “tune” (1) “mellow croon” (2) and “sway” (6) and “moan” (10) all in the opening stanza set the tone for the poem. Music, their music, held value for the black Americans. It was this style of music that helped them through the hard times, the long days—helped them pour out their souls so they could sleep at night “like a rock or a man that’s dead” (35) in order to get up the next morning and face the world. To abandon their music for Mozart and Beethoven and opera, Hughes believed meant ignoring the pain their fathers experienced, rejecting a part of their identity.

Hughes ultimately chose to incorporate elements of black heritage to remind his people of their identity. He also challenged them to ensure their decisions and choices reflected their identity. If a black man or woman wanted to be an artist, then they should become an artist without making compromises. The past shaped their present, and they needed to embrace that. Furthermore, Hughes encouraged them to overcome their past by living their lives authentically in the new America as “The New Negro” (Cameron, 2018, p. 99-100) freed from slavery and freed to finally be heard.

Claude McKay

Other times, to start new it is best to forget the past and move forward. Some authors during the Harlem Renaissance may have looked to their past and included the past in their writing, but they believed it best to focus on what they could do in the present to impact their future. These authors recognized that the past was the past, and nothing could be done to change it; therefore, it is best to move forward. Some authors, however, still wrestled with their choice.

Like Hughes, McKay remembers and writes about his heritage; yet he still chooses to accept the new normal life as his identity. Perhaps the strongest example is McKay’s poem, “The Tropics in New York.” Specific foods and colors mentioned in the poem help the reader envision his home in Jamaica. Interesting, then, that the poem ends with the speaker “longing” (10) for the “old, familiar ways” (11) rather than choosing to simply say he longed for the food. It is clear that seeing the fruit in New York has triggered a memory to his life back in Jamaica, which makes him nostalgic. The resolution of the poem, though, is what communicates McKay’s views on identity. Instead of sharing the memory with someone to keep his heritage alive, or choosing to celebrate a Jamaican holiday or festival that involved fruit with his family, the speaker “turned aside and bowed [his] head and wept” (12). This decision communicates the need for black Americans to forget the past and move forward. McKay believes that who they were is no longer who they are, so black Americans need to focus on who they are now; that is the key to embracing their identity.

Countee Cullen

Many black authors re-evaluated their cultural heritage. Instead of choosing to keep it present in their memory and daily culture like Hughes suggested, some authors presented a “nostalgic allusion to [their home] as the imaginary lost fatherland and reveal[ed] a people who are, as a race, coming to terms with their own history in an alien land” (Adewumi & Kayode, 2014, p. 17). These words, allusion and imaginary, provide insight to Cullen’s viewpoint opposed to Hughes and even McKay. Instead of presenting traditional, black life and heritage authentically merged into their present lives like Hughes, or the black man who remembers his past self and moves on like McKay, Cullen romanticize the black’s past identity. In doing so, he distances the people from the hope of achieving their past heritage.

Cullen’s life and poetic style communicated to black communities that following the whites’ conventions is the way to merge the “twoness” of a black person’s identity that Du Bois often wrote of. He attended school and was well educated; he even earned awards for his poems. Eventually, he achieved the honor of white academia and was accepted into Harvard for their graduate program. Most of his subject matter consists of African heritage, and he even urges readers to restore their past identity in the arts. The problem is that his actions did not reflect his works. Hughes criticizes Cullen in “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” by telling a story of a young black poet who wanted to be a poet, just not a black poet (Hashemipour, 2019, p. 17). Cullen made the choice to write sonnets, which then made his readers limited to the few educated black Americans and the white Americans. He followed after Keats and Housman’s style instead of creating something new based on his African heritage. These decisions prove that Cullen presented Africa and the past as distant, a lost part of themselves that cannot be and should not be re-birthed.

Many fellow authors sympathized with Cullen, such as Johnson, who believed that Cullen was simply trying to free himself from a world of race. Yet, his writing shows the “quintessence of race consciousness” (Johnson, 1931). The problem Hughes had with Cullen’s attempts to balance his “twoness” is that it countered Hughes’ efforts to establish cultural independence for black Americans. The last thing he wanted was for blacks to teach their children “being white would be the only way to go” (Hashemipour, 2019, p. 18). To see a fellow black artist, who had successfully graduated from Harvard and even married Du Bois’ daughter choose a predominately white lifestyle seemed hypocritical. But, Hughes did say that an artist is free to choose how to be an artist as long as he is not afraid to choose. Perhaps Cullen did not mean that he wanted to be a white poet and abandon his heritage, but that he did not want his entire identity as an artist to be subconsciously viewed through race. After all, Cullen did appear to have the support of the black and white communities, and other well-known authors supported his search for the African-American identity in the present world (Hashemipour, 2019, p. 18).

Life is full of opportunities and choices to make. That cliché saying, “You are not defined by your past,” was intended to mean past choices do not have to define a person because new choices can always be made in the present. It did not in any way mean to erase the past. The past is a part of a person’s makeup, a person’s identity. The Harlem Renaissance, also known as the “New Negro Renaissance” sparked “freethought” in black Americans’ lives (Cameron, 2018, p. 99-100). Thus, some chose to claim a new identity by forsaking their past simply because they could. Many who abandoned their past also abandoned their faith. Many blacks became agnostic or atheistic during this intellectual and social rebirth and wrestled with their place in society the remainder of their lives (Michael, 1996, p. 453-454). Although some rejected Christianity, others found peace knowing their full identity in Christ. They had come to realize that they were not uncivilized, subhuman, incapable of being artists or Americans. They were beautiful, as many of the Harlem Renaissance poets proclaimed. They were beautiful because they were made in God’s image (Genesis 1:26) just like the white Americans. Different does not mean inferior. Black authors of the Old Generation prefaced the need to discuss identity. Du Bois and his theory of “twoness” especially provided black authors of the New Generation to more confidently declare their entire personhood. Embracing the past and choosing to overcome it, making decisions regardless of race, regardless of the past—that is the mark of those who know their identity. Black Americans during the Harlem Renaissance recognized their need to address their struggles, their inability to find their place in society. And by addressing these needs, they began to choose how they would move forward—embracing or rejecting their past. Black literature during the Harlem Renaissance shifted its focus to identity.

References

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renaissance. Johns Hopkins University Press, Project Muse.

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the black intellectual tradition. Northwestern University Press, JSTOR.

Gates, H. & Smith, V. (2014). The Norton anthology of African American literature 3, 1. Norton &

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Hughes, L. (1926). The negro artist and the racial mountain. The Nation.

Johnson, J.W. (1931). The book of American negro poetry. Quinn & Boden Company.

Michael, S. (1996). The black church and the harlem renaissance. African American Review 30, 3.