Romare Bearden and the Harlem Renaissance

Romare Bearden and the Harlem Renaissance

A Review for the Mint Museum Docents Training Spring 2012

3/26/2012Dr. Carol Walker Jordan

History of the Harlem Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance was an arts movement that began in the 1920s and extended throughout the 1930s. Some called the time period, “The New Negro Movement”, which came from an anthology written b y Alain Locke in 1925. Like the avant-garde movement in Europe, The New Negro Movement (later to become the Harlem Renaissance) embraced all art forms, including music, film, dance, theater and cabaret, Harlem nightlight offered dance halls, jazz bands and Harlem night life frequented by Negro and White alike. Centered in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City, the effects of the movement spread into the work of French-speaking black writers from the Caribbean and Africa who were living in Paris at the time. Though some evidence appears to suggest that the period of 1919 to 1924 were the active years in which Negro literature flourished, years later the effects of the movement brought musicians, visual artists and others to the forefront of the nation’s consciousness. It is said that the Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the subsequent Great Depression slowed or diffused the renaissance of previous years. Yet, its birth and immediate impact was felt for years to follow.

Why Harlem and Who Came?

Early in the 1900s, Harlem was a district developed for wealthy and middle class white people. The area included large lavish homes with broad streets and community sites such as Polo Grounds and the Harlem Opera House. As an increase in the immigration of Europeans into New York, and particularly Harlem, middle –class whites abandoned the area and properties were bought, rented and sold to those immigrating to New York, particularly to African Americans. During the First World War,more African Americans came to Harlem and a period, the Great Migration, saw African Americans moving into New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia.

Harlem became an African American neighborhood populated by those who brought strong interests in writing, music, and theatre productions. In 1917, a premiere of “Three Plays for a Negro Theatre”, debuted. These plays allowed Negro actors to share their emotions and desires that were not presented before. In plays such as these, the actors did not embrace the stereotypes of the minstrel show focus of the times. Poetry also rose and was debuted in a sonnet, “If We Must Die”. The poet was alluding to the racism and race riots and lynchings happening in the country at the time. In music venues, jazz bands developed and consisted mostly of brass instruments and a piano, also a stage for innovation and creativity. Musicians such as Duke Ellington, Jelly Roll Morton, and Fats Waller, brought their particular brand and style to Harlem. By the 1920s, a new means of expression of the arts was brought to the national scene from Harlem but also from the major cities in which African Americans immigrated, lived and established communities.

What Did the Harlem Migration Accomplish In Later Years?

A major contributing factor to the growth of African Americans coming to Harlem was their vast movement to northern cities. Coming from rural and depressed communities, many of them took quickly to the opportunity to settle and find educational and employment opportunities.

As the African American community‘scontributions to the arts—literature, music and drama—grew, the racial divide seemed to lessen. Many whites admired and began to embrace the flowering of the arts from African Americans. Those African Americans used the arts to prove themselves as humanistic and impacted racial and cultural lines. This eventually opened doors to acceptance and collaboration within American society. The Harlem Renaissance encompassed the voices of many through the medium of expressions that were easily understood and valued.

By laying the foundation for giving voice to African Americans, the Harlem Renaissance was successful in building bridges toward the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s. Writers found it possible to publish their writings in main stream media in the form of novels, magazines and newspapers—Zora Neale Hurston, said, “Sometimes I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can anyone deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It’s beyond me.”

Tragic as it was, the Harlem Renaissance ended abruptly in 1930 with the Great Depression, as it was not the prevailing opinion that economics could impact the great arts movement as it did both in the Harlem community and the country as well.

Romare Bearden and His Life in Harlem as a descendant of the Harlem Renaissance

Born in 1911 to parents in Charlotte, North Carolina, Romare Bearden, was relocated to New York City by parents who wanted a better life. Though their lives in Charlotte could be described as comfortable by standards of the time, the opportunities that Bearden’s parents saw for them and their son in New York City were attractive. Soon Romare’s life and family became a part of the cultural and educational stimulation that existed in Harlem and enriched Romare’s educational and social opportunities. Graduating from college, Romare went on to study at the Art Students League in New York in the 1930s. He worked as a social worker with the Gypsy population in New York City. He began experimenting with differing styles of artistic expression and by the 1950s, Bearden declared he wished to “work out of a response and need to redefine the image of man in terms of the Negro Experience I know best”.

Along with the determination to embrace painting, Bearden also helped to form “Spiral”, a group of African American artists. This group was a response to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and although the group didn’t fully go along with Bearden, he made his commitment and for him, the collage or fragmented imagery was to be his most popular media expression. Bearden’s early life in Charlotte North Carolina became a fountain of images from which he drew his inspiration. Images such as the railroad he remembered and the trains that went by, daily lives and practices he witnessed , musical events and times spent on his grandparents porch, attending baptisms, landscapes, and memories of painful and uplifting family practices.

While it may be said that Bearden was a descendant of the Harlem Renaissance, it can be seen that in reality. He was the child who experienced the lives of his own family and those who went before him in environments rich with the old ways and the new ways. What he absorbed, observed and visualized represent what those of the Harlem Renaissance left as a legacy for him. The Harlem Renaissance and its legacy led to the enlightenment and courage that brought Romare to own the right to create and express though the arts, his belief in the humanity and right to dignity of all people.

End Notes

Alain Locke. The New Negro. An Interpretation. New York: Albert and Charles Boni. 1925

The Great Migration

Great Days In Harlem

Harlem of the New Negro

Langston Hughes.

The Harlem Renaissance

The Development of African American community in Harlem

Romare Bearden, Southern Recollections. 2 September 2011 -8 January 2012. The Mint Museum. Amber Smith, Adjunct Project Manager, and Carla M. Hanzal, Curator of Contemporary Art. Museum Program.

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