The Harlem Renaissance was a time period that I believe in retrospect is looked at through too much of a narrow lens to fully understand the context in which the period was born out of. I got to this conclusion when I really started to look at and analyze the vast historical and literary archive the time period has left us with. I think so often when the Harlem Renaissance is taught, especially in schools, it is boiled down to just this short period of Black artistic achievements and nothing else. But when I started to look at the archive that we were working with, the Harlem Renaissance begins to morph into this extremely pivotal time period in the timeline of Black history in the United States. Beyond just the artistic achievements, for which there were many and it’s important to highlight that, the Harlem Renaissance is at its most barebones, Black people at a crossroads. For most of the time that Black people were in the United States up until the early 20th century, they were not afforded the right to craft their own identities. Any depiction of Black people was done with either malicious or misguided intent, none of which was actually representative of the community. The literary archive that I have been looking at completely disrupts these attitudes. So as much as the Harlem Renaissance was a time of great artistic strides it was also a landmark period of reinvention for Black people in the United States. I think that adopting this perspective is imperative to fully grasp not just the art but the new forms of media that were born out of that time period. 

The Harlem Renaissance was extremely notable for the sheer number of Black-owned and managed media publications. The archive that we have been looking at in class features two prominent publications from the time: Crisis Magazine and Opportunity Magazine. Both of these magazines serve as some of the best visual representations of the changing tides when it came to the new Black identity and representation. Crisis Magazine, which was founded by W.E.B. DuBois through the NAACP, was one of the first Black media outlets to take the concept of the Black identity and view it through the lens of refinement. Some critiques of DuBois and Crisis Magazine, in particular its covers, have included accusations of colorism and classism because of who the magazine choose to highlight on the cover and inside the magazine. (Harris 82) However superficial one might claim Crisis Magazine to be, with its intense focus on light skin, high-income Black people, DuBois’ decision I believe was of specific intent. In order to have curated the reinvention of Black people in America, it would have only been successful if those in charge of the new Black identity completely rejected the reality of Black people in the country and instead highlighted the idealized version of the community which manifested itself on the covers of Crisis Magazine. While Crisis Magazine focused on Black re-invention through the lens of appearance, Opportunity Magazine looked at this re-invention through the eyes of upward mobility. As one of my blog posts exclusively touches on, Opportunity Magazine dedicated a good number of its pages to highlighting Black talent and success on a multitude of different levels. Despite the magazine’s intense focus on tangible success, its contents were not far removed from the essence of the Harlem Renaissance. In one of its issues, the magazine published the first piece of a young aspiring poet, Langston Hughes. Finding this magazine in the archives was so special just for this reason. Having a magazine that so clearly demonstrated the duality of the time period. Both the artistic revolution and the concept of re-invention are on display in Opportunity Magazine.

Some questions that I have been grappling with in terms of my own site delving into this specific part of the Harlem Renaissance’s legacy is my framing of “re-invention.” Is this word accurate in describing the sentiments of the Black leaders like Alain Locke who spearheaded the premier movement of the time, the New Negro Movement? Looking at the writings of Locke, especially ‘Enter the New Negro,” published in the 1925 edition of Survey Graphic, alluded to that idea saying, “And certainly, if in our lifetime the Negro should not be able to celebrate his full initiation into American democracy, he can at least, on the warrant of these things, celebrate the attainment of a significant and satisfying new phase of group development, and with it a spiritual Coming of Age.” (Locke 634) Locke references a “new phase,” I think that this phrase helps to ground my thinking when it comes to what I believe the Harlem Renaissance represents. For Locke, reinvention was, at that point in time, the natural next step to take in the development of the Black identity. Something new was needed to differentiate from the Black identity of the past. The New Negro movement I believe most directly addresses that goal. 

As I went through this journey I was stuck on whether I should center my site on the concept of reinvention. Is it possible to reinvent an identity that was supposedly invented by white people out of malice? Maybe. Maybe the Harlem Renaissance was just as much about reinvention as it was about reclaiming something that was stolen from Black people. This is an incredibly radical feat. Something that to this day means that the Harlem Renaissance continues to be whitewashed to just being a period of prolific art and music (which it was) but what this simplification ignores is this time period’s radical core. This is a period in which one can argue that the Black identity in America really had the ability to begin because it was in the hands of the only people that would and should have been the creators of that identity. 

It’s a reinvention of something so primal and close to self that it hammers in the lack of humanity that has been granted to Black life since the inception of this nation. that something is identity. The Harlem Renaissance is as much of a renaissance as it was a revolution. a revolution of Black people uprising against the framing of their identities that had too long been held in the hands of white people that did everything in their power to strip the life and essence of the Black identity from the people. It was a culmination of academia and art working hand in hand to craft the first Black-made vision of what Black identity could look like. 

With this conception in mind, I believe that my blog posts and the overall site should and need to be looked at through a radical lens. I hope that my site acts as a first step in reevaluating the Harlem Renaissance that has long served as a footnote in the historical record of Black people in America.