Welcome to Brainstuff production of iHeart Radio, Hey brain Stuff Lorn Bogebaum here. From poetry and prose to music, painting, and sculpture, the cultural movement known as the Harlem Renaissance produced an unprecedented array of art and social change in
the United States. The end of the Civil War in eighteen sixty five ushered in the emancipation of hundreds of thousands of Black Americans who had been enslaved in the South, and by nineteen twenty about three hundred thousand of them had moved north in search of economic, social, and political freedoms. This is known as the Great Migration, and it was
also a time of general urbanization. Northern cities like St. Louis, Chicago, and Cleveland saw many new citizens, but Harlem, in particular, a three square mile or seven hundred and seventy seven Hector neighborhood in New York's northern Manhattan, became a destination for around one hundred and seventy five thousand Black Americans seeking a fresh start. It offered them lower real estate
and rental prices than many other locations. But Harlem was a significant city for a number of reasons, as Black Americans began re establishing and redefining what it meant to be black in a post slavery world. We spoke with William J. Maxwell, professor of English and African and African American Studies at Washington University in Saint Louis. He said, to think about it in a concrete and practical way.
New York was where the existing artistic infrastructure was a big publishing companies were now in New York and no longer in Boston. Modern art was centered in New York, and Harlem was becoming an attractive destination for black artists. Harlem was also so important because it was the most international black city in the United States. That's the place Caribbean migrants came, and you had people from Barbados and
Haiti pouring in. Jamaicans like political activist Marcus Garvey and the poet Claude Mackay were deeply involved in the movement and were coming to New York along with a lot of Africans outside of Africa or Paris. New York was probably the most international black city in the world at that point. While changes were flourishing in other parts of the country as well. The movement an explosion of literary, artistic, intellectual, and social change among Black Americans quickly became known as
the Harlem Renaissance. Maxwell said it was a self conscious movement in the sense that the people who organized it knew they were holding a renaissance. It was called different things at the time, but it wasn't the kind of esthetic or cultural event that was only labeled from a distance of years. It was labeled at the time it
was actually happening. While many view the Harlem Renaissance as a primarily literary movement that included the birth of works from leading poet and author Langston Hughes, the Golden Era that lasted from approximately the nineteen teens through the mid thirties also saw the proliferation of visual arts, music, theater, and more. But at its core, the Harlem Renaissance was more than an artistic movement. It was an age dedicated
to reclaiming and redefining blackness in a new way. Maxwell explained, a renaissance is about the idea of rebirth. There are examples like what the Italian Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance had a similar idea in the rebirth of African culture as it was before slavery, but it was also about reinventing a connection all over the black world for cultural possibility and power. What's paradoxical about the Harlem Renaissance is the black artists were defining what it meant to be a
modern black people. In other words, for black people to be urban or to have found various forms of economic freedom, which is one reason it was centered in New York. After the Great Migration. There was a revival of African culture as it was before slavery, but the more important piece was defining what it meant to be a Black American in relation to modernity. According to Maxwell, the significance of the Harlem Renaissance extended beyond the arts and permi
at culture as a whole. He said, there were a lot of different styles, and all these people were trying to redefine Blackness as modern. One of the basic elements of nineteenth and twentieth century racism was the idea that black people were primitive or behind the curve of history. The Harlem Renaissance really pushed against that and suggested the Black people maybe the most modern people who have the
capacity for change. One crucial way Black Americans pushed back against historic racism was to effectively transform the country's musical landscape. While jazz music had roots in southern towns and cities like New Orleans and Memphis, and was also developed in cities like Chicago, it found fame on the East Coast. Maxwell explained classical nineteen twenties jazz wasn't invented in New York City, but that's where jazz music first became marketable
at a national commodity. Artists like Bessie Smith and Duke Ellington weren't from New York, but they played clubs there and established an audience there. New York is where early jazz joined the national entertainment industries. According to Maxwell, it's thanks to New York that the jazz imported from elsewhere began to be played on the radio and in movie theaters. However, a specific style of jazz did originate there. He said.
Some jazz did get invented in New York, a specific style called stride piano from artists like Fats waller In James P. Johnson, who wrote the music for the Charleston. Those guys showed the power of New York City as an entertainment capital, and that they became professional songwriters in
Tin pan Alley. While the Harlem Renaissance continues to be celebrated for the contributions of renowned figures like dancer Josephine Baker and artist Aaron Douglas, there's still a lot to be discovered and learned from the era, unpublished novels by
authors like Claude McKay, for example. Maxwell said there was a great variety of work created during the Harlem Renaissance that we don't understand yet, but people know the works of Langston Hughes, the great poet who produced classical A Tree Soaked in Black folklore and speech styles, and Zoraneil Hurston, one of the great storytellers and anthropologists, who is also
known for bringing black oral forms into prose. But beyond that, there's a lot of other work like that from a young novelist named Rudolf Fisher, who was also a serious physician and wrote witty novels like Walls of Jericho. Also, there were young poets like Helene Johnson, who wrote witty,
almost Dorothy Parker like pieces. The Harlem Renaissance effectively ended in the nineteen thirties after the economic effects of the great depression set in, causing businesses, nightclubs, and publishing houses to shutter and writers and artists to scatter in search
of employment. Although the historic period of the Harlem Renaissance hit its height a century ago, its influence has continuously impacted American culture through the decades, from its effect on the civil rights movement of the nineteen sixties to its
lasting legacy in modern arts and culture. Carry de Winz, a distinguished professor of history at Texas learn University, put it this way, in the Harlem Renaissance was the first time that a considerable number of mainstream publishers and critics took African American literature seriously, and it was the first time that African American literature and the arts attracted significant attention from the nation at large. Today's episode was written
by Michelle Konstantinovski and produced by Tyler Clay. For more on this and lots of other topics, is it how stuffworks dot com. Brain Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio is at the heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.