Beauty, Brownies Book, Children, Ideal, Survey Graphic

Overview

It’s the turn of the twentieth century, and the first generation of black men & women who have been born free, have all reached maturity. However, even if the law states they were free, social elements that despised their existence still lingered, so they travelled to places where they wouldn’t be persecuted as such. This led an exodus of black men and women all to New York, where they congregated into a neighborhood named Harlem. And from there, desires and hope merged, and the Harlem Renaissance began.

Now, there is only one thing that doesn’t change throughout life, and it’s the fact that we change.

Through every moment, memory, and connection in our lives, we change. We try to find aspects of ourselves, the community, and our society to alter and tinker with until we become something new and different.

But why do we do something new? Isn’t what we have already good enough?

We do all these things because of a deep rooted belief that we can become something greater. A better version of an environment or self. They all are in the pursuit of what we believe to be the best it can be.

The ideal of an idea.

Ideals were the life blood for the Harlem Renaissance, where they flowed through every man and women, whose dreams and hopes clashed with the social order to create change .

Within this site, I shall explain how ideals were the pivotal role in the development of the culture that defines Harlem to this day.

To understand the ‘ideal’ that they encapsulated, it must be first defined. Blog post #2 (The Real Vs. The Ideal), explores in-depth what idealism is and how it clashes and intermingles with it’s counterpart, pure realism. To borrow from the second blog’s understanding, and ideal is: the understanding of an ideal is varied and verbose, as each person holds their ideals differently.

So to define an ideal: it’s the most excellent form of a concept.

There have been many disparagements about the practicality of following an ideal because they don’t always mesh well with what is truly possible. They also may not match with what another believes is ideal.

However, the act of pursuing an ideal is not wrong. It’s the pure desire to change something for the better that will push a stone of change uphill until they reach the precipice where thanks to all the fruits and efforts of all the change comes tumbling down the mountain ever so faster.

Because ideals are weapons. They glitter and shine in the hearts of those who pursue them, which can charm all those who watch and believe.

An exemplary example of this can be found within the ideal of beauty. In the Blog Post #1 (Beauty of a Century), we explore how Opportunity magazine managed to sway all their readers thoughts and actions with a very loud cover that constantly tries to be beautiful.

And it’s a great idea. It can easily be found that no matter the culture and no matter the country, beauty is celebrated. And this lends itself to the question, what is beauty? How do we know something is beautiful, and how do we define that in literal word? Even with a brief glance through history, what is considered beautiful vastly differs between cultures and time periods.

So how did Opportunity magazine manage to be beautiful when the definition of beauty is so malleable? They went for a very wild approach, but yet, effective none the same. Through sheer variety, they created covers that would be beautiful in some way to a vast array of audiences. And the cherry on top is that most of them included a black female figure to prove that black people are just as beautiful as everyone else.

It’s a powerful example for the strength of a group that earnestly strives for their ideals. And this movement will not burn out in their generation, but the torch will be passed down through generation as the new blood carries the flame. Though they may carry their torches in a different way. Namely, the Fire!!! Magazine was published by the younger generation, attempting to direct the movement to better represent what it meant to be black to them.

There is a noticeable difference in the idealism of children and adults. I attempt to compare and contrast the two in the following Blog Post #3 (Nostalgia and Rain), where I bring up the difference in the world view between an adult and a child. Where the child doesn’t understand, the adult understands all too well, and almost tries to shield the eyes of the child in an attempt to buy just a little more time to change the world before they have to confront it for themselves. And we can find this kind of effort with a side publication of the same company who created Opportunity Magazine known as The Brownies Book. This book was meant to give children of the time literature that they could act in the same way as the other children, and that the stereotypes portraying them in other forms of media, weren’t accurate at all.

Ideals can be found in every part of the culture of the Harlem Renaissance and is one of the most defining features of it. It’s not making the best of a bad situation, but changing the whole situation outright with the tools they had on hand. The most pivotal point is that they didn’t give up. They didn’t accept their bad hand, but worked to stack the deck in their favor.

Keep your ideals strong and let them shine like a torch. It’s incredibly frustrating to have people say to you, “Look at reality” and completely dismiss your vision out of hand for being way too outside the norm as a vast majority just don’t feel like it’s feasible. But no matter what they say, change that astounds the world can still happen, even if it’s going to be a long time in the future. The Harlem Renaissance was able to show that complete and magnificent change, that echoed throughout the nation.

Bibliography:

The Brownies’ Book Magazine

Fire!!! Magazine

Fraternities and Sororities. (1925). Opportunity, 3(26), 48–50.

HARRIS, D. (2019). Printing the Color Line in The Crisis. In On company time: American modernism in the big magazines (pp. 80–82). essay, COLUMBIA UNIV Press.

How it feels to be Colored Me by Zora Houston

Holmes, A. (2021, February 18). The magazine that helped 1920s kids navigate racism. The Atlantic. Retrieved March 8, 2022, from https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2021/02/how-w-e-b-du-bois-changed-black-childhood-america/617952/

Hughes, L. (1925). The Weary Blues. Opportunity, 3(29), 143–143.

Johnson, James. “The Making of a Harlem.” Survey Graphic, vol. 6, no. 6, 1925, p. 636.

Locke, A. (1925). Enter the New Negro. Survey Graphic: Harlem of the New Negro, 53(11).

McKay, Claude. “Like a Strong Tree.” Survey Graphic, vol. 6, no. 6, 1925, p. 662.

Posts

Jerrod Carmichael: Black Queerness in the Contemporary

Jerrod Carmichael’s Rothaniel on HBO Max was one of the more strange comedy specials I’ve watched because a large part of comedy is the assumption that jokes aren’t real but this special was about unshrouding secrets and confronting uncomfortable truths. The whole performance was reminiscent of what I imagined nightlife during the Harlem Renaissance would be. Jazz piano twinkled in a soft introduction, Jerrod was encircled in a velvety blue spotlight and the audience watched him from the dark periphery. The club was so dark that the audience members were flattened into silhouettes, shadows of people that once were; their motions and voices were all discernible but their faces were smothered into a smooth obsidian. The speakeasy vibe spoke to an engagement with art that bubbled underneath the surface of society. The stage direction and cinematography was too intimate and vulnerable to not be important to the purpose of this production.

 

About twenty-three minutes into the special Carmichael comes out as gay. He expresses that there was a point in his life where he would rather die than come out. He recognizes that he can’t control how it could change some people’s perception of him and I think that’s one of the key takeaways that speaks to queerness in the Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance was a period of narrative writing for Black Americans––it’s a period where we have so much literature that can illustrate our experiences. Queer motifs lurk in the underbelly of this explosive Black presence but there was a general fear of acknowledging that. I hypothesize that it’s a fear that openly acknowledging that queerness complicates the Black image instead of defining it. Carmichael speaks about a distance between him and some of his immediate family members because he doesn’t feel wholly accepted. He says it’s like “being loved with an asterisk”; from what I understand, his frustration is that his queerness has become larger than him and no amount of familial love could surmount that. Although Carmichael can accept his queerness as something that completes him, it hurts him that he is somehow a different version of himself than he once was in the eyes of others.

 

This special provided an emotional depth necessary when considering the pain of being denied the space to be your full self. Putting this special in conversation with Harlem Renaissance literature emphasizes an inclination to dull Black narratives into something palatable and uncomplicated––thus, erasing entire aspects of identity that can enrich our understanding of who we are.

Beauty, Ideal, Opportunity Magazine

Blog #1: Beauty of a Century

Picture

A mother garbed in cloth holds an infant with affection (Cover, Vol. 7, No. 2)

Crisis magazine covers had a revolving tendency of portraits of women, mothers, children, and all gaggles of people in finely trimmed suits. Why did they focus on aesthetically pleasing items?

Because these images gave off a clean feeling, that they were pure and untainted, that they had beauty.

So why was there this focus on beautiful things?

Because, beautiful things are world shattering! They destroy thoughts and keep gazes steady as all try to understand! And all that is left are bystanders gazing upon its visage, breathless in awe. It’s a way to scream at someone that beyond all their hang-ups and biases, they still enjoy looking at something beautiful and wanting more from that very same image.

At the turn of the twentieth century, the idea of a beautiful negro woman was completely undeveloped. Most depictions from that time period were caricatures that racists mocked and laughed at, used as further fuel that both sides were too physically incompatible with one another to ever truly see peace. Photos were none the better. A typical complaint from Du Bois, quoted from ‘Painting Between the Colored Lines (Page 80)’, went as such:

The average white photographer does not know how to deal with
colored skins and having neither sense of the delicate beauty of tone nor
will to learn, he makes a horrible botch of portraying them.

The white photographer of that time period does not know what makes a negro beautiful, they only know what they think a negro should look like. The people who do know the beauty of the negro would be the negro themselves. He bemoans that not enough black photographers existed to express the beauty of the natural black man or woman. With no good representation depicting the negro’s likeness, the heart of the public beated out fear.

It would be impossible to verbally disprove these notions, so instead, Crisis magazine chose to redirect their arguments into their cover pages and printed out beautiful topics.

They explored beauty from all avenues, from the untainted beauty of children, the wistful glances of a woman, the pure heartedness of mothers that care, the valiant bravery of soldiers, the serene winds of nature, the professional allure of a man in a suit, and the divine grace of saints in relation of religious holidays. These are all things a white man or woman could be similarly depicted in, and by using a negro as the topic of such pieces of beauty, Crisis magazine tries to establish a common ground in which both sides are equal and both sides radiate beauty.

It’s not just to equalize the viewpoints of the white populace, but these beautiful covers appealed and worked to change the perceptions of their primary audience, the negro community. They wanted their covers to uplift all their readers on what beauty is, and to reiterate an earlier point, they can be as beautiful, if not more, than a white man or woman in any scenario.

As Enter the New Negro puts it (page 631), the negro community set themselves off to completely redefine what it meant to be black. Though this led to a paranoia that they could not have any relation to the old stereotypes and their old image. This comes to a head where Crisis magazine posted the cover “Women of Santa Lucia”, and met with backlash from their readers, fearing that it fed into the old stereotypes too much.

Du Bois thought differently, as sourced from ‘Printing Between the Colored Lines(Page 82)’:

Our photograph of a woman of Santa Lucia, with its strength and humor
and fine swing of head, was laughed at by many.

The team at Crisis magazine found the covers to be beautiful as well in their own way, as a stand of pride and what a proud black woman looks like. That their struggles didn’t weaken them, but made them tougher.

Though perhaps the backlash had proven too much, and in favor of not rocking the boat too much, they opted to aim for a more standardized idea of beauty in the covers thereafter.

In conclusion, they wanted their covers to catch the eye of all those who saw them and change their minds because they found: all is equal in the eye of beauty.

 

Works Cited:

HARRIS, D. O. N. A. L. D. (2019). Printing the Color Line in The Crisis. In On company time: American modernism in the big magazines (pp. 80–82). essay, COLUMBIA UNIV Press.

Crisis Magazine Vol. 7, No. 2
Locke, A. (1925). Enter the New Negro. Survey Graphic: Harlem of the New Negro, 53(11).
Crisis, Survey Graphic, The Opportunity, W.E.B. Du Bois

Social Progress and Racial Uplift

The Harlem Renaissance was a remarkable period during which African Americans experienced many obstacles and victories from the 1920s to the 1930s. As they over came these challenges, they established social progress and had a series of social accomplishments. The Harlem Renaissance was the upbringing of Social progress, and magazines and novels of this period represented the accomplishments of African Americans. Black people overcame racial injustice in order to obtain a better education, a better career, a better future, and better prospects. Black people made massive progress in the areas of art and writing (poetry),  music (opera), and education. Around this time period, African Americans began to be recognized for their efforts to expand and enhance their culture, acquire respect, and advocate for their rights. Social progress and racial uplift is significant to educate people today about the uplifting of black people and steps towards equality and recognition of black achievements. Typically, African Americans were viewed as merely labor and, before that, possessions. White people disproportionately imposed dispossession on African Americans. Harlem Renaissance literature indicates valuable African Americans’ contributions to a society that were often neglected and misinterpreted. My first 3 blogs demonstrate how the Harlem Renaissance accelerated black culture and now what black people overcame. During this time period, people gained knowledge and educate themselves about what African Americans have gone through and their upbringing of succeeding and black excellence.

 

Beginning with W.E.B DuBois, with the Crisis magazine that had an impact and was very popular and was mainly concentrated on African American history, politics, culture, social injustice, and their rights. Crisis Magazine had a representation for African Americans and reshaped people’s opinions on African Americans. The implications of “the New Negro “ is the Crisis Magazine on having a voice for African Americans to speak their truths and facts to educate other people. According to Donal Harris in Printing the Color Line in The Crisis “However, in 1910 another kind of magazine, the African American monthly, specifically The Crisis, emerged with the conscious desire to reshape the style, size, and color of commercial periodicals as well as the implicit race of the people who read and wrote them.” (Harris, 62). These covers of the Crisis Magazine show the experience of how African Americans had issues with racial stereotypes and racial discrimination and try to correct the stereotypes. These covers were supposed to be the new representation of the New Black America. The purpose of these covers was to overcome the stereotypes of African Americans. These covers also show and determine on how it was moving, how they showed African American accomplishments, and how they influenced. These covers of The Crisis Magazine are for readers in the world and African Americans as it helps them not only change the image of African Americans in the public eye. As well as help combat the narrative of the stereotypical and racism that was going on. This magazine also tries to have a voice for African Americans to expand and increase their culture and to gain respect, and to advocate for their rights. This can also help to open opportunities for their future. In the United States, African Americans were not acknowledged by the public and were not treated well.  

 

Viewing all of these covers, they are so descriptive, natural, and real, which made me visualize and interpret what W.E.B Du Bois was attempting to do with these covers. Based on the Crisis Magazine, what makes African Americans and Blacks American is having the freedom and independence to have their own choice and able to have opportunities for their future. For instance, in the Crisis Magazine in Vol. 18, No. 1 (1919-05-01) and Vol. 17, No. 5 (1919-03-01) they show on how many African Americans entered for World War I, which shows loyalty and being proud, and wanting to fight for their country. Another example of what makes African Americans American is based on what they have been through. They weren’t able to have an education but now they have the freedom and choice. For example in the Crisis Magazine in Vol. 24, No. 4 (1922-08-01) this shows and represents in the cover that African Americans are wanting to have an education and a career for their future. The covers are for African American descents can use the cover of crisis as a visual representation of what their culture has achieved and accomplished over the years. The Crisis wasn’t just a news magazine; it was a step towards equality and recognition of black achievements.

 

In Survey Graphic Harlem Mecca of the New Negro “The Making of Harlem” by James Weldon Johnson. Harlem became a place that doesn’t necessarily have ownership because due to the culture, art, literature, and music. Harlem was only the beginning of something new that puts America’s culture into shock. This made African Americans come together in Harlem to search for a new future and new opportunities and to become themselves. They also had the same interests of progressing and getting ahead without leaving behind their customs, culture, and beliefs, developing in this way. According to James Weldon Wilson, In the Making of Harlem, it states “Harlem is indeed the great Mecca for the sight-seer, the pleasure-seeker, the curious, the adventurous, the enterprising, the ambitious and the talented of the whole Negro world; for the lure of it has reached down to every island of the Carib Sea and has penetrated even into Africa.” (Wilson, 13). This quote determines that African Americans wanted to develop to grow and to achieve, and to have ambition and talent.  They developed many careers such as politics, arts, music, beauty, and entertainment. For example, in Black Culture in Bloom: The Harlem Renaissance by Richard Worth it states, “The Harlem Renaissance gave African Americans like A’Lelia Walker an opportunity to be proud of their success. Harlem had become the rage. Going uptown to Harlem was a popular fad that attracted many New Yorkers and travelers. The popularity of Harlem helped bring success to the writers, entertainers, and artists of the Harlem Renaissance.”(Worth, 75). This shows that the tireless struggle of African Americans to progress and teach their culture, which they are proud of, had a good result in many outstanding African Americans in art, music, and other fields. 

 

The progress of African Americans during the Harlem Renaissance was changing in the “Social Progress” in the Opportunity Magazine. African Americans have been achieving and succeeding with art, music, writing, and education. Around this time, African Americans have been acknowledged and received recognition to expand and increase their culture and to gain respect, and to advocate for their rights. This can also help to open opportunities for their future. 

African Americans were fighting and trying to have opportunities that enlightened themselves in different aspects, having an education, theatre, music, art, politics, and entertainment. Some of those people who sought for opportunities and became successful that I mentioned in my blog post are Gwendolyn B. Bennett, Carl Van Vechtim, and  Senator Adelbert H. Roberts. Many African Americans who started standing out because they kept searching for opportunities to get what they wanted and kept going to help their community and unity. According to Word, Image, and the New Negro  by Anne Elizabeth Carroll it states “Furthermore, while the primary purpose of Opportunity’s studies and news stories about African Americans’ achievements is perhaps to define African Americans as capable of integration and accomplishments, they also assert that American society would benefit if African Americans were granted greater opportunities.”( Caroll, 56). This represents and determines that African Americans are capable of having a better education and career, having a successful future for themselves and receiving better opportunities. 

 

During the Harlem Renaissance Era, social progress and racial uplift is very important to enlighten people about the uplifting of black people and steps towards equality and recognition of black achievements. African Americans have expanded and increased their culture and to gain respect and to fight for their rights. The literature, essays, and artwork of the Harlem Renaissance demonstrate the many values and views that are forming and changing during the period. Which can show that African Americans have seen success and black greatness as a result of their upbringing.

 

Work Cited

HARRIS, DONALD. On Company Time: American Modernism in the Big Magazines. COLUMBIA UNIV Press, 2019.

Harlem, Mecca of the new negro. Yale University Library. (n.d.). Retrieved May 10, 2022, from https://collections.library.yale.edu/catalog/17368696

Modernist journals: Crisis. Modernist Journals | Crisis. (n.d.). Retrieved May 10, 2022, from https://modjourn.org/journal/crisis/

Modernist journals: Crisis. A record of the darker races. vol. 18, no. 5. Modernist Journals | Crisis. A Record of the Darker Races. Vol. 18, No. 5. (n.d.). Retrieved May 10, 2022, from https://modjourn.org/issue/bdr512492/

Modernist journals: Crisis. A record of the darker races. vol. 17, no. 5. Modernist Journals | Crisis. A Record of the Darker Races. Vol. 17, No. 5. (n.d.). Retrieved May 10, 2022, from https://modjourn.org/issue/bdr511760/

Modernist journals: Crisis. A record of the darker races. vol. 24, no. 4. Modernist Journals | Crisis. A Record of the Darker Races. Vol. 24, No. 4. (n.d.). Retrieved May 10, 2022, from https://modjourn.org/issue/bdr521604/

Worth, Richard. Black Culture in Bloom : The Harlem Renaissance, Rosen Publishing Group, 2020. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/baruch/detail.action?docID=6228046.

https://books.google.com/books?id=JcgZAAAAIAAJ

Anne Elizabeth Carroll, Word, Image, and the New Negro : Representation and Identity in the Harlem Renaissance(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005).

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The Established Signature of a New Negro

See the source image

Harlem appears to have upheld the features of vibrant streets and roaring entertainment life. Harlem is also still engorged in culture by the people that densely populated the area; African Americans. It is undeniable in the image that the New New Negros, African Americans, are mingling at the stoop of the brownstones on the far right. And there are “mom & pop” shops decorating the length of the street. The people are in fellowship with one another or minding their business like the man sitting down on the far left as people pass him.

Walking down 125 street today and crossing avenues from Lenox Ave. to Lexington Ave, these sights are not rare and extremely common. This image is similar to the ambiance and image of Harlem today. The only thing that has changed is the density of people living in Harlem and the demographics of Harlem. The rich culture exists there today. there are arguments that the demographic of Harlem changed severely due to gentrification. Over the years, it has become a famous area that everyone wants to be integrated with. The New Negro could not fathom that the culture they’ve established is now in high demand. Whether it is for the rich history, reclamation, or the enjoyment of New Negro’s freed developed culture, Harlem preserves the culture unimaginably.

The New New Negro is successful in the maintenance of the culture of previous New Negros established from 1910 to 1940. Harlem still upholds the rich association with New Negros through the culture there. Today Harlem roars rich New Negro culture. Harlem is a historic location to reminisce. The New Negro left their undying culture in Harlem that is more acceptable for society today. The New Negro permanently signed their culture into an unwelcoming world from 1910 to 1940. It is preserved for witness today.