Women of the Harlem Renaissance

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Women of the Harlem Renaissance

Writers, artists, actresses, and social figures who were instrumental, though now less recognized than their male counterparts, in creating the hugely influential African-American cultural movement known as the Harlem Renaissance.

Bennett, Gwendolyn B. (1902–1981). American artist, poet, writer, and educator whose work as a columnist for Opportunity encouraged the growth of cultural life in Harlem and whose poetry, incorporating themes of her African heritage and her training as a painter, placed her among the finest of the writers of the Harlem Renaissance . Born on July 8, 1902, in Giddings, Texas; died in Reading, Pennsylvania, on May 30, 1981; only child of Joshua Robin Bennett and Mayme F. (Abernathy) Bennett; graduated from Brooklyn Girls High School, 1921; studied fine arts at Teachers College, Columbia University for two years; transferred to the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, where she finished her education; married Alfred Joseph Jackson (a physician), in 1927 (died); married Richard Crosscup (died January 9, 1980).

Shortly after her birth, family relocated first to Nevada, where her parents taught on an Indian reservation, and later to Washington, D.C., where her father studied law and her mother became a beautician. While she was still young, her parents divorced, leaving her in her mother's custody; at age seven, her father kidnapped her, and she would not see her mother again until she was an adult; graduated from Brooklyn Girls High School (1921), where she became the first black student elected to the literary and dramatic societies; became an instructor of watercolor and design at Howard University; received Delta Sigma Theta's foreign scholarship (1924), which allowed her to travel to Paris to study at the Julian and Colarossi academies as well as at the École de Pantheon; in Paris, became acquainted with the modern French painter Frans Masereel; resumed teaching at Howard (1926) and became assistant editor of the magazine Opportunity, where she wrote the column "The Ebony Flute" (1926–28); was one of two African-American artists selected to study the modern and primitive art collections of the Barnes Foundation (1927); writing appeared in numerous magazines, including Fire!, Crisis,and the American Mercury (1922–34); continued teaching at Howard University and also served as director of the Harlem Community Arts Center (1937–40); little is known of her life after the 1940s.

Selected fiction:

"Wedding Day," in Fire! (1926); "Tokens" (1927).

Selected nonfiction:

"The Future of the Negro in Art" (1924) and "Negroes: Inherent Craftsmen" (1925) in Howard University Record; "Review of Plum Bun, by Jessie Redmon Fauset," in Opportunity (1929); "The Ebony Flute" column, in Opportunity (1926–28); "The American Negro Paints," in Southern Workman (1928).

Selected poetry:

"Heritage," in Opportunity (1923); "To Usward," in Crisis (1924); "Wind" in Opportunity (1924); "Purgation" in Opportunity (1925); "Lines Written on the Grave of Alexander Dumas," in Opportunity (1926); "Dear Things" and "Dirge," in Palms (1926); "Hatred," in Opportunity (1926).

Fauset, Jessie Redmon (1882–1961). American novelist, journalist, poet, and editor whose wide-ranging literary skills both influenced other writers of the Harlem Renaissance and vividly captured the struggles and successes of black Americans in the early part of the 20th century . Born Jessie Redmon Fauset on April 27, 1882, in Camden, New Jersey; died on April 30, 1961, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; seventh child of Redmon Fauset (a minister of the African Methodist Episcopal Church) and Annie (Seamon) Fauset; attended Philadelphia High School for Girls, graduating in 1900; graduated from Cornell University, 1905, with Phi Beta Kappa; attended summer classes at the Sorbonne in Paris; University of Pennsylvania, M.A., 1919; married Herbert E. Harris (a businessman), in 1929 (died 1958).

Was the first black woman to graduate from Cornell University (1905); taught Latin and French in Washington, D.C., at the M Street High School (later Dunbar High School, 1906–19); served as the literary editor of Crisis (1919–26); edited, with W.E.B. Du Bois, a children's magazine, The Brownies' Book (1920–21); wrote four novels (1924–33); taught French at DeWitt Clinton High School in New York City (1927–44); moved to Montclair, New Jersey, with husband (early 1950s); after his death, moved to Philadelphia (1958), where she died of heart disease (1961).

Selected writings (all published in Crisis):

(poetry) "Rondeau" (1912), "Again It Is September" (1917), "Oriflamme" (1920), "La vie c'est la vie" (1922), "To a Foreign Maid" (1923), "Courage! He Said" (1929); (short stories) "There Was a Time; A Story of Spring" (1917), "The Sleeper Wakes" (1920), "Double Trouble" (1923); (nonfiction): "The New Literature of the New Negro" (1920), "Impressions on the Second Pan-African Congress" (1921), "The 13th Biennial of the N.C.A.C." (1923); (novels) There Is Confusion (1924), Plum Bun (1929), The Chinaberry Tree: A Novel of American Life (1931), Comedy: American Style (1933).

Fuller, Meta Warrick (1877–1968). Prolific American sculptor and illustrator known for sculptures symbolizing the aspirations of African-Americans as well as works depicting human suffering . Born Meta Vaux Warrick on June 9, 1877, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; died on March 13, 1968, in Framingham, Massachusetts; daughter of William Warrick and Emma Warrick, middle-class parents who encouraged her artistic talents; attended Pennsylvania School of Industrial Arts, 1899; studied for three years at Academie Colarossi, Paris, and École des Beaux-Arts, Paris, beginning in 1899; received instruction from Charles Grafly, Rodin, Gauqui, Rollard, and Raphael Collin in Paris; exhibited several works at L'Art Nouveau, a Paris gallery; attended Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, 1907; married Liberian-born Solomon Fuller (a neurologist and psychologist), in 1909; children: three sons.

Commissioned to sculpt 150 black figures (called The Progress of the Negro in America) for the Jamestown Tercentennial Exposition (1907); most of her early sculpture destroyed in a fire in a Philadelphia warehouse (1910); exhibited life-size work Awakening Ethiopia at the New York Making of America Exposition (1922); invited by W.E.B. Du Bois to sculpt a piece for the 50th anniversary celebration of the Emancipation Proclamation, held in New York (1931); remained active in Boston art circles (1930s); lived and worked at her home in Framingham, Massachusetts, where she also taught students (1929–68).

Selected sculpture:

Crucifixion of Christ in Agony (c. 1894); Secret Sorrow (also known as Man Eating His Heart), The Thief on the Cross, The Wretched, Man Carrying a Dead Comrade (most likely during years in Paris, 1899–1902); John the Baptist (1899); Head of Medusa (1903); Oedipus, The Silent Appeal, Exodus, The Impenitent Thief, Warrick Tableau (all n.d.); Emancipation Group (1913); Awakening Ethiopia (1914); Water Boy (1914); Peace Halting the Ruthlessness of War (1917); The Talking Skull (1937); The Madonna of Consolation (1961); The Statue of Jesus on the Cross (1962); The Refugee (1964); Bust of Charlotte Hawkins Brown (1965).

Exhibits:

Paris Salon (1898, 1899, 1903); Jamestown Tercentennial Exposition (1907); New York Public Library (1921); Making of America Exhibit,New York (1922); Boston Public Library (1922); Art Institute of Chicago (1927); Emancipation Exhibit, New York (1931); Harmon Foundation (1931–33); Boston Art Club (1930s); Augusta Savage Studios (1939); American Negro Exposition (1940); Howard University (1961); Framingham Center Library (1964); City College of New York (1967).

Collections:

Cleveland Art Museum; Schomburg Collection, New York City; Atlanta YMCA; Garfield School, Detroit; New York Public Library, 135th Street Branch; Framingham Center Library, Massachusetts; Framingham Union Hospital; St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, Framingham; San Francisco Museum of Fine Arts; Howard University; Livingston College Library, Salisbury, North Carolina; Business and Professional Women's Club, Washington, D.C. Awards: elected fellow, Academy of Fine Arts; silver medal in New Vistas in American Art Exhibition, Howard University (1961); honorary Doctor of Letters, Livingston College (1962).

Johnson, Georgia Douglas (1877–1966). American poet, playwright, educator, and political activist whose work, incorporating many threads of the artistic tapestry of the Harlem Renaissance, explored the duality women of color endure in American society . Born Georgia Blanche Douglas Camp on September 10, 1877, in Atlanta, Georgia; died in Washington, D.C., on May 14, 1966; daughter of George Camp and Laura (Jackson) Camp; received primary education in Atlanta public schools; completed Normal Program at Atlanta University, 1896; studied music at Oberlin Conservatory in Oberlin, Ohio, where she trained in violin, piano, voice, and harmony; also studied at Cleveland College of Music and Howard University; married Henry Lincoln Johnson (a lawyer and politician), in 1903 (died 1925); children: Henry Lincoln, Jr., and Peter Douglas.

Returned to Atlanta after studies to teach school and serve as an assistant principal; moved to Washington, D.C. (1910), where Henry Johnson established a law firm; their home became a literary salon known as the "Round Table," which met on Saturday nights and drew many of the major figures of the Harlem Renaissance; published her first poems in Crisis (1916); published first volume of poetry, The Heart of a Woman and Other Poems (1918); published more than 200 poems (1918–30), and became active in civil-rights activities and in politics, participating in the Pan-African movement, Congregational Church meetings, and the Republican Party; after the death of husband (1925), took various government jobs to support herself and her children; became the commissioner of conciliation at the Department of Labor (1927) and began writing plays; won first prize in the Opportunity magazine play contest (1927); became involved with the Federal Theater Project, which was part of the New Deal; continued to write until her death (1966).

Selected writing:

(poetry) The Heart of a Woman and Other Poems (1918), Bronze (1922), An Autumn Love Cycle (1928), Share My World (1962), also published in various anthologies, including "The Dreams of the Dream," "Hope," and others in Countee Cullen's Caroling Dusk (1927); (plays) A Sunday Morning in the South: A One-Act Play (1924), Plumes: Folk Tragedy (1927), Blue Blood (1928).

Johnson, Helene (1907—). American poet, part of the younger generation of writers of the Harlem Renaissance, whose literary career, though brief, had an important impact on American poetry . Name variations: Helen Johnson Hubbell. Born Helen Johnson on July 7, 1907 (some sources cite 1906), in Boston, Massachusetts; only child of Ella (Benson) Johnson and William Johnson; cousin of Dorothy West (1907–1998); attended Boston public schools and Boston University; attended Columbia University Extension School in 1926; married William Warner Hubbell (a motorman), early 1930s; children: Abigail Calachaly Hubbell (b. September 18, 1940).

While still living in Boston, was a member of the literary group, the Saturday Evening Quill Club; also won first prize for a short-story contest in the Boston Chronicle; moved to New York City with her cousin Dorothy West (1920s); published poems in numerous periodicals, including Opportunity, Vanity Fair, and Fire!; became active in A'Lelia Walker's literary salon, the Dark Tower, and in the Fellowship for Reconciliation, an international organization; won literary awards for her poems "My Race" and "Metamorphism" (1926); probably returned to Boston (c. 1929); disappeared from the Harlem literary scene (1929); published a few poems in Opportunity (early 1930s).

Poetry:

"My Race," in Opportunity (1925); "Fulfillment," "Futility," "Metamorphism," "Night," "Mother," "The Road," in Opportunity (1926); "Love in Midsummer," in Messenger (1926); "Summer Matures," in Opportunity (1927); "Cui Bono?" in Harlem Magazine (1928); "A Missionary Brings Native," in Palms (1928); "Fiat Lux," in Opportunity (1928); "I Am Not Proud," "Invocation," "Regalia," "Remember Not," "Why Do They Prate," "Worship," in Saturday Evening Quill (1929); "Vers de Société," in Opportunity (1930); "Sonnet," in Opportunity (1931); "Sonnet," "Monotone," in Opportunity (1932); "Plea of a Plebian," in Opportunity (1934).

McClendon, Rosalie "Rose" (1884–1936). American stage actress who combined wide-ranging theatrical talents with a desire to promote and advance black theater during the Harlem Renaissance . Name variations: Rose McClendon. Born Rosalie Virginia Scott on August 27, 1884, in Greenville, North Carolina; died of pneumonia in 1936; daughter of Sandy Scott and Tena (Jenkins) Scott; grew up in New York City, where she was active in her church theater group; received a scholarship to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Art, 1916; married Dr. Henry Pruden McClendon (a chiropractor and Pullman porter), in 1904.

Following her marriage, spent the next ten years engaged in church work (1904–14); cast in first serious role in play Justice (1919); achieved critical acclaim for her role in Deep River (1926); had roles in nearly every important African-American play staged in New York City (1926–mid-1930s); began directing plays at the Negro Experimental Theater in New York (early 1930s); with Dick Campbell, organized the Negro People's Theater (1935); fell ill with pleurisy (1935).

Selected stage performances:

Justice (1919); Roseanne (1924); Deep River (1926); In Abraham's Bosom (1926); Porgy (1927); The House of Connelly (1931); Never No More (1932); Black Souls (1932); Brainsweat (1934); Roll Sweet Chariot (1934); Mulatto (1935).

Collections:

Rose McClendon Memorial Collection at Howard University includes hundreds of photographs of black artists and writers, gift of Carl Van Vechten, 1946.

Mills, Florence (1895–1927). American actress, singer, and dancer whose performances in musical theater productions like Shuffle Along and Blackbirds made her an international star and a popular figure of the Harlem Renaissance . Born Florence Winfree on January 25, 1895 (some sources cite 1896), in Washington, D.C.; died of appendicitis in New York on November 1, 1927; daughter of John Winfree and Nellie (Simons) Winfree; married Ulysses Thompson (a dancer and comedian).

By age five, was winning dance contests; made her first stage appearance at age eight in a Washington, D.C., production of Sons of Ham; toured with the Bonita Stage Company as a "pickaninny" with the singing and dancing chorus; performed in the Mills Trio with sisters Olivia and Maude ; later formed the Panama Trio with Ada Smith and Cora Green; toured with the Tennessee Ten Company in a trio with her husband and Fredi Johnson; received important professional break with Shuffle Along (1921); performed in numerous other Broadway and Harlem productions, including Dixie to Broadway (1924) and Blackbirds (1926).

Selected stage performances:

Shuffle Along (1921); Plantation Review (1922); From Dover to Dixie (London, 1923); Dixie to Broadway (1924); Blackbirds (1926).

Walker, A'Lelia (1885–1931). American heiress, hostess and literary patron whose social gatherings brought together some of the most colorful figures of the Harlem Renaissance . Name variations: Lelia Walker (changed her name to A'Lelia as an adult). Born Lelia McWilliams in Vicksburg, Mississippi, on June 6, 1885; collapsed at a dinner party and died in Long Branch, New Jersey, in August 1931; daughter of Sarah (Breedlove) McWilliams (the future Madame C.J Walker) and Moses (Jeff) McWilliams (a laborer); graduated from Knoxville College in Tennessee; married a man named Robinson, around 1905 (divorced 1914); married Wiley Wilson (a physician), in 1919 (divorced 1923); married James Arthur Kennedy (a physician, divorced); children: (adopted during first marriage) Mae Walker Robinson.

Raised in Indianapolis, Indiana; arrived in New York City to manage the Walker Corporation's Harlem headquarters (1914); her mother died (1919); wedding of Mae Walker Robinson, adopted daughter from first marriage (1923); opened the Dark Tower, a literary and artistic salon in her New York townhouse (1928).

The term "renaissance" means "rebirth," and in Harlem, the neighborhood in New York City above 125th Street, a rebirth is what took place in the 1920s. The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural explosion in African-American literature, art, theater, and dance which began around 1917 and lasted until the early 1930s. It was also, as historian Nathan Huggins has described, "a channeling of energy from political and social criticism into poetry, fiction, music and art." Participants in the Harlem Renaissance viewed art and literature not merely as expressions of creativity, but as agents of change. This was an age of freedom in art and literature, dance and theater, but it was also an age marked by racial segregation, the disenfranchisement of blacks, and heightened prejudice. An understanding of this contradiction informed the artists of the Harlem Renaissance.

Part of the impetus for the Harlem Renaissance was a demographic shift known as the Great Migration. Between 1910 and 1930, almost one million blacks left the South and migrated North to cities like Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburgh, and New York in search of better opportunities. Migration North reached its peak during 1915 and 1916, when factories producing war materials needed Southern workers to combat serious labor shortages. The Great Migration represented a significant change in the structure of the American population, and it meant that a new generation of African-Americans would become urban, rather than rural, dwellers.

New York City had a special appeal to those headed North, and for the African-Americans who would sustain the Harlem Renaissance, it was a promising destination. For aspiring writers, it was the center of the publishing industry; the many theaters of Broadway lured hopeful stage performers; art galleries and museums were plentiful. As a whole, the city had an unrivaled "metropolitan charisma" in the 1910s and 1920s which lured many talented writers and artists to its environs. New York became the headquarters for the two most influential publications of the Harlem Renaissance, Crisis and Opportunity. Crisis was the official organ of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and W.E.B. Du Bois, the founder, served as the magazine's editor. Opportunity served a similar function for the Urban League, and Charles S. Johnson was its editor. Both magazines published the latest work of African-American poets, writers, and critics.

Among these were a number of talented African-American women. Yet, as one historian of the era has noted, "although women were central within the Harlem Renaissance, the names which define the movement are usually male." Countee Cullen, Jean Toomer, and Langston Hughes appear frequently in discussions of the Renaissance, but the names of many of the hundreds of black women who wrote poetry, plays, fiction, essays, and children's books in the 1920s and 1930s have been lost to history. This was due in part to the vagaries of the patronage system, which for a number of reasons tended to exclude women. Without the assistance of a benefactor, many women artists of the Harlem Renaissance had to find alternative employment in order to support themselves.

Women not only contributed to the literature and art of the period, but also served as editors. The writer Jessie Redmon Fauset, for example, served for several years as literary editor of Crisis. In addition, women played an important role in fostering cultural discussions through "salons" like Georgia Douglas Johnson 's Saturday evening "Round Table," and A'Lelia Walker 's "Dark Tower" club. In all of these capacities, women contributed a great deal to the cultural vitality of the Harlem Renaissance.

Some of the most notable women of the Harlem Renaissance were writers, and of these, a large number expressed themselves through poetry. As critic Gloria T. Hull has noted, poetry during the Harlem Renaissance was "the preeminent form" of expression, "based on its universality, accessibility for would-be writers, suitability for magazine publication, and classical heritage as the highest expression of cultured, lyric sensibility." Yet the women writers of the Harlem Renaissance rarely limited themselves to one genre. They wrote plays, essays, and magazine columns; they painted; they became educators and civic leaders. Taken together, their contributions represent an important chapter not only in the history of 20th-century American literature, but in the history of American culture as a whole.

Jessie Redmon Fauset

Perhaps the best known of the women writers of the Harlem Renaissance was Jessie Redmon Fauset, a woman of letters who was admired for

her editorial skills as much as for her fiction and poetry. Fauset was a trailblazer from a young age: she was one of the first black students at the Philadelphia Girls' High School, and after Bryn Mawr rejected her college application because of race, she went on to become the first black woman graduate of Cornell University. These experiences influenced Fauset's later fiction, which had as its recurring theme women's struggle for autonomy in a world bedeviled by racial prejudice.

While she was a young teacher in Washington, D.C., Fauset began to submit articles on a wide range of topics to the magazine Crisis. Editor W.E.B. Du Bois was so impressed with her work that he persuaded her to move to New York City to serve as the publication's literary editor. In this capacity Fauset became, according to Langston Hughes, "one of those who midwifed the so-called New Negro literature into being." She used Crisis as a forum for new talent, giving much-needed exposure to young novelists and poets like Nella Larsen and Gwendolyn Bennett.

To be a Negro in America posits a dramatic situation.
—Jessie Redmon Fauset

Fauset herself contributed to the literature of the Renaissance through her poetry and fiction. Her first novel, There Is Confusion, published in 1924, told the story of a young woman who fights racial prejudice and achieves success through self-sacrifice and perseverance. In many ways, the story mirrored Fauset's own experience as a young black woman in America. Her second novel, Plum Bun, published in 1929, had as its central character a light-skinned black woman who attempts to pass as white in New York society. Through this character, Fauset, with keen insight, deconstructed American ideas about skin color and showed, as one critic noted, how "the white disguise proves to be a heavier burden than dark skin."

Fauset's contemporaries and later critics characterized her novels as fully within the genre of "genteel black fiction" because they took as their setting the internal dynamics of the black middle class. One Harlem writer, Claude McKay, described Fauset as "prim, pretty, and well-dressed," and noted that she "talked fluently and intelligently." He went on to say, "Miss Fauset is … dainty as a primrose, and her novels are quite as fastidious and precious." Some of Fauset's contemporaries and many later critics dismissed her work as "novels of manners," unpersuasive in their descriptions of black life. Yet this overlooks the deeper dilemmas Fauset explored in her work. In her writing, she captured the predicament that all blacks faced in America: social and racial barriers which barred them from achieving their full potential. This theme found its way into a great deal of the literature of the Harlem Renaissance.

Fauset's contact with other artists of the Harlem Renaissance was not limited to her editing responsibilities at Crisis. During the late 1910s and 1920s, she was a frequent guest of another writer and literary host of the era, Georgia Douglas Johnson. In Johnson's Washington, D.C., living room, Fauset met writers like Angelina Weld Grimké , Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen and Alice Dunbar-Nelson . Fauset and Johnson formed a comfortable working relationship as well. Fauset helped Johnson assemble her first volume of poetry for publication. It is not surprising that Fauset and Johnson became friends, for in their work they both wrestled with the question of their place in society as women, as writers, and as African-Americans.

Georgia Douglas Johnson

Though she lived in Washington, D.C., rather than New York City, historians consider Georgia Douglas Johnson an important contributor to the literature of the Harlem Renaissance. First as a poet, and later as a playwright, Johnson tackled a wide range of contemporary social themes in her work, including the oppressiveness of sexual and racial stereotypes and the atrocity of lynching in the South.

An accomplished lyricist whose earlier musical training influenced her use of language and rhythm in her writing, Johnson, in her earliest poems, tells the stories of women who try to overcome the restrictive sexual stereotypes of the age. "Heart of a Woman," the title poem of her first collected anthology, described this struggle and the frustration it sometimes brought. The heart of a woman, Johnson wrote, is like a bird that flies "forth with the dawn," then "falls back with the night."

And enters some alien cage in its plight.
And tries to forget it has dreamed of the stars
While it breaks, breaks, breaks on the sheltering bars.

Johnson experienced the restrictiveness of those "sheltering bars," for it was well known that her husband, a public official, did not approve of her career as a writer.

In her second volume of poetry, Bronze, Johnson went beyond sexual stereotypes to explore racial ones as well. As one biographer has noted, she tried to explain why women like herself "were expected to identify themselves as either black or female, but never both." This duality is revealed in poems like "Bondage" and "Alien." In "Octoroon," Johnson discussed the "sorrowful circumstances" of mixed heritage, and some scholars have speculated that her use of miscegenation as a theme in her poetry, combined with her reticence about her own family's history, suggest that her ancestry contained white blood. Her later writing, particularly the poems in An Autumn Love Cycle, explored universal literary themes such as love and aging.

As the Harlem Renaissance reached its high point in the late 1920s, Johnson turned her attention from poetry to playwriting and found a forum for her political concerns. Employing a mix of standard English and traditional black dialect, she used theater to convey powerful stories about African-American life in the early 20th century. A Sunday Morning in the South, for example, revealed the horrors of lynching and the nefarious activities of the Ku Klux Klan in the Southern states. Another play, Plumes, won the first prize in Opportunity magazine's playwriting contest in 1927.

Johnson's literary activities during these years were even more remarkable when one considers that she was not able to devote herself to them full-time. Starting with the death of her husband in 1925, she was employed in various government agencies in order to support herself and her children. Her work offered a unique description of African-American history from a woman's perspective, at the same time that it celebrated black efforts to achieve equality and freedom in American society. Like Jessie Fauset's novels, Georgia Douglas Johnson's plays and poetry were informed by her sense of history and by her personal experiences as a black woman in America.

Gwendolyn B. Bennett

In 1924, a dinner was held at New York City's Civic Club to honor the publication of Jessie Fauset's first novel, There Is Confusion. Celebrating with Fauset and other literary luminaries that evening was Gwendolyn Bennett, a 22-year-old artist, poet, and writer who represented a new, younger generation of the Harlem Renaissance. Bennett traveled in the most exciting artistic circles in Harlem. She knew Georgia Douglas Johnson through the lively and engaging Saturday-night meetings held at the Johnsons' Washington, D.C., home, and she corresponded with other women writers like Zora Neale Hurston and Regina Anderson .

Gwendolyn Bennett's interest in literature began at an early age, and she became the first black girl to be elected to the Felter Literary Society at Brooklyn Girls High School. She also engaged in literary pursuits while she completed her higher education, penning two plays while a student at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. But it was as a columnist for the magazine Opportunity that Bennett first made her mark on Harlem's literary scene. Lifting a line from William Rose Benet's poem "Harlem"—"I want to sing Harlem on an ebony flute"—Bennett dubbed her column "The Ebony Flute," and from 1926 to 1928 she tracked the "literary chit-chat and artistic what-not" of Harlem. In addition, she used her column as a medium for discussing the African-American literary and artistic movements flourishing in other cities, like the Saturday Evening Quill Club in Boston.

Though her column had many devoted readers, Gwendolyn Bennett's most significant impact on the Harlem Renaissance came through her poetry. She never published her own volume of collected works, but she was a frequent contributor to publications like Crisis, where Jessie Redmon Fauset published her work, Fire! and Palms. Bennett's poetic themes ranged from love and death to nature, romance, and the dilemmas of race. She employed a variety of forms in her work, from traditional ballads and sonnets to more modern styles like free verse, and the length of her poems ranged from a few lines to four dozen.

Bennett's poetry was informed by her training as a visual artist, and she appears to have been particularly influenced by her encounter with modern art during her years of foreign study in Paris. There she met the well-regarded modern painter Frans Masereel, who encouraged her painting. One literary critic has called her poems, literally, "word paintings." In one verse, she linked the world of the painter to the world of the poet, saying "Brushes and paints are all I have/ To speak the music in my soul…. / A copper jar beside a pale green bowl." Bennett also used poems to explore her African heritage, capturing both the tumult and the joy of the African-American experience. In "To a Dark

Girl," for example, Bennett praised black beauty, and in "Song" she described the "cry of the soul" of African-Americans.

Helene Johnson

Bennett was not the only young poet of her generation to make a lasting impression on the Harlem literary scene. A woman from Boston whose literary heroes included Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Percy Shelley, and Walt Whitman, she left her home city for New York in the early 1920s. Though her literary career would prove fleeting, Helene Johnson was, as Hull has noted, one of "the stellar poets of the younger generation" of the Harlem Renaissance. This generation included people like Gwendolyn Bennett and Arna Bontemps, who wanted to change the direction of Harlem culture away from the "polite" interests of the older generation and towards newer forms of literary and artistic expression. They wanted to stir things up. They launched a new magazine aptly named Fire! which had as its stated purpose: "to burn up a lot of old, dead, conventional Negro-white ideas of the past." Through this medium and others, as historian Jervis Anderson has noted, they "hoped to define the position of the black literary avant-garde and, in so doing, state their aesthetic and philosophical differences with the older literary leadership."

Though little is known of her early life, Johnson came to Harlem with a wealth of literary talent; established Harlem writers like Wallace Thurman expected much of her, calling her a "Negro prodigy." She immersed herself in the Harlem literary scene, attending meetings of A'Lelia Walker's Dark Tower group and publishing several prize-winning poems in Opportunity magazine. In her work, Johnson wrote about race in a way that the older generation of Harlem poets had not. She demonstrated, as one biographer has noted, a "fierce identification" with her racial heritage and a fascination with "ghetto life." As her contemporary James Weldon Johnson put it, "she took the 'racial bull' by the horns," often combining militant themes with the new colloquial-folk-slang style that was becoming popular at the time. According to some critics, her best poem was "Bottled," published in Vanity Fair in 1927, which compared a bottle of sand from the Sahara desert with a black man from Seventh Avenue in New York. Johnson concluded that although both the sand and the man had been "bottled" for the gaze of Western society, they retained the integrity of their own cultures and heritages.

Like many of the other women writers of the Harlem Renaissance, Helene Johnson found time amidst her literary activities to pursue political activities as well. She became a member of an international organization called the Fellowship of Reconciliation, which advocated pacifism and interracial cooperation. Johnson remained active in the organization until the late 1920s, when she suddenly retired from the Harlem scene. After marrying William Warner Hubbell, a motorman (Johnson's married name was not made public until the 1970s), she devoted herself full-time to raising their daughter Abigail Calachaly Hubbell . Critics generally agree that Johnson's early promise as a poet remained unfulfilled since her career spanned such a short period of time, preventing her work from growing in new directions and maturing.

Helene Johnson's departure from the Harlem literary scene, though driven by personal concerns, was emblematic of the shift in fortunes experienced by other writers of the era. When the full force of the nationwide economic depression hit Harlem in the 1930s, writers and poets like Fauset, Georgia Douglas Johnson, and Bennett suffered. Since the literary magazines that published their work were struggling to stay afloat financially, many of these women had to turn to other professions in order to support themselves. Jessie Fauset devoted herself almost entirely to teaching; Georgia Johnson turned her attention to New Deal-sponsored theater projects; and Gwendolyn Bennett returned to her earlier career as an educator, teaching watercolor and design at Howard University.

Unlike the women writers of the Harlem Renaissance, much of whose work is immortalized in anthologies and literary magazines, the female stage performers of the era live on only in black-and-white still photographs and in the accounts of their contemporaries. Nonetheless, these descriptions tell the story of women like Florence Mills and Rose McClendon, whose electrifying personalities lit up the stages of New York and Europe. Their skills found fertile soil in Harlem. According to Jervis Anderson, by the mid-1920s Harlem had become the "night-club capital of the city," and even of the nation. The Lenox Club at Lenox Avenue and 143rd Street, the Bamboo Inn on Seventh Avenue, and "Jungle Alley," the stretch of night clubs along West 133rd Street, all drew hordes of black and white New Yorkers in to experience the sounds and sights of Harlem. In addition to these cabarets and night clubs, Harlem has never had so many active theater groups as it did in the decade of the '20s. This flourishing theater culture provided a number of venues for young performers.

Florence Mills

One of the most beloved stage performers of the Harlem Renaissance was the actress, singer, and dancer Florence Mills. A theater veteran from a very young age, Mills was, according to the poet Countee Cullen, "all too slender and slight for the bright and vivacious flame of her being." James Weldon Johnson echoed this praise, calling Mills "exotic … pixie radiant … [with] a naivete that was alchemic." Mills was also a Harlemite, known for her down-to-earth demeanor and friendliness, even after achieving celebrity.

Though she had traveled with a number of theater companies, Mills' career gained momentum after her turn in the 1921 production Shuffle Along. A musical comedy written by collaborators Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake, Shuffle Along, according to one historian, "ushered in a vogue of Negro singing and dancing that lasted until the Great Depression." Though Mills was only in the chorus line of the production, she stole the show, and quickly became one of Harlem's biggest celebrities. She followed this breakthrough performance with appearances in Lew Leslie's Plantation Review the next year. Plantation Review toured in London and then returned to New York in 1924, enlarged and retitled Dixie to Broadway. There was no doubt that Mills was its star, and she became the first female performer around whom an entire musical was structured.

Mills was the maven of a new style of Harlem musical, which introduced novel forms of music and dance to the American stage and to the public. The plaintive tones of jazz and blues, and the swing-like beat of ragtime music, became as popular as new dances like the Charleston, the Cakewalk, and the Lindy Hop. But it was Mills' star turn in Lew Leslie's Blackbirds in 1926 that brought her international recognition. An American critic, assessing her performance, compared her to the male stage performer Al Jolson, and declared, "Florence Mills is, within the limits of her field of theatrical enterprise, America's foremost female player." Foreign audiences agreed. Blackbirds toured London and Paris for more than a year, and it was said that England's prince of Wales saw the show 20 times.

Mills returned from Europe to a parade in her honor that wound through the streets of Harlem. Tragically, just a few weeks later, she died after an operation for appendicitis. She was 32 and at the peak of her career. New Yorkers expressed their admiration for her talents by giving Mills one of the most elaborate funerals Harlem had ever seen, with floral tributes pouring in from all across the country and the world—$100,000 worth in one day, according to a reporter for the Boston Evening Transcript. Mills' body lay in state for a week at a Harlem funeral home, where thousands came to pay their respects.

Rose McClendon

If Florence Mills was the star of Harlem musicals, then Rose McClendon was the leading lady of the Harlem theater. McClendon embarked on a professional acting career late in life; she was 35 when she landed her first major role in the 1919 production Justice. Yet, like Florence Mills, she quickly gained critical acclaim for her acting skills. Ethel Barrymore called McClendon's performance in the 1926 play Deep River "one of the memorable, immortal moments in the theater," and a critic commented on the "sensitive personality, bell-like voice," and "fineness of perception" she brought to her roles. By 1927, McClendon was a seasoned performer, appearing in such works as Paul Green's Pulitzer Prize-winning In Abraham's Bosom. Of the play, which also featured the actors Jules Bledsoe and Abbie Mitchell, one observer wrote:

It is difficult to remember scenes in any play that were more compelling than the tragic scenes in which these three players appeared together—all artists, all with long theater training, all understanding that unity among players which the Russians call "communion."

Yet McClendon was not satisfied to remain merely a performer. She was also an important force behind the black community-theater movement in the late 1920s and 1930s. In a letter to The New York Times, McClendon outlined the need for the establishment of a permanent black theater in America. "Such a theater could," she said, "create a tradition that would equal the tradition of any national group" and develop "a long line of first-rate actors." In 1935, with this goal in mind, McClendon and actor Dick Campbell organized the Negro People's Theater in Harlem. Unfortunately, McClendon would not live to see her dreams realized. She died of pneumonia in 1936, having remained an active stage and community presence until her final days. Her Negro People's Theater became part of the Works Progress Administration's Federal Theater Project during the New Deal, and in 1937, her friend Dick Campbell formed the Rose McClendon Players, which one historian has described as "dedicated to carrying out her vision of a community group for training in all aspects of the theater." Through her moving performances on the stage and her strenuous efforts on behalf of the Harlem theatrical community, McClendon left an enduring legacy.

Meta Warwick Fuller

In addition to the many talented writers and actresses of this period, the Harlem Renaissance spawned a number of gifted visual artists. One of the most well known of this group was the sculptor and illustrator Meta Warrick Fuller. Fuller's career would span nearly nine decades. Although she was born and raised in Philadelphia and did not live in New York, the themes she explored through her sculpture were those of the Harlem Renaissance. As a young woman, Fuller received a scholarship to study in Paris, where she arrived in 1899. Under the tutelage and encouragement of Auguste Rodin, Fuller's talents flourished. Despite her successes in Paris (including an exhibit at the Paris Salon gallery), upon returning to Philadelphia, Fuller faced prejudiced art dealers who refused to buy her sculptures. It was not until 1907, when she was commissioned to craft a piece for the Jamestown Tercentennial, that the American art world took notice of her work.

Human suffering fascinated Meta Fuller, and through sculpture she explored its various elements. In The Wretched, completed in 1903, she fashioned seven figures, each of which depicted a different form of human suffering. This interest reflected the very great influence of Rodin, and historian Nathan Huggins has argued that "her art was derivative of Rodin's rather than part of the new wave of impressionism and post-impressionism that was swelling around her." Fuller's contemporaries often found her focus on suffering extreme to the point of morbidity, and they labeled her a "sculptor of horrors." But Fuller's work was also about human aspirations, especially the aspirations of African-Americans. In Water Boy, she used the image of a small black child's struggle to carry a heavy water jar to symbolize this process. In this way, Fuller's work mirrored that of other Harlem Renaissance figures who used literature and the theater to explore contemporary social themes.

A'Lelia Walker

Many facilitated the exchange of ideas, art, and literature that took place during the Harlem Renaissance, but few did so with the flair of A'Lelia Walker. The daughter of Madame C.J. Walker , the beautician who built an empire around the "Walker System" of hair-care products, A'Lelia Walker first came to New York in 1914 to manage the Harlem headquarters of her mother's beauty corporation. After her mother's death in 1919, Walker became the wealthiest woman in Harlem; she would use that wealth to create a social circle that included some of the most important figures of the Harlem Renaissance.

As one of her contemporaries noted, A'Lelia Walker's guest lists "read like a blue book of the seven arts." Poets, writers, artists, actors and actresses, musicians and journalists mingled at Walker's sumptuous parties, usually held at her mother's Westchester County mansion, Villa Lewaro, or at either of her two city residences. Her wealth gave her access to a wide circle of acquaintances, including a well-known white patron of the Harlem Renaissance, Carl Van Vechten. Hull has suggested that Walker and Carl Van Vechten "were the fete-givers supreme of this party-mad era," and Anderson has said that she typified the social side of the Harlem Renaissance. While some of the older, established Harlem families grumbled about Walker's nouveau-riche style of entertaining, there is no doubt that the social activities she organized did a great deal to encourage the blossoming of culture in Harlem in the 1920s.

Walker was not college-educated, nor did she consider herself an intellectual or an artist. Instead, she was that most important of figures, the generous social organizer and artistic sponsor. Yet Walker was not a philanthropist on a large scale, as her mother had been (two-thirds of the Walker Corporation's profits went to charity); her generosity was considerable, but it was directed towards her immediate circle of friends. Indeed, Walker was infamous throughout her life for her conspicuous consumption of expensive jewelry, cars, and clothing. For years, Harlemites recalled the 1923 wedding she hosted for her adopted daughter, Mae Walker Robinson . It was one of the most elaborate and expensive celebrations Harlem had ever seen.

Walker's generosity flowed directly to the artists and writers she knew through her social circle. In 1928, she turned the bottom floor of her townhouse into a meeting-place for younger members of the Harlem Renaissance. According to Anderson, they named the place the Dark Tower Tea Club after a monthly column called "Dark Tower" that poet Countee Cullen wrote for the magazine Opportunity. It became a regular gathering-place for Walker's talented circle of friends.

Perhaps the best evidence of her impact on the Harlem Renaissance was the recognition given to her by her friends. Carl Van Vechten commented frequently on her charms, and after her death in 1931, a number of prominent figures paid their respects to Walker. At her funeral, Langston Hughes read a poem he had written, "To A'Lelia"; Mary McLeod Bethune spoke, and Reverend Adam Clayton Powell delivered the eulogy. Though she left behind no published works, A'Lelia Walker had a significant influence on the Harlem Renaissance. Through her wealth, her social powers, and her generosity, she aided the community of writers and artists who produced the best work of the period.

For many observers, Walker's death in 1931 marked the end of an era. As Langston Hughes wrote, that spring "was really the end of the gay times of the New Negro in Harlem." The Depression brought hardship to artists and writers throughout the country, and by that time many prominent figures of the Harlem Renaissance had either died or moved away from New York. Yet the legacy—both artistic and political—of this vibrant period in American history lives on. One historian has described it as an important point "in the evolution of Afro-American literature." The works of Jessie Fauset, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Gwendolyn Bennett, Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Dorothy West , Nella Larsen, and Helene Johnson attest to this. Harlem in the 1920s also generated new and exciting forms of acting and musical theater, as seen through the careers of Florence Mills and Rose McClendon. Finally, the Harlem Renaissance created a sense of community among writers and artists and led to a new sense of racial identity among African-Americans. This new identity was both cultural and political, and it would have an important and lasting influence on American life.

sources:

Anderson, Jervis. This Was Harlem; A Cultural Portrait, 1900–1950. NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1981.

Huggins, Nathan Irvin. Harlem Renaissance. NY: Oxford University Press, 1971.

Hull, Gloria T. Color, Sex, and Poetry: Three Women Writers of the Harlem Renaissance. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1987.

Kellner, Bruce, ed. The Harlem Renaissance: A Historical Dictionary for the Era. NY: Methuen, 1984.

Roses, Lorraine Elena, and Ruth Elizabeth Randolph. Harlem Renaissance and Beyond: Literary Biographies of 100 Black Women Writers, 1900–1945. Boston, MA: G.K. Hall, 1990.

Sylvander, Carolyn Wedin. Jessie Redmon Fauset: Black American Writer. Troy, NY: Whitston, 1981.