Category Archives: Crisis

Crisis, Survey Graphic, W.E.B. Du Bois

Illustrations vs. Photographs of Harlem and The Crisis Culture

Between Illustrations and Photographs, there are two types of expressive art. They are both commonly alike because it shows how the artist is trying to depict and trying to tell us something about what’s going on in the art. Unlike others, some might find Illustrations and photographs not similar. I personally feel like they are both similar because you can alter a photograph to the context that you want and you can also alter an illustration because it’s more direct on what you choose to draw. These both determine that Illustrations and Photographs are very commonly alike.

 

In the book 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, page 13). This quote determines that African Americans wanted to develop to grow and to achieve and to have ambition and talent.

The Crisis Magazine also has illustrations and photographs covers which represents African Americans trying to have a voice to expand and increase their culture and to gain respect and to advocate for their rights. Also, all of these covers 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 1 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 this shows and represents in the cover that African Americans are wanting to have an education and a career for their future.

 

 In this photograph, it was in Harlem which is showing that many people are taking the train and the majority are African Americans. Compared to now in Harlem, there’s way more diversity, not just African Americans. 

 

 

Both of these different types of creative and expressive art which are illustrations and photographs are both very similar because it determines on how the artist sees from a different perspective and show us the meaning of the art. Some people find illustrations and photographs different although I personally disagree. Based on these photographs and illustrations that I have chosen you could see that the artist wanted to show a deeper meaning, and tell us a background story about it. This determines why illustrations and photographs are similar.

 

 

Crisis, The Opportunity, W.E.B. Du Bois

Fighting for New Identity in the Social Progress during the Harlem Renaissance

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. Many of the people that have succeeded and received recognition for example novelists such as Carl Van Vechtim and Otto K. Khan; chairman of the Board Directors of the Metropolitan Opera Company. Most African Americans that have achieved it were also by having an education and preparation and have careers which were Gwendolyn B. Bennett, Senator Adelbert H. Roberts, and R. Maurice Moss. Gwendolyn B. Bennett assisted  Pratt Institute- Brooklyn, Columbia University, and among other universities for Art. According to the Social Progress, it claims “Miss Bennett’s artwork while at Pratt Institute attracted considerable attention, and some of her drawings have appeared as covers and illustrations in the Crisis and Messenger. Her poetry has equalled her art. One of her poems appears in the current issue of OPPORTUNITY.”( page 62). Gwendolyn B. Bennett is one of the most successful African American women that has worked for the Crisis Magazine and Opportunity Magazine. Also, her artworks and poems she wrote were both published in the Crisis Magazine and Opportunity Magazine. One of the cover arts that Gwendolyn B. Bennett made and was published in the Crisis Magazine was called “The Crisis Christmas Number” in 1923. Also some of her poems that were published as well from Opportunity Magazine and Crisis Magazine that were called  “Heritage” in The Opportunity in December 1923, “Nocturne” in the Crisis in November 1923, and “To Usward” in the Crisis and Opportunity in May 1924.  Another person that has received an education and made a career for himself is Senator Adelbert H. Roberts, who graduated from Northwestern University Law School and was the first African American to be elected as a senator in Chicago.  R. Maurice Moss also made a career but to help others. According to “Social Progress” it states “Mr. Moss is a graduate of Columbia University and has spent a year at the New York School of Social Work. His experience includes boys’ and athletic direction in community service and Y. M. C. A. work, and surveys of the Negro population in several communities.”( page 62). Based on the reading, the “Social Progress” in the Opportunity Magazine determines on how African Americans have succeeded,  accomplished, and made a better future for themselves.

 

Although Social Progress showed many positive notes on how African Americans have many accomplishments. After having suffered discrimination in schools because of the color of their skin, factions since they were children, they forged a better future for their new generations with much sacrifice, perseverance, and better opportunities for education. According to Preliminary Observations in a Study of Negro-White Crossing by Melville J. Herskovits it states “The population of Harlem, as has been mentioned, where the school in which the boys were measured is situated, is of great known mixture, —thus, of the adults from whom genealogies were obtained only two claimed to be full blooded Negroes.” (Herskovits, page 72).  The children were being measured based on their weight, height, head size, face features especially nostrils and lips. For example, in Preliminary Observations in a Study of Negro-White Crossing by Melville J. Herskovits it demonstrates “Narrow lips, thin nostrils— (NT) -31 Broad lips, thin nostrils— ( BT ) -25 Narrow lips, wide nostrils— (NW ).— 25 Broad lips, wide nostrils— (BW ) -35” (Herskovits, page 72).  This reading determines on how Preliminary Observations in a Study of Negro-White Crossing in the Opportunity magazine shows how African Americans were being discriminated against based on their facial features, the color of skin, and body.  In the reading “The Preliminary Observations in a Study of Negro-White Crossing” by Melville J. Herskovits speaking about the color of skin, facial features, and segregation can connect with “Printing the Color Line in The Crisis” from American Modernism in Big Magazines” by Donal Harris because Du Bios talks about this certain cover Art in the Crisis called “Woman of Santa Lucia”. While looking at this cover art you would think it would be a good representation of African Americans to the public but in reality, African Americans feel that it isn’t the right representation of them. According to “Printing the Color Line in The Crisis” from American Modernism in Big Magazines by Donal Harris” by Donal Harris states “In the 1920 Crisis article “In Black,” he writes, “Colored folk, like all folk, love to see themselves in pictures, but they are afraid to see the types which the white world has caricatured.”( Harris, page 82). This quote determines that African Americans didn’t want African Americans that were “too black” because they wanted new forms of representation and they also didn’t want to be seen as the racial stereotypes.

 

Based on these passages in the Opportunity Magazine, Crisis Magazine, and Printing the Color Line in The Crisis” from American Modernism in Big Magazines they showed how African Americans have struggled and have been through racial discrimination. Over the years, African Americans overcame this to have a better education, career, have a future for themselves, and want better opportunities.

 

1910 — 1922
                 Vol. 19, No. 3

                            The Opportunity: Social Progress

 

The Crisis, (1923), cover art

 

 

 

 

 

Works Cited

The crisis (1923). Pratt Institute. (n.d.). Retrieved March 9, 2022, from https://www.pratt.edu/the-work/gallery/the-crisis-1923/

Wikimedia Foundation. (2021, December 29). Gwendolyn B. Bennett. Wikipedia. Retrieved March 9, 2022, from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwendolyn_B._Bennett

https://modjourn.org/issue/bdr512704/ 

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

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7312/harr17772.6

Alain Locke, Charles Johnson, Crisis, Opportunity Magazine, Survey Graphic, W.E.B. Du Bois

Different Sides of The Same Coin: the marginalization, objectification of African Americans

While reading the Opportunity by Charles Johnson, the passages that stood out to me were The Corner By Eunice Hunton Carter and The High Cost of Keeping the Negro Inferior By John C. Wright because of the way perspective is utilized in each passage to explain the subtle and not so subtle wealth and class disparities in and outside of Harlem, and how such disparities are influenced by race and blinded outsiders on how rich not only Harlem’s culture was but the culture of black people in general

In Carter’s The Corner,  from the very beginning and throughout we can see a stark contrast in the lifestyles the narrator describes. In the very first paragraph, the narrator states, “My friend lives in the house on the corner. She lives high above the street in a doll’s house of white enamel and soft blues with lovely old furniture and oriental rugs of faded brilliance on dark polished floors; in a miniature home with a real fireplace and polished grasses and flowers all about in crystal bowls (Carter 114).” This vivid description is given to us from the viewpoint of the narrator who then goes through the rest of her day seeing one by one how the cars commute from Harlem to seek pleasures and entertainment and back to the suburbs located in the city. She goes on to then compare and kind of even scold the “aliens” who passed through, and reflect on how even though the night was coming to an end the city was still alive with people, sounds, and lights. She was particularly critical of how the “aliens” moved so fast that they were missing out on what was happening right in front of them, “the young boy in the corner dancing and singing the man without legs wheeled himself along on a wooden platform and with an instrument or two gave the effect of a whole brass band (Carter 114),” and how even to this day we still see this happening with street performers. 

1910 — 1922 Vol. 20, No. 1 Du Bois, W. E. Burghardt

Another example that demonstrates this is the first modern jazz band to ever be heard in New York City. They played and sang in a dancing orchestra at The Marshall in Harlem and became the first to make use of banjos, saxophones, clarinets, and trap drums in combination to create what we now know as jazz. Comparing this to the Survey Graphic: Harlem: Mecca of the New Negro, “The Making of Harlem,” by James Weldon Johnson he talks about how Harlem is a “city within a city,” and how “a stranger is struck with surprise at the transformation which takes place after he crosses One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street (Johnson 635).” He uses such a marker, as does Carter when she compares the house above to the street below to signal how different and unique Harlem was to the rest of the city at the time, especially illustrating how easily communities can change from just turning a corner or crossing a bridge.

The High Cost of Keeping the Negro Inferior By John C. Wright (p. 116) also stood out to me because of how he discusses and analyzes that because people in the south have these views and prejudices towards black people, basically caricaturing them, and how this perspective also with the years of generation after generation being taught this same information that the majority of white Americans in the South have little actual knowledge of black people. Wright illustrates this when talking about the overwhelming number of black people incarcerated in Florida and how propaganda stating that the “Negro is naturally trifling, dishonest, low and vicious,”  is used to “keep them inferior they must be huddled in segregated ghettos without drainage, light, pavements, or modern sanitary conveniences they must be denied justice and the right to make a decent living. They must be insulted and bullied and mobbed, discriminated against in public places, and denied access to parks and recreational centers (Wright 116).” This yet again illustrates another perspective, and just how to stark a contrast it is to Carter’s passage where the people of Harlem are overlooked or only seen as a pastime in comparison to the dehumanization and degradation Wright describes – except that they’re both describing different sides of the same coin, both groups being marginalized just in different extremes.

1910 — 1922
Vol. 18, No. 5
Du Bois, W. E. Burghardt

The DuBois magazine, The Crisis, and its covers also showcase both visually and in writing the thoughts and concerns of African Americans at the time. To quote Elizabeth Carroll “The Crisis offers a different collective portrait of African Americans and demonstrates that the changing identity of African Americans necessitated changes in American society and the functioning of American institutions (Objectivity and Social Change: Essays and News Stories in Opportunity Anne Elizabeth Carroll, Word, Image, and the New Negro : Representation and Identity in the Harlem Renaissance).” Two covers that exemplify this in relation to the passages mentioned previously are the cover for May of 1920, which featured the portrait of Mattie Flemming by Frank Walts, and the cover for September of 1919 which featured a drawing of soldiers returning back from WWI by Laura Wheeler. Both of these covers show contrasting images – one of affluence and the other of violence and war, and yet on the inside of their covers, both mention lynching and their continued struggle to just achieve the right to vote. The covers are direct parallels of each other and show how affluence and place did not stop the marginalization and mistreatment of black people.

 

                                         works cited 

Modernist journals: Crisis. A record of the darker races. vol. 20, no. 1. Modernist Journals | Crisis. A Record of the Darker Races. Vol. 20, No. 1. (n.d.). Retrieved March 9, 2022, from https://modjourn.org/issue/bdr512980/

Chapter 2 Objectivity and Social Change:Essays and News Stories in Opportunity” from Word, Image, and the New Negro

Harlem, Mecca of the new Negro.

  opportunityhttps://modjourn.org/issue/bdr512980/#

Alain Locke, Crisis, Survey Graphic, W.E.B. Du Bois

It takes perspective; Harlem in the eyes of the few

Illustration/ Poetry and photography appear to be two different creative forms of art because while one uses words, the other uses images. But they have more in common than one may believe. Photos are good for providing a visual description and getting the viewer to see what the artist has captured, while illustration leads to more room for interpretation and understanding of what the artist was going for.  

In Survey Graphic: Harlem: Mecca of the New Negro “The Making of Harlem” by James Weldon Johnson we are able to see how Johnson portrayed this and to answer this question of what creates a place if it isn’t necessarily ownership? is really the people, and the culture how one can create a place by finding people who can connect and relate to the same ideas and want the same outcome. “Harlem is not merely a Negro colony or community, it is a city within a city, the greatest Negro city in the world, It is not a slum or a fringe, it is located in the heart of Manhattan and occupies one of the most beautiful and healthful sections of the city. It is not à “quarter” of dilapidated tenements but is made up of new-law apartments and handsome dwellings, with well-paved and well-lighted streets. It has its own churches, social and civic centers, shops, theatres, and other places of amusement. And it contains more Negroes to the square mile than any other spot on earth.”(Johnson, page 635) 

With that in mind, on page 637 there is a picture of a map “This sketch map shows approximately where Negroes live in Harlem, according to a housing survey made in 1024 by the New York Urban League. The fringe of houses in which both Negro and white tenants live is not indicated. The first houses occupied by Negroes were On I34th Street east of Lenox Avenue” I include this picture because it shows Harlem it shows a visual of Harlem and how it a “city within a city” and how much history lies there, how even today walking in some parts of the city their brown street signs instead of green to showcase that (landmarks)

As well in  The Crisis covers where there are both photography and illustrations they are realistic since they depict the New Negro in their daily lives, one must both see and read to fully understand what  Du Bois was going, for example, to answer the question “How are African Americans or Black people (Negros in the language of the magazine) What makes them American? du Bois show many examples like the Vol. 18, No. 2 (1919-06-01) shows the soldiers go to war ready to fight for their country and stand for it, standing up for America. Also how in  Vol. 25, No. 2 (1922-12-01) cover of the magazine, features a photo of a young black woman in a cap and gown with a bright feature ahead. I would say this can make her American by following the “American dream” of getting higher educating and pursuing what comes after like a good job etc

Crisis, W.E.B. Du Bois

Reality versus expectations: how media shapes reality past present and future

The covers of The Crisis communicate the “normality” as well as the Black perspective about the Black experiences in America because it is a direct parallel of their experiences at the time and their perspective and contributions to the different movements including art, and the first world war it shows or is an example of both the alienation and representation that Black people at this time wished to have and see in media that they didn’t have so that they made for themselves. It is media that showed them as actual humans and people and not racist caricatures (sambo as an example below/ means cartoon).  

 Like Henry Louis Gates, Jr. mentioned in The Trope of a New Negro and the Reconstruction of the Image of the Black, 

“These two figures bear an antithetical relation to each other, and function in a relation of reversal. Whereas the image of a “New Negro” has served various generations of black intellectuals as a sign of plenitude, of regeneration, of a truly reconstructed presence, the image of the black in what I like to think of as “Sambo Art” has served various generations of racists as a sign of lack, of degeneration, of a truly negated absence. The two sets of figures can also be said to have a certain cause-and-effect relation, with the fiction of a Negro American who is “now” somehow “new” or different from an “Old Negro” generated to counter the image in the popular American imagination of the black as devoid of all the characteristics that separate the lower forms of human life from the supposedly higher forms.” (pgs 130-131)

 He explains how this Sambo figure and art that was constructed by white people at the time dehumanized and made Black people no more than a caricature that wasn’t taken seriously or seen as capable of any “real” contributions to society especially intellectually. This is why publications such as The Crisis became popular especially among well educated Black people because it showed to them that they weren’t this caricature and they weren’t a “lower life form” than white people but that could do and contribute the exact same things be it art, media or politics regardless of the color of their skin or what racist cartoon and stereotypes showed. This “new” and “old negro” as the reading mentioned, were direct parallels of each other –  the creation of the one caused the creation of the other so that each of these images opposed each other, one seen as part of a distant past and the other as the present and future but only to the people who would put their prejudices aside to see it as such. 

 The pair of covers from the Crisis that I think represents this best are Vol. 18 no.1 and no.2  which shows a black soldier (1919-01-05)  craving the words “loyalty’’ on a plack after fighting in a war for a country that didn’t even want and then in Vol. 18, No. 2 (1919-06-01) shows the soldiers go at war ready to fight