During a time of artistic reconstruction and identity confusion during the 1900s, a variety of literary activists challenged the artistic community. They utilized a plethora of differentiated belief systems and ideas of what the new renaissance should resemble for people of color to make their mark on the black renaissance movement. Various literary activists and significant authors with differing stories to tell all carry their own perspectives on target sociopolitical issues like racial attitudes in literature, conforming to white ideals, and the very meaning of racial identity concerning their art forms of prose, poetry, and literature. They contribute their distinctive ideals to society through their reflective essays and shared beliefs on the culture of racial identity during the creative shift for blacks in the Harlem Renaissance.
Langston Hughes was a leader of the Harlem Renaissance during the 1920s. His work inspired and frustrated many individuals in the black and white communities both. Hughes published his book, The Weary Blues, in 1926; it was his very first published literary venture that featured his poetry. It was also a very significant enterprise in defining the poetic aspects of the renaissance movement. He strongly believed that Jazz is a worthy addition to poetry. In fact, a lot of his early poetry had domestic and musical emphasis like Jazz; then, his works grew more political during the Great Depression, when his Marxist views also evolved. The former notion concerning Jazz is important, because poetry, to many European literature experts, is of the highest class in literature; it involves and emphasizes lofty subjects like love, spirituality, and death. In his 1956 presentation, “Jazz as Communication” at the Newport Casino Theater, Hughes shares the Jazz affiliates who have influenced his own Jazz-inspired poetry: Jean Paul Sartre and W.C. Handy (Hughes n.p). He claims that these writers all “[put] Jazz into words,” supporting his belief that this musical practice greatly surpasses its traditional sphere of performance and connects to other intellectual art forms like poetry and literature. Thus, by intertwining Jazz and poetry, Hughes began to revolutionize the Harlem Renaissance.
Hughes’ landmark essay, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” was also paramount in defining the literary and artistic movement during the Harlem Renaissance (Huggins 305). He asserts that society needs those writers who separate from the white society standards and embrace their “blackness” from a cultural standpoint (Huggins 305). This viewpoint sparked a charged conversation within the wider African American community in that George Schuyler wrote a response essay, “The Negro-Art Hokum,” in his popular African American newspaper, The Pittsburgh Courier (Huggins 309). This essay was seen by many as a direct response to Hughes’ “Racial Mountain” essay. In this, Schuyler questioned Hughes’ notions about the need for artists to separate their traditions concerning their craft and literature from that of the white community. He claimed that there is no such thing as “African American art” contrary to Hughes’ take on the movement. He believed what people tried to coin as “African American art” during this renaissance is actually simply American art (Huggins 311).
However, Hughes was a huge believer that a black person cannot separate their art from their racial identity, and that they should not want to anyways. He claimed that everything in the 1920s for African Americans was a race issue. This is especially true, since he was often criticized by other blacks for not presenting them with an exaggerated degree of respectability and bribed by whites to portray blacks as more stereotypical to what they already expect of the African American community. Henry Anthony in his novel, Searching for the New Black Man: Black Masculinity and Women's Bodies, asserts that these stereotypes and lies “serve more as reflections of a white American psyche afraid to come to terms with the possibilities and challenges implicit in black manhood,” which implies that white society refuses to acknowledge the humanity and prominent skills that the African American society poses to offer to this civilization (Anthony 5). These humanity and skills, black specific humanity and skills, were what Hughes wanted to present in his projects during the renaissance: the realism in the lives of African Americans.
Hughes’ works, his aforementioned essay in particular, also illustrated the need for black specific celebration and recognition concerning African American creativity. Newer forms of artistry like the Blues, Spirituals, Literature, and Jazz during the Harlem Renaissance was very important to Hughes’ image of black art. As such, rejecting assimilation and emphasizing racial identification were quite prominent in his perspective of art that blacks should create. He thought that if they repress their innate “blackness” as an artist, then they also lose their artistic potential. Hughes claimed that “this is the mountain standing in the way of any true Negro art in America—this urge within the race toward whiteness, the desire to pour racial individuality into the mold of American standardization, and to be as little Negro and as much American as possible” (Huggins 305). In this, he asserts that experiences shape who a person is or who a person becomes, and racial identification should be a permanent and prominent part of this aspect of their artistic expression.
Like Hughes, W.E.B. DuBois dramatically influenced Black Nationalism and Pan African literary recognition. He was a strong activist against the discrimination and racial prejudice that predicates inequality for people of color in society. Much like Hughes and fellow black writer, Richard Wright, this black nationalist focus on analyzing the deep-rooted challenges of American racism centralized most of DuBois’ literary works and theories. Dudley Randall, in his poem, “ Booker T. and W.E.B.,” voices DuBois as firmly supporting a liberal arts education: “some men rejoice in skill of hand/and some in cultivating land/but there are others who maintain/the right to cultivate the brain” (Randall 13-16). Randall claims that DuBois thought the liberal arts education offered intellectual skills for blacks to produce social change in their communities. In this Randall indirectly alludes to DuBois’ term, “The Talented Tenth,” that he coined to refer to the smaller group of educated blacks that can promote this social change. As such, Randall’s poem also emphasizes DuBois’ claim that people of color should band together to protest and to agitate the white supremacy social order at this time.
DuBois is also infamous among black scholars for his belief in a double consciousness mindset in African Americans. DuBois’ double consciousness, according to an excerpt from his book, The Souls of Black Folk, is when an individual feels “two warring ideals in one dark body” and a sense of “two-ness” (DuBois n.p.). Wright utilizes this ideal in many of his characters, specifically the protagonist in his short story, “The Man Who was Almost a Man,” Dave Saunders. This character, in particular, feels an added sense of emasculation and, as DuBois would claim, “this longing to attain self-conscious manhood” from the racist society which DuBois challenges as well (DuBois n.p.).
Like Hughes and DuBois’ racial emphasis on identity, Wright, in particular, can attest to the lower status and societal expectations of African Americans in that, as a child, he would challenge the adults around him, “asking them about the racial inequalities he sees and why they have come to be, but is never able to receive any answers…constantly challenges the system he lives in” (Turner 2). As such, Wright also exhibits the identity crisis that DuBois and Hughes theorized through presenting the ideal of masculinity as a failed intent and truly illuminating the challenges associated with black individuals in a white-dominated American society.
While also emphasizing the “blackness” identity crisis like Hughes and DuBois, Wright’s fiction and biographies usually portray the experiences of African Americans like Dave Saunders in his story, “The Man Who was Almost a Man.” Specifically, these experiences include, as aforementioned, the tenuous relations between whites and blacks in the larger American society. As such, there is a coming of age theme in this short story regarding Dave’s exploration from boyhood to attempted manhood. Wright utilizes significant motifs and symbols like the gun he purchases in order to characterize this oppressive society that a black man must survive and the struggle for Dave to find recognition as the man he believes himself to be. These motifs are written through a naturalist lens as Wright tended to gravitate towards naturalism that tackles collective issues, truths, and experiences that generates a wider audience of people from many races.
This lens, specifically, engages with persecution and uncontrollable instances of oppression that Wright portrays through his artistic and literary ventures. For instance, Dave Saunders finds himself caught up in devastating and irrepressible circumstances that leave him helplessly maltreated. Wright artistically fashions Dave to feel so victimized, in fact, that this character decides that he needs a gun “jusa enough t let im know Dave Saunders is a man” (Norton 1069). The gun represents potential power and dominant facilities. Even though Dave does not understand how to harness such power and strength, Wright implies that the pistol affords Dave a sense of power and masculinity for which he thoroughly longs to possess. In this, Wright characterizes Dave as insecure in his own masculinity and introduces an ominous naïve tone with which his audience can critique the larger effects of white prominence in the American society.
DuBois’ theory of consciousness is evident here in the idea that Dave Saunders feels confused and victimized, longing for “the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face” to open again and allow him some control over his own life (DuBois n.p.). Wright utilizes Dave’s dynamic character to investigate the disparaging and vicious power of racism and racist ideologies and the appalling and utter lack of socioeconomic opportunity and economic stability on the lives of African Americans in the United States. To this effect, Wright develops an increasingly tumultuous internal conflict present in Dave as he tries to reconcile his differences and find his own hidden potential that white society completely rejects. This internal conflict, then, highlights the broader African American struggle to gain greater acceptance, freedoms, and more rights for their larger public of colored communities. Through this, he also illustrates to the wider community that blackness and literature cannot be wholly separated. The politics of identity and emasculation are too much to ignore for African Americans, writers in particular.
Alternatively, on writing identity, Zora Neale Hurston and Claude McKay, to some extent, offer entirely different perspectives and focuses. As a black, feminist writer, Hurston does not conform to the ideal that black artists must produce texts to dismantle racism. In fact, she rejects the idea of black masculinity in terms of white men completely. Like Hurston, Claude McKay more positively than not emphasizes the beauty of African American women by not utilizing the theme of passing for white as more attractive in his novel, Home to Harlem. Similarly to Hurston, McKay also rejects the notion of black masculinity that so many other male authors emphasize. For instance, his male characters, Jake and Ray, are characterized as sexually driven brutes who treat women horribly. Therefore, McKay criticizes black men like this by negatively portraying them as savage animals who cannot respect women. He characterizes black men as creeps who degrade black women, drawing attention to the flawed and disturbing general idea of masculinity as a general concept instead of a racial one. In a comparable way, Hurston also characterizes men in Their Eyes Were Watching God as pompous and condescending to women as well.
In her novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston explores the storyline concerning a black woman who seeks fulfillment in her life outside of the politics of respectability and who redefines what a black woman should be. By rejecting traditional notions of what masculinity and femininity should be, Hurston greatly differs from many of the black male writers like Booker T. Washington, Wright and Hughes. She instead characterizes black women with a specified feminist lens which was unheard of by many writers at this time.
In Their Eyes, Hurston claims that black women are the mules of the world: “de nigger woman is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see” (14). This major metaphor carries throughout her novel; mules are seen as stubborn and often seen as the subjects of ridicule like black women in society. Additionally, mules are characterized as common and, unlike horses, not a great representation of any regal animals. Hurston presents this metaphor against her feminist lens to claim that Janie, her independent protagonist, should not see herself like with these aforementioned mule characteristics even though the larger society might. In this, Hurston criticizes the must-have politics of respectability that imply Janie must become a married “respectable” woman to surpass this representation. So, while Hurston actively fought against oppression, she specifically emphasized the importance of gender as well as the oppression involved in a racist America.
However, unlike Hurston, male theorists like Langston Hughes, W.E.B. DuBois, and Richard Wright focused on black masculinity began to cut away at the prevalent, white, masculine dominance that excessively dictates American popular ideals. This challenge emanates through to their work. Richard Wright forged the way to illuminate African American plights that he and his society experienced. He highlighted these post slavery challenges in his classic texts such as Black Boy and Native Son. Wright readily portrayed the intense poverty and his own correlating personal accounts of cultural discrimination and racism in the American civilization.
Wright explores the effect of racism on those who experience oppression in a society through his quintessential protest novel, Native Son. Wright’s message in this novel is starkly different from those messages of Zora Neale Hurston, Claude McKay, Charles Chesnutt, and Langston Hughes in that he asserts that it is the duty of the writer to protest horrible living conditions. Because of this, he would write a text like Native Son that was so horrific in its subject matter that it drives home his racial protest in very agonizing ways. Therefore, Wright explores the social and political conditions that create monsters like his antihero, Bigger.
Through Bigger’s psychological mutilation that the reader experiences throughout Native Son, Wright offers the American populace a differing perspective that highlights the emotional and psychological consequences of racism facing African Americans in the 1930s. Bigger, as an allusion by Wright to racism, forebodes that “something awful’s going to happen” (20). He goes further to describe the race divide as the overpowering and hostile force that works against his life: “‘Every time I get to thinking about me being black and they being white, me being here and they being there, I feel like something awful’s going to happen to me…’” (20). In this, Wright illustrates the distrust and fear that blacks had in this time period towards whites which led to Bigger’s devolution into a murdering savage that is created by racism. DuBois’ double consciousness theory can apply here in that Bigger continually struggles with his blackness and how to cope as a black man, world stacked against him, in a white-dominated society. As such, Wright claims that if America does not change social, political, and economic circumstances in this country, menaces will develop that will bring this country down.
Like Wright, Claude McKay also contributed to the racial rebellion with his own protest poetry like his haunting and graphic poem, “The Lynching.” McKay, also illustrates the horrors of racism by utilizing poetry as a form of protest. McKay alludes to religion and spirituality to condemn racism and the act of the lynching in this poem. He calls it an “awful sin remained still unforgiven” connecting it to the Christian figure of God that he understands the majority of white people in America worship (4). Through the denouncing diction of “awful sin” and “unforgiven,” McKay claims that these racist acts are so heinous that not even their God would forgive them. Since lynching was a common practice during the twentieth century, McKay, like these other advocates, wanted to warn Americans that treating something this savage as commonplace is a dangerous and disturbing habit. He attempts to, by using enjambment throughout the poem, make readers stop and process the barbarity of these events and the horrors of racism in America.
Wright specifically emphasized the desire male children have to become men as co-opted by white racist ideology in “The Man Who Was Almost a Man.” For instance, Dave Saunders finally makes the decision to empower himself, when he jumped the train to find that “somewhere where he could be a man” (Norton 1069). Critics have varying viewpoints on this theory and they come to different conclusions on how or why Wright has portrayed this ideal in his works. For instance, in Anthony Dawahare’s article, "From No Man's Land to Mother-land: Emasculation and Nationalism in Richard Wright's Depression Era Urban Novels,” Dawahare claims that “since all male workers are raised in a patriarchal society, their feelings of powerlessness can evoke feelings of emasculation” (Dawahare 4). He further takes this point in identifying that Wright “shows how these feelings of emasculation can be intensified for black men, since they are symbolically emasculated as ‘boys’ in a racist discourse” (Dawahare 4).
At the time this story was published, civil rights activists like DuBois and Wright promoted the quiet rebellion where they refused to comply with chauvinistic, racist, and humiliating experiences offered by the white man. As such, Dave’s sudden departure at the end of Wright’s story parallels the larger Great Migration of black Americans from the South to better opportunities in the North. Therefore, his escape from oppression in his hometown becomes Wright’s symbolic renunciation in that Dave rejects the agrarian servitude offered by his white bosses in favor of an unmarked future left for him to claim. Running away from the life of oppression and disparaging resignation allows Dave Saunders the opportunity to truly find himself. According to DuBois, leaving behind this strangling oppression might potentially also help individuals like Dave to cast aside the double consciousness provided by their white, dominant counterparts. Therefore, both DuBois and Wright both highlight the importance of control over one’s life and the universal necessity for an accepted identity within a chosen society.
These differing black activist writers exert this revelation of “warring ideals,” black artistry, and preservation of identity to promote the fight for civil rights and black nationalistic recognition as human beings who deserve the same as their entitled, white neighbors. They portray through their art that identity is very important in literature and poetry. These authors challenge the sense of black-identity negation and emasculation thrust on black Americans. They also determine that the perceptions that others create of black individuals should matter significantly less than the perceptions they create of themselves in a white-dominated American society. By utilizing literature, poetry, and other artistic ventures, these literary activists forge their way through criticism to sway the stereotypical perspectives of African Americans during the renaissance movement.
References
Dawahare, Anthony. "From No Man's Land to Mother-land: Emasculation and
Nationalism in Richard Wright's Depression Era Urban Novels." The Free Library. 2008 African American Review 26 Feb.2017 https://www.thefreelibrary.com/From+No+Man%27s+Land+to+Mother-land%
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Du Bois, W.E.B. “Lit2Go.” Chapter 1: Of Our Spiritual Strivings | The Souls of Black Folk | W.E. B. Du Bois | Lit2Go ETC, Lit2Go, 1903, etc.usf.edu/lit2go/203/the-souls-of-black-folk/4428/chapter-1-of-our-spiritual-strivings/.
Huggins, Nathan Irvin. Voices from the Harlem Renaissance. Oxford University Press, 1995.
Hughes, Langston. “Jazz as Communication by Langston Hughes.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69394/jazz-as-communication.
Hurston, Z. N. (2008). Their eyes were watching God. New York: HarperLuxe.
Levine, Robert S. The Norton Anthology of American Literature.
McKay, C. (2014). Home to harlem. Melbourne, Vic.: Wildwood Publishing.
McKay, C. (n.d.). The Lynching by Claude McKay. Retrieved December 13, 2017, from
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56983/the-lynching
Randall, Dudley. “Booker T. and W.E.B.” Booker T. and W.E.B., by Dudley Randall, Broadside Press, 1969, www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47690/booker-t-and-web.
Turner, Sarah J. "An Insatiable Hunger: A Literary Analysis of Richard Wright's Autobiography, 'Black Boy'." Inquiries Journal/Student Pulse 1.12 (2009). <http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/a?id=81>.
Wright, R. (1940). Native son. New York: HarperCollins.
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