FREE ESSAY ON HARLEM RENAISSANCE

HARLEM RENAISSANCE

During the Harlem Renaissance a new feeling of racial pride emerged in the Black
Intelligencia. The Black Intelligencia consisted of African-American writers, poets,
philosophers, historians, and artists whose expertise conveyed five central themes
according to Sterling Brown, a writer of that time: "1) Africa as a source of race pride,
2) Black American heroes 3) racial political propaganda, 4) the "Black folk" tradition,
and 5) candid self-revelation." Two of the main people responsible for this new
consciousness were W.E.B. Du Bois and Alain Locke. Du Bois laid a foundation for this
dawn of racial pride in his essays. Locke took Du Bois' initial idea one step further
with his writings and aiding younger writers and artists that appeared during the Harlem
Renaissance. Langston Hughes was one of the writers that Locke mentored. Hughes was a
devote believer of exhibiting pride in the Black race; this theme was often exhibited in
his writing. These three men have each contributed and advanced the sentiment of racial
pride in their own unique way during the Harlem Renaissance.
In order to fully understand the contributions of W.E.B. Du Bois, Alain Locke, and
Langston Hughes it is imperative to know their backgrounds. William Edward Burghardt Du
Bois was born on February 23rd, 1868, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. He enrolled at
Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee where he was an editor for the school newspaper.
Du Bois was admitted to Harvard in 1888, and in 1891 he received his M.A. in History.
After Harvard, Du Bois traveled to Europe and studied in Berlin for a year. In 1894, he
went to Wilberforce University and worked as a Professor of Classics. In 1895, Du Bois
acquired his Ph.D. from Harvard thus becoming the first African-American to earn a
doctorate. The following year Du Bois married Nina Gomer. In 1897, unable to find an
academic position anywhere in the North, Du Bois and his new wife moved to Georgia where
Du Bois taught at Atlanta University for over a decade. They had two children together: a
son named Burghardt Gomer, who died when he was two years old, and a daughter,
NinaYolande. Between the years of 1897 and 1914 while Du Bois was a professor at Atlanta
University he published sixteen research monographs analyzing the sociological conditions
of African-Americans in America. He also published The Philadelphia Negro, a Sociological
Study in 1899, the first case study done in the United States about an African-American
community. Du Bois began focusing more on African-American life in 1899 after he
witnessed the lynching of an African-American male. He wrote letters and petitions
against discrimination in travel facilities and schools. In 1900, Du Bois went to the
Paris Exposition and Pan-African Congress in London. Du Bois' most recognized work, The
Souls of Black Folk, was published in 1903. He gained critical acclaim as well as
national fame with that publication. In that same year "The Talented Tenth", an essay in
the anthology The Negro Problem was published. 
Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter formed the Niagara Movement in 1905. The organization
scattered in five years, and in 1909 Du Bois, with several other eminent African-American
and Caucasian men and women, formed the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored people (NAACP). Du Bois became the Director of Publications and Research for the
NAACP based in New York. For the next twenty-four years Du Bois was the editor of its
journal, The Crisis. 
By the first ten years The Crisis: A Record of the Darker Races was in circulation it had
achieved a monthly gross of one hundred-thousand dollars. Needless to say it was a very
influential journal in the Black community. Du Bois said in his editorials "...[it was] a
critical time for the advancement of men" and that "...tolerance, reason and forbearance
can today make the world-old dream of human brotherhood approach realization...." Du Bois
wanted The Crisis to be a magazine of great substance that published issues related to
the Caucasian and African-American public, but he had a special interest in
African-American racial problems and their solutions. In his editorial "Agitation," Du
Bois stated that this agitation, this raising consciousness of racial issues in America,
was necessary in order to point out the problems in the nation. He knew that this
agitation would cause disruption in American society, but Du Bois believed this
disruption was essential in order to find the solution to race discrimination and
prejudice. The Crisis also reviewed and supported African-American literature and art,
giving the African-American public a forthright piece of literature that spoke about
problems and issues that plagued them. This magazine was also influential because it
exhibited pieces of literature by young African-American writers who wrote about racial
pride. The Crisis was an excellent way to boost African-Americans' sense of self-regard
because they saw people of their own race writing distinguished and important articles
that related to their plight and accomplishments as a race.
It was during this time that Du Bois was furthering the development of racial pride in
the African-American community. In his essay "The Talented Tenth" Du Bois stressed the
importance of education amongst the Black race. He believed that the most promising
African-Americans (roughly 10% of the population), which he called "The Talented Tenth,"
should be educated in order to guide and teach the uneducated Blacks; "The problem of
education, then, among Negroes must first of all deal with the Talented Tenth; it is the
problem of developing the Best of this race that they may guide the mass away from the
contamination and the death of the Worst, in their own and other races." This essay rose
awareness about the need for higher education of African-Americans, the importance of
Black role models, and the concept of self-motivation for the African-American race. Du
Bois believed that the African-Americans who exhibited the best abilities needed to be
educated to uplift the Black race as a whole. 
Alain Locke is an example of this educated African-American Du Bois talked of. Locke
agreed with Du Bois' ideas about education and racial pride and reapplied them to
African-American artists in his book The New Negro. Alain Locke was born on September 13,
1886 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He received his undergraduate degree in Philosophy
from Harvard in 1907 and became the first African-American Rhodes Scholar. He studied at
Oxford from 1907 to 1910 and then at the University of Berlin from 1910 to 1911. Locke
became the head of the Philosophy Department at Howard University in 1912; meanwhile, he
earned his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Harvard University in 1918. He edited a number of
volumes including Four Negro Poets (1927), Plays of Negro Life (1927), Negro Art: Past
and Present (1936), and The Negro and His Music (1936). His most renowned work is The New
Negro (1927), an anthology consisting of poetry, essays, drama, and fiction.
Locke stimulated and guided artistic activities and promoted the recognition and respect
of Blacks by the total American community. "Having studied African culture and traced its
influences upon Western civilization, he urged Black painters, sculptors, and musicians
to look to African sources for identity and to discover materials and techniques for
their work." He encouraged Black authors to seek subjects in Black life and to set high
artistic standards for themselves. 
Locke started the novel The New Negro by editing Harlem Edition of Survey Graphic (March
1925) entitled "Harlem, Mecca of the New Negro," which introduced American readers to the
Harlem Renaissance. He then expanded the theme of The New Negro which included works by a
stately collection of new artists like Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Rudolph
Fisher, Jean Tommer, and others; it also featured established writers like James Weldon
Johnson, Claude Mckay, and W.E.B. Du Bois. In The New Negro Locke displayed works by
writers who did not "sugar coat" their situations as minorities in a racist country.
These writers spoke about the grim realities of racism and poverty that Black people
faced daily and encouraged their audiences to take pride and empower themselves. This
indeed was the emergence of the Harlem Renaissance and the continuation and expansion of
racial pride. 
In Locke's essay The New Negro, he spoke of a new generation of African-Americans that
had "...a more positive self-respect and self reliance...." This 'new Negro' was educated
and communicated the idea of race pride and high self-esteem through their art.
African-Americans no longer needed to wallow in self-pity, the 'new Negro' was not
ashamed of where s/he came from, and in fact was proud of his/her heritage. Now the
African-American race had role models who not only understood their sufferings but
rejoiced in the knowledge they had learned. "Therefore the Negro today wishes to be known
for what he is, even in his faults and shortcomings, and scorns a craven and precarious
survival at the price of seeming to be what he is not." Locke advanced Du Bois' ideas for
education and role models for the African-American community by also stressing
African-American's need to be more self-motivated, self-aware, and self-sufficient. He
spoke about the ascent from social disenchantment to self-respect, from the feeling of
societal obligation to giving back to society, and offsetting the conformity of
segregated conditions to the belief in utmost esteem and acknowledgement. Locke, like Du
Bois, wanted African-Americans to believe in themselves and realize how beautiful and
intelligent they were. He did not want this realization to come from faults of other
races: "We wish our race pride to be a healthier, more positive achievement than a
feeling based upon a realization of the shortcomings of others." Locke informed the
masses, both Black and white, about the importance of taking pride in your race and the
importance self-expression via education and art. Du Bois and his contemporaries had not
rose this awareness to whites. As stated in the Black Reference Library:
Renaissance self-expression had emerged in a large measure because the moralizing
writings of Blacks prior to this era had failed to reach white consciences and abate
racism. Much of this writing by Douglass, Du Bois, and James Weldon Johnson was of
excellent caliber and truly reflected the experience of Blacks. However, it remained for
Alain Locke to stress to Blacks of post-World War I America that whites were not really
paying much attention, and that the time had come for Blacks to cease propagandizing and
reach into themselves to express their suffering throughout art rather than
pamphleteering. 
For African-Americans, the awareness of the importance of racial pride did not stop with
Alain Locke and his volume The New Negro. It continued to be supported and promoted
throughout the Black Intelligencia. Du Bois continued to support this sentiment of racial
pride through his editorials in the magazine The Crisis while Locke continued his
patronage by nurturing up and coming African-American artists. 
Alain Locke sponsored and promoted several African-American artists in the Black
Intelligencia by featuring them in his tomes and by supporting and encouraging them. An
example of one of these artists is Langston Hughes. Born in 1902 in Joplin, Missouri,
Hughes spent his childhood years with his grandmother living in Lawrence, Kansas. He
moved all over the country with is mother, including Cleveland, Detroit and Topeka. His
first poems and short stories were written during his high school years. Hughes went to
live with his father in Mexico for two years before decided to move to Harlem. He
enrolled in Columbia University in 1921, and left after one unhappy and unsuccessful
year. Hughes then went on a four-year trip around the world working as a seaman. One of
the stops on the boat was Africa and after his exciting visit there he finished his first
major poem, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers", which was published in The Crisis. Hughes
returned in 1925 and enrolled at Lincoln University. During his summer breaks he would
spend time in New York. It was in New York that Hughes met Locke and several other
artists who helped and encouraged him. Locke introduced Hughes to Charlotte Mason, a rich
white patron of African-American artists during that time. Hughes looked up to Mason and
referred to her affectionately as 'Godmother,' and she viewed him as one of her
'Godchildren'. Mason helped Hughes focus on writing literature that would uplift the
African-American race and supplied him with more than enough money, clothes, and writing
materials to accomplish this task. 
An example of the uplifting literature that Hughes wrote is the article "The Negro Artist
and the Racial Mountain," which appeared in The Nation in 1926. In this article, Hughes
talked about the 'racial mountains' that African-American artist must climb in order to
be liberated within. Hughes believed that Black middle and upper classes tried to
assimilate to the Caucasian race. They turned their noses up to anything distinctly
African and loved everything distinctly white. Their children did not like being
classified as African-American and tried their best to not identify with their heritage.
These thoughts were understandable considering that these middle-to-upper class parents
instilled these beliefs in these children since birth; Hughes writes, "...this urge
within the race toward whiteness, the desire as much American as possible." Hughes then
praised the lower class for displaying most cultural and self-awareness. Individuals of
the lower class were not afraid of being themselves even when faced with the official
standard of Caucasian America. These were people, in Hughes' opinion, that would produce
great African-American artists. A great artist cannot be afraid of who they are or from
where they came. An artist must overcome the mountain of racial denial and race rejection
to be truly great within him/herself. They must stand alone clothed only in their
brilliance and pride, pride in their race and pride in themselves, for that is the only
way that they can become a true artist; "We younger Negro artists who create now intended
to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are
please we are glad. If they are not, it doesn't matter. We know we are beautiful." 
Du Bois laid a foundation by starting the consciousness of racial ride, beginning with
education for African-Americans, role models for African-Americans, and the idea of
giving back to the African-American community. Locke advanced this idea further by
applying the sentiment of racial pride to arts like writing, painting, poetry, song,
dance, etc. which brought artists like Langston Hughes into the public sphere which in
turn rose awareness to all of American society, Black and white, about the importance of
racial pride. These three men all have contributed immensely to the increase of
consciouness of racial pride during the Harlem Renaissance.
Bibliography
Bibliography
Davis, Charles T. and Daniel Walden. Being Black: Writings by Afro-Americans from 
Frederick Douglass to the Present. (Greenwich: 1970). pp. 23-33, 128-188.
Locke, Alain. The New Negro. (New York: 1925).
Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature. (Springfield: 1995). pp. 690-693.
Mullane, Deirdre, ed. Crossing the Danger Water: Three Hundred Years of African-
American Writing. (New York: 1993). pp. 366-489.
Reference Library of Black America. (New York: 1990). pp. 976-978.
Watson, Steve. The Harlem Renaissance: Hub of African-American Culture 1920-30. 
(New York: 1995). pp. 1-20, 44-76, 140-164.