When exactly did the Harlem Renaissance begin, when did it end, and where did it happen? Although Harlem in the 1920s remains its most celebrated spatiotemporal arena, scholars have called for a broader historical and geographical framework for understanding the movement. Some scholars view the “Harlem Renaissance” as an anachronism and a misnomer, since the term was applied retrospectively and imposes narrow time and space limits that don’t adequately account for African American cultural production in the first half of the twentieth century.
But how do we recover the real Harlem Renaissance? How do we distinguish the truth from the myths? One way is to go back to origins—to the magazines and first editions to read about the Harlem Renaissance as it happened. CAUTION: these magazines and first editions show that, from the get-go, different editors, writers, and artists had competing visions of what the movement should be. They debated issues such as: How assimilationist? How assertive? How bourgeois? How black?
To read these debates as they happened, we will examine a special Harlem issue of Survey Graphic. From 1921 to 1932, the magazine was published as a supplement to The Survey, a mainstream magazine with a largely white readership, which focused on sociological and political research and analysis of national and international issues. Survey Graphic offered a stronger emphasis on illustrations, photographs, and visual culture. Bidding his readers to “embark on a voyage of discovery,” Editor Paul Kellogg used a metaphor of a ship in his inaugural remarks for the new magazine: “Survey Graphic will reach into the corners of the world — America and all the Seven Seas — to wherever the tides of a generous progress are astir.” Many of the issues were guest edited.
In March 1925 the magazine produced an issue on “Harlem: Mecca of the New Negro,” edited by Alain Locke and devoted to the African American literary and artistic movement now known as the “Harlem Renaissance.” This issue established Harlem’s popular reputation as the black mecca. Much of the material in this issue was republished in Locke’s 1925 anthology The New Negro.
As you read and report on the articles in Survey Graphic, consider the following questions:
- What, in a nutshell, is the author’s argument?
- What’s is his or her agenda or spin on the topic?
- Does this author agree with the other authors represented in the issue?
- What difference does it make to read a poem in SG rather than in the anthology selections we read last week?
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