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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Now we continue our WNYC centennial series, 100 Years of 100 Things. Today, 100 years of the Harlem Renaissance. It was a blossoming of Black culture across the arts centered in Harlem, featuring writers like Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer and and Zora Neale Hurston. The music of Duke Ellington and Fats Waller. Also the visual arts, maybe you saw the big show of this work at the Met last year, it is said to have ended by World War II, but its impact was felt beyond New York City and has certainly lasted these hundred years. With us to talk about what gave rise to the Harlem Renaissance and its lasting significance, we're joined now by Jacoby Adeshei Carter, a philosophy professor at Howard University and Director of the Alain Leroy Locke Society, Alain Locke being the so called dean of the Harlem Renaissance. Professor Carter is the author of African American Contributions to the Americas’ Cultures: A Critical Edition of Lectures by Alain Locke, and most recently co-editor of Philosophizing the Americas. Professor Carter, we're honored that you could join us for this 100 Years of 100 Things segment. Welcome to WNYC.

Jacoby Adeshei Carter: Good morning, Brian. Thanks for having me. I'm a longtime listener, yet to be a caller and happy to be a first-time interviewee.

Brian Lehrer: I'm so honored that you're a listener. Why the term "Harlem Renaissance," first of all? If Renaissance is a rebirth of something, what was it-- or why that name for this period or these movements in the arts?

Jacoby Adeshei Carter: Well, there's two answers to that question, Brian. The first has to do with why Harlem, and the second has to do with why the Renaissance. Why Harlem? Because that was, at the time, the largest concentration of African-descended peoples in the United States. It was as a result of the demographic shift that was taking place in the country at the time, the cultural center of Black life in a lot of ways.

The artists that you've named and the artists that we all probably associate with that movement were gathered, in large part, around Harlem. To be sure, there were other parts of the United States that were also part of this larger movement, but Harlem was the center, the gravitas of what was taking place.

To Locke's mind, why a renaissance, is because Locke sees what's happening culturally with Black people in the United States at that time as on a par with other movements that are taking place in different cultures globally. He sees it as on a par with what he calls the Irish Renaissance, with the sorts of cultural innovations that are taking place in Palestine at the time.

Actually, in his opening essay to The New Negro, he talks about the way in which there's a cultural rebirth that's happening between the two wars. he doesn't know that the second war is coming in, but how there's a cultural rebirth that's taking place in various centers around the globe. He sees what's happening in the United States in that shift from the South to the North, and in the gravitas of culture that's taking root in places like Harlem and Chicago and Detroit as being very much of its time and on trend with the kind of cultural evolution that's happening.

Brian Lehrer: The start of the Harlem Renaissance is often dated to the publication of Alain Locke's anthology, The New Negro. When was that published? For you as a scholar of Locke, why was it so seminal?

Jacoby Adeshei Carter: It was published in 1925, and actually it was the follow up, if you will, to an earlier publication in that year. In March of 1925, Locke publishes a special issue of the magazine Survey Graphic that's titled Harlem: Mecca of The New Negro. It was there that he birthed the idea of bringing together in a single volume a representative sample of the cultural awakening that's taking place in the United States amongst the African American population. That earlier work already has essays in it by Locke. It features folks like W.E.B. Du Bois, Charles S. Johnson, some of Locke's Howard University colleagues.

It's as a result of a banquet that Locke attends with a bunch of young Black artists in Washington D.C. that-- Another thing, at this point, Locke has been fired from Howard University. Locke was dismissed from Howard University over some disagreements with the then president of the university between the years of 1924 and 1928. This is also coming at a time where, in his own career, Locke is undergoing a kind of shift and he sees the opportunity to work in an area of publishing reviews, literary assessments, cultural criticism of this artistic movement that's taking place. He actually gets a benefactor who sponsors his writing or his editorship of what would then become The New Negro: An Interpretation.

There are a number of things happening in Locke's own life and happening nationally and internationally that Locke seizes on with those two publications.

Brian Lehrer: Maybe interesting to say that Locke wasn't an artist himself, so why is he called the so called dean of this movement?

Jacoby Adeshei Carter: I think because he managed to accomplish something remarkable in those two publications, particularly the second publication, what we know now as The New Negro, something pretty remarkable. That is, he took what was a somewhat disparate movement that had lots of elements. By Locke's own estimation, this is a cultural movement, to be sure, in the way that he means it.

Undeniably, it's a racial movement. It's also a class movement. You see a large migration of working class and poor African American people from the South moving into more affluent urban centers. Not that they are necessarily occupying affluent positions when they land there, but they're moving from a really rural kind of atmosphere to an urban one. Locke manages to crystallize all of that in a single sort of presentation that makes it something that's identifiable and has a sort of identity of its own so that it can be set within a certain context.

In, one, being attuned to a good deal of what was happening and having a philosophical and thematic vision of what he thought was taking place, he was able to crystallize that in The New Negro and give it a sort of voice and a representation that made it make sense to people.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we're in our 100 Years of 100 Things series today. It's 100 years of the Harlem Renaissance. You heard our guest say that that seminal book about the Harlem Renaissance, The New Negro, dates to 1925, so we are exactly at the century mark, and we're going to open up the phones. Here's the question that you might answer, listeners, for some of you who are into some of this work, music, visual arts, literature. What work of art comes to mind for you when we talk about the Harlem Renaissance?

Maybe your grandparents or great grandparents took part in this era in some way producing or even just appreciating art or dancing at the Savoy, whatever. Tell us your Harlem Renaissance oral history story at 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. It doesn't even have to be that. Maybe some of you saw the Harlem Renaissance show at the Met last year and had a favorite piece from that that you want to shout out that people could see images of online or whatever.

What works of art come to mind when we talk about the Harlem Renaissance for you, whoever you are? If your grandparents or great grandparents took part in this era in any way, maybe you have an oral history story to tell us as well. 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692. With our guest, Jacoby Adeshei Carter, philosophy professor at Howard University and Director of the Alain Leroy Locke Society there, Locke again being the so called dean of the Harlem Renaissance.

Professor Carter, can I ask you the same question we're inviting the listeners to answer, maybe give our listeners an example of one work of literature or one work of visual art, maybe of music that exemplifies the era, especially for people unfamiliar? I think you might have even brought a little poem or two to read. Do I have that right?

Jacoby Adeshei Carter: I did. One I would certainly say is probably one of the more famous, might be a little bit off the beaten path, but not too much, is Cane by Gene Toomer. With that one, Brian, I would even recommend to your listeners that the audio version of that book is particularly interesting to listen to because one of the things that Toomer is most noted for is his really rhythmic and lyrical prose. There are times if you listen to the audio version of that instead of actually physically reading it, you can sometimes have a hard time deciphering when there's actual poem in the book versus just prose because it's so lyrical. It makes for an interesting listen.

The other one that I might suggest would be Passing by Nella Larsen. Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God is also another one that I would recommend as a good audiobook listen. Then in New York, I think you can find some of the sculpture of Richmond Barthé. I think the Met has some. On the visual side of things, that's a particular thing that I would recommend.

Brian Lehrer: You brought a couple of Langston Hughes poems?

Jacoby Adeshei Carter: I did. The first poem is one that Langston Hughes published in the Crisis. This was the magazine that was published by the NAACP under the leadership of W.E.B. Du Bois. This poem is titled Poem.

We have tomorrow bright before us like a flame,

Yesterday a night gone thing a sundown name,

and dawn today broad arch above the road we came, we march.

The second poem is titled Song.

Lovely dark and lonely one,

Bare your bosom to the sun.

Do not be afraid of light,

You who are a child of night.

Open wide your arms to life,

Whirl in the wind of pain and strife.

Face the wall with the dark closed gate,

Beat with bare brown fists and wait.

Brian Lehrer: Such simple titles. A Poem called Poem and one called Song. Do you want to talk about those at all and why you chose to read them, or let them stand on their own?

Jacoby Adeshei Carter: Well, I'll say a bit, and then perhaps they'll stand on their own from there. The first, I think, pays a little bit of a tribute both to what probably lots of folks, I think, are most familiar with from the Harlem Renaissance, particularly in the personage of Langston Hughes, his poetry.

Locke was certainly appreciator of poetry. I think in terms of the precursors to the Harlem Renaissance that Locke thinks were most influential in making the artistic movement possible and have the effect that it went on to have was the poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar. I think for Locke in particular, poetry holds a specially creative and imaginative and evocative kind of space. That's why I think he included those things.

Song, I think, also is one of those that plays on the idea that becomes important, particularly in the personages of folks like Hughes and McKay and Countee Cullen, the play in between the rhythmic lyricism of poetry and song in the African American tradition. I think poetry is one of the things that sits importantly and prominently at the center of a lot of what's going on in the Harlem Renaissance.

Brian Lehrer: Here's Paul in Queens with, I think, a family oriented oral history or oral history question. Paul, you're on WNYC with Professor Carter. Hi.

Paul: Hi. Thanks for taking my call. Carter, you said?

Brian Lehrer: Yes.

Jacoby Adeshei Carter: Yes.

Paul: My grandfather, Llewellyn Ransom, I don't know if he worked for Alain Locke. He went to Howard University in Washington, D.C. and apparently came to New York. That's the reason here, at the request, at the invitation of Alain Locke. I know this because I Googled my grandfather's name. I Google people from time to time to see what's going on, and I saw a lot of stuff about him and Countee Cullen. I don't know much about this, so I'm asking if you're doing research on this, have you encountered Llewellyn Ransom?

Jacoby Adeshei Carter: I haven't, not in particular, not that name, but I will certainly be on the lookout for it as I continue to work on all things Locke and the Harlem Renaissance.

Paul: Fabulous.

Jacoby Adeshei Carter: It makes sense around. Locke was a frequent visitor to New York City. Of course, he wasn't that far away, just in Washington, D.C. and towards the end of his career, once he retired from Howard University, he taught at a couple of places in New York before he ultimately passed.

Brian Lehrer: Paul, thank you for your call. Here's Jane in Manhattan, who I think has a favorite Harlem Renaissance author. Hi, Jane, you're on WNYC.

Jane: Hi, Brian. It's Jane Tillman Irving. I would certainly endorse Cane. It's a wonderful assemblage of a bit of-- I believe there's a play. There are short stories, there are poems. Cane by Jean Toomer. An unsung heroine of the Harlem Renaissance is Jessie Redmon Fauset. She wrote four novels. She was the literary editor of the Crisis magazine under Du Bois. Plum Bun is her masterpiece. It is about a young Black woman who lives in Philadelphia, comes to New York, passes for white and discovers that it isn't what she expected it to be.

Also, I would mention Dr. Alain Locke. When my parents were at Howard University, my father went there as an undergraduate and medical school. When my mother was there, she told me that Dr. Locke told his class that he did not give A's to women. I don't know how true it is, but that is what I was told.

Brian Lehrer: Ever hear that, Professor Carter, or come across it in your scholarship?

Jacoby Adeshei Carter: First time I heard that one. The suggestion of Jessie Redmon Fauset is an excellent one. In fact, one of the books that I was thinking of also recommending is her first novel, There Is Confusion, which Locke actually had a pretty high opinion of and heralded as one of the first novels to portray, in a realistic way, middle class African American life. Jessie Redmon Fauset [unintelligible 00:16:16]

Jane: That is absolutely true.

Jacoby Adeshei Carter: She also wrote that-

Jane: That is absolutely true.

Jacoby Adeshei Carter: Sorry, go ahead. I'm sorry.

Jane: No, I was going to say that's absolutely true. There Is Confusion is about middle class Black people. Plum Bun is a better novel, it's better constructed, but There Is Confusion is groundbreaking and was rejected by many publishers because they did not believe that Black people lived that way.

Brian Lehrer: Jane, thank you very much. We call it the Harlem Renaissance, but do I understand correctly that Alain Locke also saw similar kinds of arts movements taking place locally in other cities, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles?

Jacoby Adeshei Carter: That's correct. I think that's probably one of the important reasons why we see that shift. There's two important publications that come out in 1925, the special issue of Survey Graphic, and then the book that we know as The New Negro. Recall that the title of the first is Harlem: Mecca of The New Negro. Later, when Locke does the much larger volume, he titles it The New Negro: An Interpretation.

I think that a large part of the reason for that is that while he began thinking about and thematizing and philosophizing about this artistic movement from the perspective of Harlem, because it was the center, he very quickly realizes that it's a movement of national and international scale.

Then it becomes impossible to talk about the full range of artistic development and exploration that's taking place amongst African American folks without talking about places like Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, St. Paul and Baltimore, Philadelphia, where Locke himself was from, and also talking about the connection of those places to parts of the Caribbean and other parts of the world where this movement is being fueled by demographic shifts that are taking place because it's not just a movement of relatively poor Southern Blacks moving to urban centers in the United States. It's also an international transition from parts of Latin America and the Caribbean to the United States and then to further north.

Brian Lehrer: You didn't mention any Southern cities. Did Jim Crow at the time, we're talking 1920s through World War II, even lock out the arts?

Jacoby Adeshei Carter: It made it more difficult, for sure. Importantly, I think Locke sees it as a transition that enables the release of this sort of creative energy. Now, that said, there were, of course, places where you can see artistic production that's taking place in the South, but by far, the explosion of it that is keyed in on is taking place in urban centers in the Northeast.

Brian Lehrer: We're in our100 Years of 100 Things series. Today it's 100 years of the Harlem Renaissance with our guest in your oral histories and questions. Sharon in Queens Village, you are on WNYC. Hi, Sharon.

Sharon: Hi. Hi, Brian. Always love the show. I got a small grant from the Queens Council of the Arts, and I interviewed Estella Williams, whose father, Fritz Williams, entertained at The Savoy during that period. She also talked to me about the Black Star publishing music company that she worked at. I also spoke with Dick Campbell, who was a major entertainer during that time. He was also married to Muriel Rahn, who was also an actress during that period, beautiful lady. He also talked to me about how he worked for Capone's brother and how a lot of Black entertainers worked at the speakeasies because they got paid a lot of money.

I also spoke with Ms. Helen Brown, a long time Harlem residence, and she spoke to me about Casper Holstein and how he got kidnapped by Dutch Schultz and how all of Harlem went out to look for him. They told me some really interesting stories about the Harlem Renaissance. She was also a friend with A'Lelia Walker, Madam C.J. Walker's daughter. She told me about the visit they took to her beautiful estate [unintelligible 00:21:02] I guess that's considered mid state New York.

I got some wonderful stories out of them, and I'm trying to turn it into something. I'm trying to convert it actually to this. I've been working on it for a while. I read Passing, Cane, all of Laura Neale Hurston. The interest in it came from my father, because my father came to Harlem, I guess, in the '30s, but he always talked to me about just different people, and Marcus Garvey. I grew up in Harlem, so it's always been a serious interest for me.

Brian Lehrer: Great stuff. I hope your project comes to fruition. Professor Carter, you want to talk to Sharon at all?

Jacoby Adeshei Carter: Absolutely. It sounds like a wonderful project. I am envious of the deep and multifaceted connections you have to this movement throughout Harlem, and I'd love to hear what happens with the project in the future.

Sharon: Unfortunately, all the people I spoke with are no longer here. I caught them at the right time because they were all in their 80s and 90s and what have you. I also talked to Dr. John Henry Clark, and he spoke to me about why the Harlem Renaissance happened, so I'm pushing.

Brian Lehrer: Sharon, thank you. Thank you so much. Keep calling us. Professor Carter, the Harlem Renaissance is usually identified, I think, as this specific era that began by 1925 and ended either with the Great Depression or World War II. What ended it?

Jacoby Adeshei Carter: Well, the Great Depression and the World War II. I think Locke himself would tell you that the artists of the time themselves ended it. One of the reasons, I'm going back to your earlier question, Brian, why he calls it the Harlem Renaissance is he thinks it constitutes a kind of new birth. Right. We're dealing with new artistic representations of African American folks within various American contexts.

He thinks that vital art, cultures that are known for producing art of universal appeal and quality and substance, is regenerative. Every few generations, innovations, new forms, new techniques happen. Locke thinks that what ultimately kills the Harlem Renaissance is it becoming overly-materialistic and capitalistic and falling victim to its own success, so that artists begin to produce more of what they think audiences want than pressing the envelope in the way that he thinks is vital and important.

I think it's a combination of those things. In the same way that it was demographic and sociological phenomena taking place that led to the rise of it, I don't think you can divorce those same sorts of considerations from what ultimately led to its decline, but viewed from an aesthetic position, it lost a sort of impetus that was needed to, not just preserve itself, but to push itself forward in future and new iterations.

Brian Lehrer: Don, in Harlem. You're on WNYC. Hi, Don.

Don: Hi. I used to make house calls in Harlem when I was a physician, and there was a place called the Dunbar where Marcus Garvey and Du Bois supposed to have lived. What's his name? Booker T. Washington, had moved to the Dunbar when he visited. That's 149th Street and 8th Avenue. Also, I've heard that Ho Chi Minh lived in Harlem and that the father of India's Constitution, who was an untouchable, also lived in Harlem. He was referenced in Isabel Wilkerson's movie Caste. Do you know anything about Ho Chi Minh being in Harlem and the father of India's 1947 constitution also living in Harlem round about this time, and, of course, Garvey and Du Bois living in Harlem at the same time?

Jacoby Adeshei Carter: Garvey and Du Bois were connected with Harlem, I'm sure. That Ho Chi Minh was there? That's a new bit of information for me, but interesting nonetheless. To get back to Brian's question, part of the reason why the movement is so centered around Harlem and named after Harlem in some iterations, because there was so much going on there culturally. Something that's not even, strictly speaking, part of the Harlem Renaissance itself, the Garvey movement is happening at the same time. Of course, it's impossible to completely separate the influence that those two movements that are occurring simultaneously in Harlem are having on one another.

There's so much going on there and so many interesting points of intersection and ways to tease things out. The particular connection of Ho Chi Minh being in Harlem that I'm unfamiliar with.

Brian Lehrer: Really interesting, Don. Thank you for that. Building out from there, can you draw a straight line or any kind of a line between the Harlem Renaissance movement before World War II and the Civil Rights Movement that came right after it?

Jacoby Adeshei Carter: You might be able to draw a straight one with a few breaks in it, or else a very crooked one. If one wants a sort of algorithmic connection between this happened that we call the Harlem Renaissance, and it had these features, and that led to the Civil Rights Movement, I don't think you could possibly get that. At the same time, I think insofar as Locke understood the movement as being a departure from what had been most common in American society, which is the representation in art of the old Negro, he calls it, where that particular subject is caricaturized, stereotyped, is treated as a social problem and not treated as the existential being that it really is.

What Locke thinks is important is the idea that for the first time in a large scale that's recognized throughout the country, African American persons are able to give their own voice and articulate in their own way their experiences as citizens in this country. They're able to present themselves as they wish to be presented rather than merely respond to the caricatures and stereotypes of others.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, go ahead. You wanted to finish the thought? Go ahead.

Jacoby Adeshei Carter: Yes. Exactly how you draw a line from that kind of a shift to the extension of civil rights and the like, you need a sociologist instead of a philosopher for that one. Certainly it seems to me that that sort of shift in perspective and understanding of African descended peoples and their place in American society has some role to play in that way.

Brian Lehrer: Well, maybe this is a question for a philosopher. The perennial question, does art lead to or make space for political change or is it the other way around? How do you see that when it comes to the Harlem Renaissance?

Jacoby Adeshei Carter: I see that as the quintessential debate between Du Bois and Locke, and I don't know who won. Du Bois famously thinks all art is propaganda. Art is a political tool that always, even when it's denied to be, is being put to the service of some political agenda or another, and he thinks that what's important about the movement is that it take the reins and use art as a mechanism for moving the social situation in the right direction. Locke is vehemently opposed to this.

Locke is vehemently opposed to this. Locke thinks all art is not propaganda. Locke famously talks about, and is criticized by Du Bois, doing art for art's sake. Now, I think as someone who was likely influenced a bit by the pragmatist philosophical tradition, Locke's understanding of what it means to do art for art's sake is not as solipsistic and individualistic as it sounds. Locke certainly would not deny that art plays a crucial role in certain kinds of social transformation, or it can be a sort of record or register of certain kinds of transformations that are taking place socially. Locke certainly thought that it needn't be the aim and motivation of good art to serve political purposes. He was at odds with the boys on that issue.

Brian Lehrer: We leave it unresolved in that respect for this conversation.

Jacoby Adeshei Carter: I could pick a favorite if you like, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: You get the right.

Jacoby Adeshei Carter: I'm more inclined to think that Locke probably got it right, but in a way that I think doesn't really fail to appreciate the point that Du Bois is [unintelligible 00:30:35]

Brian Lehrer: One more call. Elizabeth, in Lincoln, Massachusetts, you're on WNYC in our 100 Years of 100 Things, 100 Years of the Harlem Renaissance segment. Hi, Elizabeth.

Elizabeth: Dream come true, Brian. So great to speak to you and Dr. Clark. I'm from Brooklyn, New York, multigenerational family, and I wanted to bring up another aspect of this, which is Marcus Garvey and his influence on the American Islamic movement among African Americans and specifically the Moorish Science Temple of America.

We're talking about identities and how they were explored in the Harlem Renaissance, and I think that's a big piece of it, which was that the Moorish Science Temple of America [unintelligible 00:31:14], which I was raised in, really had a strong footing in Harlem, and this idea that we could align not only with Christianity, but also with Islam in this American kind of representation of it. Often in the discussions of Harlem Renaissance, I don't often hear the trying on of different religious traditions and redefining identity among African Americans in that period.

Brian Lehrer: Professor Carter, to that, and then we're going to be out of time.

Jacoby Adeshei Carter: To that I would say that, that's certainly present. That might be a difference between the artistic movement that is the Harlem Renaissance and the more social movement, that is Garveyism. For his own part, though, Locke himself had some affinity with the Baháʼí faith. It's debated as to whether Locke was himself Baháʼí or no, but he certainly represented a sort of religious vision that wanted to recognize the diversity of religious perspectives and identities amongst African descended peoples in the United States and thought that the incorporation of that variety of elements into the fullest range of expression of Black life was certainly an important thing to endorse.

Brian Lehrer: Elizabeth, thank you. Please call us again and we'll have to leave it there. That's thing number 71 in our series, 100 Years of 100 Things. It was 100 years of the Harlem Renaissance today. We thank our guest, Jacoby Adeshei Carter, philosophy professor at Howard University and director of the Alain Leroy Locke Society and co-editor of, most recently Philosophizing the Americas.

We're going to go out, Professor Carter, with a little bit of music just for the fun of it, Duke Ellington, as we end this segment, East St. Louis Toodle-Oo from 1927 when he led the house band at the Cotton Club. Before we bring on the Duke, thank you very much. This has been really wonderful and an inspiration.

Jacoby Adeshei Carter: Thank you so much, Brian. I really had a great time.

 

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