Harlem Renaissance. The Beginnings 1920-30s Literature Music Theater Art Politics Zora Neale Hurston

Harlem Renaissa

nce

The Beginnings• 1920-30s• Literature• Music• Theater• Art• Politics

Zora Neale Hurston

Groundwork• Education• Employment• Great Migration• Publications

Langston Hughes

Characteristics• Roots of the

African-American experience

• Racial pride

• Social and political equity

Cotton Club

Diversity of Expression

• Ghetto life — jazz• Sophistication and

glamour• Urban life • Rural South• Audience — black

or white; not mixed

Ending and Influence• Great Depression

• Segregated Harlem• Harlem exodus• Resurrected in

1980s and 90s

Louis Armstrong

Lasting Legacy“Strange Fruit”

Billie Holiday

Southern trees bear a strange fruit,

Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,

Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,

Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant south,

The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,

Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,

Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,

For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,

For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,

Here is a strange and bitter crop.

Lasting Legacy“'Tain't Nobody's Business If I Do”

Bessie Smith

There ain't nothing I can do,

Or nothing I can say,

That the folks don't criticize me;

But I'm gonna do just as I

Would do anyway,

And I don't care if they all despise me!

If I should take a notion

To jump into the ocean,

'Tain't nobody's business if I do, do, do, love, do, do.

If I let my best companion,Drive me right in the canyon,'Tain't nobody's business if I do, if I do.

Lasting Legacy"Nobody's Business"Rihanna feat. Chris Brown

You'll always be mine, sing it to the worldAlways be my boy, I'll always be your girlNobody's business, ain't nobody's businessAin't nobody's business,But mine, and my babyMine, and my baby,But mine, and my babyBut mine, and my baby, oohI love to love to love you babyI love to love to love you babyMe and you, get it?Ain't nobody's businessSaid it ain't nobody's business

Echos Past and Present

“If We Must Die”

By Claude McKay

If we must die, let it not be like hogs

Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,

While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,

Making their mock at our accursèd lot.

If we must die, O let us nobly die,

So that our precious blood may not be shed

In vain; then even the monsters we defy

Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!

O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!

Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,

And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!

What though before us lies the open grave?

Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,

Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

Art and Artists

Pablo Picasso

West African Mask

Aaron Douglas

We Wear the Maskby Paul Laurence Dunbar

We wear the mask that grins and lies,

It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—

This debt we pay to human guile;

With torn and bleeding hearts we smile

And mouth with myriad subtleties,

Why should the world be over-wise,

In counting all our tears and sighs?

Nay, let them only see us, while

We wear the mask.

We smile, but oh great Christ, our cries

To thee from tortured souls arise.

We sing, but oh the clay is vile

Beneath our feet, and long the mile,

But let the world dream otherwise,

We wear the mask!