David and Art - Looking at the Harlem Renaissance

One of the most enjoyable things I do in my career as an academic is take part in something called the Lifelong Learning Program hosted by Baylor University’s Mayborn Museum. It’s a program that offers academic classes to senior citizens on any number of topics. The classes are usually four sessions long—one 90-minute meeting per week over the course of four weeks. Over the past 15 years or so I’ve offered various classes like “Four Military Presidents,” “Four Lesser-Known Presidents,” “The History of the Medal of Honor,” “Lesser Known Figures from the American Revolution,” “The Historical Roots of Current Contentions,” and many more that I can’t call to mind right now.

Last Thursday, I started a four-part series on the Harlem Renaissance. That was a cultural movement that began in New York City in the 1920s and, for my money at least, is the most coherent and consequential artistic movement in the 20th century. Most people, it turns out, are not really familiar with the Harlem Renaissance even though they might know a name or two from it. And they may recognize some of its music.

As a movement it’s rooted deeply in the particulars of history of the time it emerged. The writers, poets, journalists, musicians, dancers, and painters who made it up were all shaped by that history. And they all had one or more ties to the neighborhood of Harlem, that, by 1920, was becoming the center of African-American life in the United States.

Because it’s a movement rooted in history, the history comes first. The history creates the energy, and the energy creates the flowering of culture. That’s how that works.

The immediate precursors of the Harlem Renaissance were, first of all, the segregation and racism that was permeated much of the country. Secondly, there was the experience of World War I. And thirdly, a movement called the Great Migration. These were the formative historical ingredients. Many African Americans living in the South—which is where most of them lived at the beginning of the 20th century—sought to flee the quite literally life-threatening conditions in the region by any means they could. As years went by, increasing numbers of them wound up in New York City. Tens of thousands of men, women, and children went to Harlem over the first two decades of the 20th century.

The Harlem Renaissance is a perfect example of how history and art intersect, and how both help us to understand the other more fully. Let’s spend a little bit of time talking about this next time.

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