164: Harlem Renaissance: The Great Migration, Jazz, and the Flowering of Black Culture
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We're in downtown New York City at the Civic Club on West 12th Street for a party unlike any the United States has likely ever seen. That's not to say that people are partying hard or that there's crazy behavior here. It's nothing like that. On the contrary, the 100 or more guests are a cultured, well-read, literary type of crowd, as is evident from the witticisms, jests, and spot-on rejoinders flying back and forth in the banter-filled room.

No, what makes this party unique, perhaps the first of its kind ever in American history, is that this party's well-dressed, witty wordsmiths aren't all the same color. You know, it's kind of loud in here. Let's step outside for a minute where it's quieter and I'll explain. Here's the deal. Originally, tonight's party was supposed to be a celebration of Jesse Fawcett's new novel called There Is Confusion, which was just published by Bonai and LiveWrite Press.

It's a great accomplishment, particularly given the prejudices she faces as a black woman. But as the two black intellectuals asked to organize her party got to work, Opportunity Magazine editor Charles S. Johnson and chair of the philosophy department at Howard University, Alan Locke, they decided to take this soiree in another direction. Living in the racially segregated Jim Crow era and painfully aware of the many career paths closed to black Americans by law or by practice, they wondered,

What if the nation's best creative black minds, specifically the informal Harlem-based Guild of Black Writers, and New York's most influential publishers got together for a dinner party? That's exactly what the duo decided to make of this upcoming event. And to their delight, editors from the Big Apple's biggest newspapers, like the New York World, and most illustrious publishing houses, like Harper Brothers, accepted the invitation and are here tonight.

An incredible accomplishment, and all the more impressive that Charles and Allen could find a venue willing to host a mixed-race event. Most wouldn't. But here we are. And now that you understand that holding a dinner party for black and white guests is an incredible feat in and of itself, much less for that party to enable black creatives to network with New York's most powerful publishers, I'm sure you get what I mean when I say this party is unlike any in the nation's history.

And now that you have the full picture, let's step back inside. There isn't a formal program for the evening, but at some point, Charles Johnson calls for his dinner guests' attention. As the room quiets down, the mustachioed Opportunity Magazine editor looks out on the room through his round-rimmed glasses and explains that many here tonight belong to an informal writers' guild of young black authors and that this is something of a coming-out party for them.

He then introduces the leader, or dean, rather, of this movement, his fellow dinner organizer, Alan Locke. The handsome 38-year-old Howard University professor rises and proceeds to share a few remarks. Continuing with the theme of this informal guild, he explains their hope to overcome stereotypes and reframe the image of Black Americans in this age of what he's calling the New Negro. To quote Alan,

They sense within their group, meaning the Negro group, a spiritual wealth which, if they can properly expound, will be ample for a new judgment and reapprisal of the race." At some point, Allen introduces a colleague who, frankly, needs little introduction. The one and only Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois, heavily balding but still rocking his signature Kaiser mustache and goatee, even if with a touch of gray in both.

He doesn't love that Allen describes him as a part of the quote-unquote older school. Still, the recently returned from Africa professor gets it. He comments on how his writings in the past two decades, like The Souls of Black Folk, had to focus on the barriers black Americans face. Hmm, sounds like he's seeing new opportunities for these younger black authors. Be it before or after Dr. Du Bois, the room's power-wielding New York publishers begin to speak up as well.

Horace Liveright of Boney and Liveright Press advises the aspiring authors around him not to worry too much about how many copies they sell. Some of the best works don't see commercial success. Century Magazine editor Carl Van Doren offers further encouragement. I have a genuine faith in the future of imaginative writing among Negroes in the United States.

It is due to a feeling that the Negroes of this country are in a remarkable strategic position with reference to the new literary age, which seems to be impending. Long oppressed and handicapped, they have gathered stores of emotion and are ready to burst forth with a new eloquence once they discover adequate mediums.

Being, however, as a race not given to self-destroying bitterness, they will, I think, strike a happy balance between rage and complacency. That balance in which passion and humor are somehow united in the best of all possible amalgams for the creative artist. More attendees, black and white, give their hopeful views on the moment and the rise of black authors.

And not entirely denied the spotlight, Jessie Fawcett has a moment of celebration and thanks Dr. Du Bois in particular for being her best friend and severest critic. Countee Cullen and Gwendolyn Bennett each read original poems. The night is a tremendous success, one that will bring demonstrable results as 40 major works written by black authors see publication over the next decade.

This is a genuine shift, a new era in which black authors, playwrights, scholars, and other creatives are punching through the limitations of Jim Crow to reach the whole of American society. And we call this era the Harlem Renaissance. Welcome to History That Doesn't Suck. I'm your professor, Greg Jackson, and I'd like to tell you a story. ♪

In the 1920s, the "New Negro Renaissance" or the "Harlem Renaissance" as we'll later call it, burst onto the scene. Growing out of the war years but truly defined by our dinner organizer professor, Alan Locke, the idea of the New Negro is that Black Americans should know their worth as human beings. That they should be assertive and ready to take their place as equals to white Americans.

Now, Jim Crow segregation remains an enormous hurdle to this reality, but Jim's segregating grasp is weakest on the arts. Hence, we see this 1920s New Negro movement most powerfully among writers, poets, painters, playwrights, and other Black creatives. And while the movement is national, nowhere is the energy stronger than in New York City's quote-unquote Black Mecca of Harlem.

Our tale begins with a demographic shift. As black southerners, sick of Jim Crow laws and faced with shifting economic realities, head north in the 19-teens to seize new opportunities. Is the North really the promised land though, as some say? Well, it's not perfect, as we'll see. But as hundreds of thousands of black Americans make the North home in this decade, we'll see black artists and musicians like Louis Armstrong follow, be that to Chicago or to New York City.

Indeed, we'll see how the Great Migration contributes to the Big Apple's northern neighborhood of Harlem becoming a true gathering place for black intellectuals by the 1920s. There are a lot of different directions we could go from here, but we'll stay fairly literary for a bit as we get to know at least three authors in particular: Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Countee Cullen. We'll contrast their different ideas and attend Countee's wedding to Dr. Du Bois' daughter, Yolande Du Bois.

Alas, it's a marriage that isn't meant to last, but we'll get to that later. We'll then wrap our tale by focusing on the Harlem Renaissance's music, on jazz, this exciting new sound that's sweeping the nation. Yet, irony hits hard as black musicians like the legendary Cab Calloway find themselves performing for white-only audiences.

What does this mean for the New Negro Movement? We'll contemplate that while witnessing one such performance, then push past the Harlem Renaissance's 1920s pre-Great Depression heyday for a little 1930s fun. A swingin' battle of the bands. Plenty to do as always, and we begin by returning to the 19-teens to start the Great Migration that will help facilitate the Harlem Renaissance. And you know what that means. Rewind.

By the 19-teens, Jim Crow is the law of the land in the South. Now, we've seen the rise of Jim Crow across a number of past episodes, specifically episodes 76, 101, 120, 138, and 152. But in case it slipped your mind, here's a quick refresher on what Jim Crow is. While new constitutional amendments and laws moved the needle toward true citizenship for Black Americans in the post-Civil War years, known as the Reconstruction Era, that trajectory came to its end in the 1870s.

During that decade, the federal government stopped enforcing Reconstruction policies, and Southern states began passing laws that ostensibly provided for separate but equal realities for Black and white Americans, but in reality, relegated Black Americans to second-class citizenship. These laws are known as Black Codes, or, as we learned in the last episode, by a nickname derived from a minstrel show character, Jim Crow.

As the decades passed, Jim Crow laws spread far and wide. They soon defined careers, how Americans traveled, and more. But even as these segregating laws reached across the nation to varying degrees, nowhere was it more entrenched or ardently adhered to than below the Mason-Dixon line. So, like I said, by the 19-teens, Jim Crow is the law of the land in the South.

Jim Crow keeps black Americans in low-paying jobs, often in cotton, rice, and tobacco fields, not that different from the days of slavery, and contributes to a dangerous reality. I trust you recall the lynchings we've encountered in past episodes, such as 120, 138, and 152. Tired of these conditions, a small but noticeable trickle of black southerners start moving away by 1910, informally kicking off the Great Migration. But that trickle increases by the middle of the 19-teens,

There are two reasons for that. One is a boll weevil infestation in 1915 and 1916 that threatens the viability of southern agricultural products and therefore threatens the livelihood of black southerners. Second is the answer to this boll weevil economic hardship, economic opportunity up north created by the Great War. Now, the US hasn't entered the conflict yet, but the war has created a booming economy while simultaneously causing the north's go-to source of new labor, European immigration, to plummet.

Given the situation, Northern labor agents look to the South's strong, capable, but unemployed black men. In fact, some Northern employers are so desperate that they cover railroad fares for their new black employees. Sometimes they do this in droves. In 1916, the understaffed Pennsylvania Railroad hires 16,000 black Southerners and brings them to Pittsburgh. Alas, the free railroad tickets won't last long.

With opportunity for employment, better schools, voting protection, and other basic rights making the North an easy sell to black southerners, a little over 400,000 of whom will migrate to the North before the end of the decade, companies realize they no longer have to pay for transportation in order to have sufficient workers. In fact, not only does the railway fare disappear, but railroads see a financial opportunity and jack up the prices.

Black families begin sending one member north who, in turn, works and sends money home, slowly enabling the rest of the family to follow. But white southerners are shocked and displeased. They're losing their Jim Crow-crafted cheap labor pool. Some resort to force to try to stop this. They pull black southerners off trains and buses and throw them in jail.

They fine labor agents. And in an attempt to change hearts and minds, they publish articles in newspapers claiming life is better for black Americans in the South than in the North. Northbound black migrants respond by leaving in the dead of night, slipping away much like their predecessors did to escape enslavement. But even as black Southerners meet more opposition, they're receiving encouragement to head North, specifically from a black publisher named Robert S. Abbott.

Robert Abbott is a huge advocate of what will soon be called the Great Migration. He believes that Black Southerners should head north, particularly to Chicago, and he doesn't hesitate to push this view in his newspaper, The Chicago Defender. He runs ads in the paper, offering to help Black migrants fund their journey, find jobs, and secure housing. His newspaper brims with biblical references, calling Chicago the "promised land" and the journey there "the flight out of Egypt."

According to one of the newspaper's editors, Robert "gives black southerners courage to acknowledge their dissatisfaction and some sense of security by telling them that others were championing their cause and could give them protection in the city that was the home of the defender." Aspiring Chicagoans respond by flooding the defenders' headquarters with letters about living conditions, job opportunities, and the journey northward.

For instance, one educated but stymied black Georgian sends the following: "I write you to ask if you have an opening anywhere for me. I am a college graduate and understand bookkeeping, but I am not above doing hard labor in a foundry or other industrial establishment.

Other letters show exhaustion and despondency, like one black Mississippian who writes: "I am so sick, I am so tired of such conditions that I sometimes think that life for me is not worthwhile, and most eminently believe with Patrick Henry: 'Give me liberty or give me death.'" In these letters, you can hear the simultaneous despair of the present and hope that the North is indeed the promised land.

And yet, moving north isn't like waving a magic wand. Both the journey there and the process of building a new life bring their own different challenges. These challenges will later be articulated powerfully by a black artist named Jacob Lawrence.

Two decades from now, in 1941, his "Migrations" series will tell the tale of the Great Migration in 60 captioned paintings. Now, his work does not depict a single person's experience, but an amalgamation of what those who made the journey might have experienced. You really don't want to miss it, so let me walk you through an audio version of his visual tale. And as I do, I'll of course quote heavily from the paintings' captions. It's an unspecified day in the years following World War I.

We're in a southern train station and countless southern black families are anxiously waiting for their train to arrive. Special guards, called in to keep order, loom behind mothers desperately trying to comfort their children as they watch for the incoming train. Some are undertaking this journey because they have nothing left at home. One green cloaked man says sadly, "The boll weevil has ravaged the crop." Another woman in a yellow jacket turns to him slowly nodding, "Food has doubled in price because of the war.

A lady next to her, wearing a clay-colored hat with black and yellow ribbons floating down her back, is more morally motivated. Referencing recent lynchings, she says that "there is no justice in the southern courts." A man dressed in all black, looking like he's headed to a funeral, remarks mournfully, "Tenant farmers receive harsh treatment at the hands of the planters." But today, these clustered, scared, and restless northbound travelers are ready.

With blue, green, red and brown suitcases and bags piled high on railroad platforms, it's almost time. When the train bound for Chicago lumbers into the station, the grandfathers, grandmothers, fathers, mothers, aunts, uncles and children all board, holding their heads up high. The adults cross their fingers that no blue-clad police officer will storm onto the train and arrest them, preventing their escape. The children bounce excitedly in their seats, looking forward to going to school instead of working.

Finally, they arrive in Chicago, stepping off the train and onto the flat, dusty ground, sprinkled with the occasional tuft of grass. The migrants walk toward the city, or the gateway to the West, in great numbers. Relaxing in their new home, they, quote, found discrimination in the North. It was a different kind, close quote.

Housing shortages, the aloofness and disdain of long-time black northern residents dressed in gowns, long black coats and top hats, and the disease-ridden, crowded environments all prove a problem. And yet, it's an improvement. In the north, three young black girls in red, yellow, and blue dresses are now going to school. We see seven beheaded black adults lined up to vote, and the blue-clad policeman guarding the booth helps rather than prevents them from doing so.

With word of these new opportunities spreading, we go back to the beginning of our story, back to the train station, for yet another overflowing group of eager northbound southerners. And as we do, Jacob Lawrence's caption tells us that "the migrants kept coming." Jacob Lawrence's depiction does indeed speak to reality. The North does provide a better life, yet black migrants find the North still has its violence and hardships.

Between 1917 and 1927, 26 race riots occur in northern cities, the most well-known being in East St. Louis and Chicago. Meanwhile, housing shortages, combined with racially prejudiced policies, make it challenging for black families to find safe and secure homes. Yes, Jim Crow may not be codified in the North as deeply as it is in the South, but discriminatory policies and practices still abound.

And yet, to quote Jacobs' work once more, the migrants keep coming. The 1920s will see somewhere between 800,000 and 1 million black southerners head north. That's about double the numbers from the previous decade. And while the Great Depression will slow that pace in the 1930s, the Great Migration will only pick up in the 1940s and will continue to some degree until 1970, ultimately bringing approximately 6 million black Americans north.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Even now, in the early 1920s, all of this movement is bringing a boom of black culture to the North, and that includes the so-called Promised Land of Chicago. So much so that the city soon captures the attention of a black Southern trumpeter with a killer smile. His friends know him as Satchmo, or just Satch. But for those of you who are only acquaintances, you might know him by his legal name, Louis Armstrong.

Born in New Orleans, Louisiana on August 4th, 1901, Louis was raised in a dangerous neighborhood called the Battlefield. He drops out of school early to work, and after saving up enough money from his job with the Jewish Karnofsky family, he bought his first cornet at the age of 11. On New Year's Day, 1913, young Louis was arrested for shooting blanks out of his stepfather's .38 revolver. The judge sentenced him to the New Orleans Colored Waves Home for Boys.

There, Louis tells us that "he made a beeline to Mr. Peter Davis in his music." What better place to foster a love of music in a young child than New Orleans? To quote musician and self-proclaimed originator of jazz, Jelly Roll Morton, "New Orleans is the cradle of jazz."

While Jelly may not deserve all the credit he personally claims, he is right about the Big Easy being the place where the genre emerges around the turn of the 20th century as a descendant of ragtime, African American folk music, African rhythms, blues, hymns, marches, and classical music. It's spread in part by musicians hired to play on riverboats traveling the Mississippi River.

In fact, it was on February 26, 1917, that the original Dixieland Jazz Band released its first so-called jazz record with two songs: "Livery Stable Blues" and "Dixie Jazz Band One Step." You might say it introduced the jazzy sounds of the bayou to the nation at large. And boy, was it a hit. Americans quickly fell in love with jazz. Frankly, now, in the 1920s, America craves jazz.

As composer and music historian Gunther Schuller writes, "Through Louis Armstrong and his influence, jazz became a truly 20th-century language, and it no longer belonged to New Orleans but to the world." And where does Satch's role sharing New Orleans jazz with the world begin? Well, arguably, in that new northern hub of black culture, the promised land of Chicago. It's an unspecified day in mid-August 1922.

A taxi is just pulling up near 31st and Cottage Grove Avenue on the south side of Chicago at a dance hall called the Lincoln Gardens. And as the car door opens, a handsome 21-year-old Louis Armstrong emerges. And oh, is he excited to be here. Tonight, Louis is performing with his musical hero, Joe "The King" Oliver and the King's appropriately named entourage, Joe Oliver's Creole Jazz Band.

Walking under the canopy that stretches from the doorway to the street, the young New Orleans native pushes through the crowd, finally making it into the dance hall's lobby. What a scene! He'll later recall that, quote, "The lobby seemed to be a block long, so long that I thought I was never going to see the bandstand." Close quote. Finally, Louis makes his way to the smoke-filled bandstand. Looking around, he's among the Windy City's finest musicians.

We've got Johnny Dotz on clarinet, his brother Warren Baby Dotz on drums, Honoré Dutri on trombone, Bill Johnson on bass, beautiful Lil Hardin on voice, and of course, King Oliver on cornet. The King then gives them the look, it's time to play. And as Louis will later recall, "When we cracked down on the first note that night at the Lincoln Gardens, I knew that things would go well for me.

When Papa Joe began to blow that horn of his, it felt right, like old times. The first number went over so well that we had to take an encore. It was then that Joe and I developed a little system for the duet breaks. We did not have to write them down. I was so wrapped up in him and lived so closely to his music that I could follow his lead in a split second. No one could understand how we did it, but it was easy for us and we kept it up the whole evening.

After the floor show was over, we went into some dance tunes, and the crowd yelled, Let the youngster blow! That meant me. Joe was wonderful, and he gladly let me play my rendition of the blues. That was heaven. I had hit the big time. I was up north with the greats. I was playing with my idol, the king, Joe Oliver. My boyhood dream had come true at last. This won't be Lewis' last stop up north.

After a short stint in Chicago, the legendary trumpeter will find that the Great Migration is creating even more opportunity for a jazz musician like himself. He'll go jive in New York City, specifically in a neighborhood just north of Central Park that is rapidly gathering black talent and thinkers to birth an explosion of art and intellectualism. Yes, this neighborhood, this Black Mecca as some call it, is creating a new Negro movement or renaissance of thought. And that neighborhood

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History isn't black and white, yet too often it's presented as such. Grey History: The French Revolution is a long-form history podcast dedicated to exploring the ambiguities and nuances of the past. By contrasting both the experiences of contemporaries and the conclusions of historians, Grey History dives into the detail and unpacks one of the most important and disputed events in human history.

From a revolution based on hope and liberty, to its descent into the infamous reign of terror, there's plenty to discuss, and plenty of grey to explore. One can't understand the modern world without understanding the French Revolution.

So if you're looking for your next long-form, binge-worthy history podcast, one recommended by universities and loved by enthusiasts, then check out Grey History, The French Revolution today. Or simply search for The French Revolution. Initially settled by the Dutch in 1658, Harlem consisted of little more than farms during the New Amsterdam and British colonial eras.

That changed as Manhattan's population grew in the 19th century, and the island's northern neighborhood became home to German, Irish, and Jewish immigrants. Now in the early 20th century, Harlem makes up approximately two square miles of Manhattan above Central Park. The neighborhood is roughly the shape of a triangle, stretching from the Harlem River westward, almost to the Hudson River, all within 114th and 156th streets.

The tidy streets are lined with solid brick and brownstone buildings, constructed by early settlers. It's a stark contrast to the tightly packed Lower East Side. The neighborhood's first black residents arrive in 1905. Harlem's overbuilt, and this means that the owner of 31 West 133rd Street can't find new renters after a murder on the premises. He turns to a black realtor named Philip A. Payton Jr., who soon has black renters for the residence.

More follow. Philip feels that, quote, By opening for colored tenants first a house on one block and then a house in another, I have finally succeeded in securing over 250 first-class flats and private dwellings. The fight that I am making has got to be made sooner or later, and I see no better time than now. Close quote. Many of Harlem's white residents aren't pleased with the influx of black inhabitants.

In 1911, Harlem's Home News states that the white community, quote, must wake up before it is too late to repel black hordes that stand ready to destroy homes and scatter the fortunes of the whites living and doing business in the very heart of Harlem, close quote. But according to Jamaican-American writer and poet Claude McKay, quote,

As the metropolis of New York attracts Americans and the rest of the world, so does Harlem attract the Negro of America and the world. Harlem is the queen of the black belts, drawing Afro-Americans together in a vast humming hive, from the different states, from the islands of the Caribbean, and from Africa. It is the Negro capital of the world. Close quote.

Not a bad description. Amid the Great Migration, Harlem is indeed becoming the North's quote-unquote Negro capital, one influencing, producing, and even gathering Black intellectuals who, in turn, are producing and contributing to New York City's Black-run newspapers and publications.

By 1920, these include the decades-old and once Booker T. Washington-influenced New York Age, the NAACP's politically-focused magazine, once edited by Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois and now in the capable hands of Jesse Fawcett, called The Crisis, and The Messenger, which claims to be, quote, the only radical Negro magazine in America, close quote, with self-identified socialist editors that criticized Dr. Du Bois for urging Black service in the Great War.

Come 1923, the National Urban League's black culture-focused publication, Opportunity, a journal of New Negro Life, joins their ranks. Whether agreeing or arguing, these Harlem-based and adjacent publications are building a new black intellectualism, soon called the New Negro Movement. Now, what exactly is the New Negro?

While A. Philip Randolph first lays claim to the term in The Messenger, it's one of the organizers of the party that started this episode, Howard University philosophy professor Alan Locke, that puts it on the map. In 1925, Alan publishes an essay titled Enter the New Negro, which he then republishes that same year in a collection of works by black authors, that is, an anthology, likewise called The New Negro.

Well, in this twice-published essay, Allen argues a quote-unquote metamorphosis is taking place, a shedding of the old Negro, rooted in enslavement, segregation, and superstition, in favor of the new Negro, who sees his value and rejects, quote, the tyranny of social intimidation, close quote. The philosopher frames this change within the Great Migration, while pointing to a spiritual migration of sorts within the hearts of Black youths.

To quote Allen at length, "...with this renewed self-respect and self-dependence, the life of the Negro community is bound to enter a new dynamic phase, the buoyancy from within compensating for whatever pressure there may be of conditions from without."

The migrant masses, shifting from countryside to city, hurdle several generations of experience at a leap. But more important, the same thing happens spiritually in the life attitudes and self-expression of the young Negro, in his poetry, his art, his education, and his new outlook, with the additional advantage, of course, of the poise and greater certainty of knowing what it is all about. From this comes the promise and warrant of a new leadership."

And perhaps no one knows this better than the up-and-coming poet Langston Hughes. Born on February 1, 1901, in Joplin, Missouri, Langston is of Native American, French, and African descent, which he sums up by identifying as mulatto. He had a rough family life. Bouncing around from city to city, the youth found refuge in the poetry of Dunbar, Longfellow, Whitman, and Sandberg.

In June 1921, The Crisis publishes Langston's poem, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," and the young poet makes his way to New York City to study mining at Columbia University. But that course of study is just to please his pops. As Langston tells us, "Really, why I had come to New York was to see Harlem."

When Columbia proves less accepting of black students than he anticipated, Langston decides to change his paths, explaining that: "After the finals, I moved out of Hartley Hall at Columbia and down into Harlem, where I began life on my own. I was 20." This move pays off in time. By 1925, Langston is truly welcomed into the community that supports his writing. It's May 1st, 1925.

We're among 316 people at a Fifth Avenue restaurant on the corner of 24th Street, eating chicken, mashed potatoes, and green peas. The food isn't the highlight of this evening's dinner, though. No, tonight the magazine Opportunity is honoring the winners of its various writing contests. Well-known black and white figures in the arts like Fanny Hurst, Carl Van Doren, and the Showboats, Paul Robeson, are in the audience, as are well-known white critics.

All are excited to celebrate the up and coming young writers here, like Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Countee Colon, all of whom are about to receive their individual prizes. Writer James Weldon Johnson kicks off the presentations. He notes that "No race can ever become great that has not produced a literature" and concludes by reading a letter from Caspar Holstein, Harlem's West Indian-born mobster, who promises to fund more awards.

James reads aloud Langston's "The Weary Blues" and awards the 23-year-old poet his $40 prize. Countee Colan comes in second with his poem, "The One Who Said Ni-Nay." Zora is announced as the second prize winner in the drama category for "Color Struck," and the author proudly walks through the room, unfurling her brightly colored scarf while loudly announcing the title of her play. Color struck!

This evening was a great success. It's a career-propelling moment for many of these authors. In fact, the three award winners I mentioned, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Countee Cullen, are particularly noteworthy figures in the Harlem Renaissance. Let's go a little deeper on each one of them. Starting with Langston, the opportunity dinner was especially valuable. It creates a second run-in between him and Carl Van Vechten, and this leads to Carl helping Langston to get a book deal with Alfred A. Knopf.

But what does this success as a poet mean for Langston? Is he a successful poet? Or a successful black poet? Is there a difference? He explores this racial angst felt by so many Harlem Renaissance creatives in his 1926 essay, The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain. To quote him,

One of the most promising of the young negro poets said to me once, "I want to be a poet, not a negro poet. Meaning, I believe, I want to write like a white poet. Meaning, subconsciously, I would like to be a white poet. Meaning, behind that, I would like to be white." And I was sorry the young man said that, for no great poet has ever been afraid of being himself. And I doubted then that, with his desire to run away spiritually from his race, this boy would ever be a great poet.

but this is the mountain standing in the way of any true Negro art in America. This urge within the race toward whiteness, the desire to pour racial individuality into the mold of American standardization and to be as little Negro and as much American as possible." As for Zora Neale Hurston, she, like Langston, is a Southern transplant to the North. Yes, another nod to the Great Migration in this intellectual movement.

She left Alabama and by the age of 14, Zora was fending for herself, on tour with a Gilbert and Sullivan troupe. Later, she enrolled at Howard University, where Professor Alan Locke noticed her intellectual abilities. That truly says something. Alan's reputation for dismissing a woman's intellect precedes him. Well, after receiving her award at the Opportunity Dinner, Zora enrolls at Barnard College in the fall of 1925.

Her experience at this New York-based private women's college is similar to Langston's at Columbia. She's the only black student and describes herself as, quote, a scared black cow, close quote. But unlike Langston, Zora does not want her work to be centered on race. As she writes, my interest lies in what makes a man or a woman do such and so, regardless of his color. It seems to me that the human beings I met reacted pretty much the same to the same stimuli.

Different idioms, yes. Circumstances and conditions having power to influence, yes. Inherent difference, no. But I said to myself that that was not what was expected of me, so I was afraid to tell a story the way I wanted, or rather the way the story told itself to me. Now, her seminal work, Their Eyes Were Watching God, is a ways out. It will get published in 1937.

Set in the rural South, the story will be framed by the main character Janie Mae Crawford's memories of her life. The stories she remembers highlight tensions within the African American community as Janie and the people around her attempt to form their individual Black identities amid rampant sexism, racism, and classism. The novel will not be received well initially.

Richard Wright, author of Black Boy and Native Son, will say that, "...her prose is cloaked in that facile sensuality that has dogged Negro expression since the days of Phyllis Wheatley. In the main, her novel is not addressed to the Negro, but to a white audience whose chauvinistic tastes she knows how to satisfy."

She exploits that phrase of Negro life, which is quaint, the phrase which evokes a piteous smile on the lips of the quote-unquote superior race, close quote. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, however, readers will appreciate Zora's ability to bring the rural Black American to the forefront in contrast to her contemporaries trying to define the new Negro as being based in the metropolis.

But back to our present, 1927, and on to the last of our three award winners from the Opportunity Dinner, County Cullen. Remember how Langston's essay mentioned being disappointed in a black poet who didn't want to be known as a black poet? A desire Langston interpreted as a desire to be white. There's a good chance that poet is County Cullen. County believes that art transcends race. He holds that race and other conditions of life are irrelevant in poetry.

County and Langston carry on their intellectual disagreements through their poetry. Likely in response to Langston's essay, The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain, and other publications that follow, County writes his 1927 poem to certain critics, which begins with a powerful comeback. Then call me traitor if you must, shout treason and default. Say I betray a sacred trust, aching beyond this vault.

I'll bear your censure as your praise, for never shall the clan Confine my singing to its ways beyond the ways of man. And yet, even as he believes that art transcends race, County Colan's poetry is thematically based around it.

As James Weldon Johnson puts it, quote: "Strangely, it is because Cullen revolts against racial limitations, technical and spiritual, that the best of his poetry is motivated by race. He is always seeking to free himself and his art from these bonds. He never entirely escapes, but from the very fret and chafe he brings forth poetry that contains the quintessence of race consciousness." Close quote.

But that's enough analysis for now. The key thing is that all of these thinkers have their own takes, and those differences do not diminish their separate roles in the Harlem Renaissance. Indeed, even as County pushes back on the idea of race, he remains a valued poet in Harlem's intellectual community. Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois is a huge fan. In fact, the two are about to become family. It's Monday evening, April 9th, 1928.

We're in the red brick Salem United Methodist Church at 129th Street and 7th Avenue in Harlem, New York City for what Langston Hughes rightly calls the "social literary event of the season." Today, Countee Cullen and Yolande Du Bois, that is, the daughter of Dr. Du Bois, are getting married. At 5:30 pm, the 13 patrolmen and two police sergeants guarding the church's high-arched door allow the people to enter.

Eager Harlemites, some of whom have been waiting for three hours, make their way to the balcony. The bottom floor is reserved for invited guests, of course, but it too is overflowing as thousands pack themselves in the church. But wherever the guests squeeze in, they're amazed at the sights before them.

Decorations from yesterday's Easter service, including singing birds and cages all draped with white fabric, are doubling perfectly for today. Roses, carnations, sweet peas, even the occasional palm branch adorn the railings. At 6 p.m. sharp, the ceremony begins. An organist from Union Theological Seminary plays the Lohengrin March. The wedding parties 16 bridesmaids and 10 ushers, one of whom is Langston Hughes, sporting a rented and faded tailcoat.

all make their way toward the altar. The 24-year-old bride soon follows. Wearing a cream-colored satin dress adorned with rose-point lace, Yolande Du Bois walks down the aisle on the arm of her renowned father. With a bouquet of roses and lilies resting in her hands, Yolande is soon next to her groom, County. The two stand below three white doves hanging over the altar.

At 6:45, after Yolande quite intentionally promises to "cherish and not obey" her husband, the groom's father, Reverend Frederick Cullen, pronounces the couple man and wife. This marriage, the union of one of Harlem's finest young poets with the brilliant daughter of one of the community's most cherished intellectual leaders, was a beautiful, uniting moment for Black Mecca. But alas, it doesn't last long.

While sorry to disappoint Harlem, Dr. Du Bois, and of course his bride, County realizes he can't let a lie. Within a few months, his feelings for his best man, the most handsome man in Harlem, Harold Jackman, went out. The marriage dissolves soon after that. So much more could be said of County Cullen and his fellow Harlem writers, of Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and so many others. But we have more ground to cover.

It's time to turn our attention back to the bandstand, because frankly, the Harlem Renaissance isn't just introducing jazz, it's changing the entire meaning of American music. In all human history, there are few stories like that of ancient Egypt. On the banks of the Nile, these people created one of the most enduring and significant cultures. Their tale comes to life in the History of Egypt podcast.

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Located at 142nd Street and Lenox Avenue, there's hardly a hotter, more happening place to be on a Friday night than the famous Cotton Club. Gangster Owen "Owenny" Madden first opened the joint in September 1923, and as the years have passed, he's enjoyed great success serving bootlegged beverages to his jazz-loving patrons. Exclusively white jazz-loving patrons, that is. This is actually quite common.

There are a good number of clubs in heavily black Harlem that cater to white patrons, usually coming up from downtown. As the Harlem Renaissance has taken off, so too has the curiosity and interest of white Americans, colloquially described as having "Harlem-mania." Thus, white guest-oriented jazz clubs with black performers begin popping up along 133rd Street between Lenox and 7th Avenues.

This stretch is soon dubbed "Jungle Alley," a term that in and of itself powerfully conveys the racial attitudes of downtown's white New Yorkers who want Harlem's black New Yorkers to entertain them but not commingle with them. And the three most famous clubs here are Connie's Inn, Smalls Paradise, and, you guessed it, the Cotton Club. And oh does the Cotton Club draw talented musicians.

Artists in residence include one renowned band leader whom we've already met, King Oliver. He, in turn, is replaced by another royal musician, Edward Kennedy "The Duke" Ellington. Well-dressed and mannered since his days growing up in Washington, D.C., where his father served as a White House butler, The Duke is one of the most gifted American composers in history, and he and his band are in residence at the Cotton Club from 1927 to 1931.

And who follows him? Yet another musical gift to humanity, one of my personal all-time favorite musicians, that devilishly handsome, thin-mustache-wearing Baltimore native, Cab Calloway. And it's during these Cotton Club days that Cab accidentally puts the finishing touch on, well, what you might call his theme song. It's an unspecified day, spring 1931.

We're at the corner of 142nd Street and Lenox Avenue, just making our way past a gangster-hired bouncer and into Harlem's renowned Cotton Club. The large, horseshoe-shaped room is decorated with artificial palm trees and a jungle-like scene, a clear nod to the supposed jungle alley. Meanwhile, black waiters holding trays of fried chicken, barbecue spare ribs, and other dishes so beloved by downtown Manhattanites are weaving their way through tightly packed tables.

Yes, the division between the black performers and staff and the white patrons is starkly apparent. And another reminder that, even up north, Jim Crow's effects are felt. Yet, if you keep your eyes peeled, you might see some famous faces among the patrons. Actors Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd, financer Otto Kahn, and the heiress to the Vanderbilt fortune, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, all frequent the Elegant Club.

But I digress. Tonight, gangster and owner, Oney Madden has a special show in store. His organization is broadcasting their headliner over the radio nationwide. So come on, grab a seat. It looks like things are about to start. The lights dim. The five foot ten mustachioed Cab Calloway, accompanied by his orchestra, step onto the stage. Within their set, they play one of their newest numbers called "Minnie the Moocher."

And as they do, Cab spaces the lyrics. Knowing the whole nation is listening to him on the radio, the quick-thinking singer decides he has but one option. To improv with some scattin'. As Cab will later recall, I forgot the lyrics of a song. That's right. It was a moment of forgetfulness that gave us Cab's scattin' in Minnie the Moocher.

And the only Black Americans to witness this moment were employees and band members. The irony of Black performers facing segregation in Harlem, in Black Mecca, in the midst of the New Negro Movement no less, is not lost on them. But segregation is deeply entrenched. It won't end overnight. As for Cab Calloway, he continues crushing it night after night at the Cotton Club, spreading that jazz sound in the process.

Yet he'll be the first to remind you that jazz isn't spread, quote, through the big concert halls, the big fancy clubs like the Cotton Club and Connie's Inn, close quote. No, jazz is spread, as he goes on to say, through small cafes and gambling houses and speakeasies where we could hustle up a drink in exchange for a little of our souls. In Harlem, these small cafes, gambling houses, and speakeasies are often called lap joints.

New York police estimate that the average Harlem block has about 10 of these joints. After 3 a.m., when the city's curfew and noise ordinance shut down legit business, lap joints explode. One of these hole-in-the-wall joints, the sugar cane, is located at 135th and 5th Avenue. Walking up to it, you'll see a man sitting in front of a window holding a chain that connects to a bolt holding a door shut. If he lets you in, you can head down the steep, 125-foot-long flight of stairs.

Once there, the space that supposedly fits only 100 patrons may have double that number, drinking low-grade alcohol as they gather around wooden tables and wire-legged chairs. A three-piece band plays, and if the sugar cane gets too crowded, customers dance on a dime, meaning that they dance in place. Another popular source of entertainment in Harlem is a rent party.

See, Harlem's inflated rent is $12 to $30 per month higher than the rest of Manhattan. Yet, black New Yorkers' wages are significantly lower. As such, residents have to find creative solutions to pay their bills. So a rent party is effectively a party to raise money for rent. They usually happen on Saturday nights, but if you look hard enough, you can find one any night. Admission is between 10 and 50 cents, which lets you into a dimly lit room with a live band playing in the corner.

You can walk around the apartment and maybe grab a snack, stop by the makeshift bar in the hallway that serves cheap liquor, or head into a side room to play cards. And don't worry about the furnishings. Usually the furniture, rugs, and whatnot are removed so as not to be damaged, while pianos are moved into the largest room of the house, and colored light bulbs are screwed in to add a bit of ambiance. And how do we know about these under-the-radar Harlem events?

That's in no small part thanks to Langston Hughes, who saves just about every Rent Party invite he receives. And the popular poet receives quite a lot. And Langston's not the only famous attendee at Rent Parties. Musicians and entertainers of all sorts from the Harlem scene might stop in.

We've heard about Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Cab Calloway. But how about Bessie Smith, the blues singer from Chattanooga, Tennessee, whose downhearted blues sells 780,000 copies in just six months? Or Mamie Smith, the first black singer to record a blues song? Then there's Bilbo "Jangles" Robinson, whose tap dancing act makes him one of the most famous black performers of the era.

And we can't forget about Ethel Waters, who first makes a name for herself on Broadway and her longtime piano accompanier, Fats Waller, who has a remarkable career of his own. Maybe Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, or Ma Rainey will step out of the club they're performing in that night and grace your rent-paying soiree with their gorgeous smooth voices. Okay, don't bake on it. You'll still need to head to a music club to hear famous talent dependably.

In fact, you might even find a talented showdown at one of these establishments. That's exactly what's happening at the famous Savoy Ballroom. It's Tuesday evening, May 11th, 1937. Located between 140th and 141st streets on Lenox Avenue, Harlem, New York City. We're seated near the bar at the Savoy Ballroom with countless others in a mixed white and black crowd awaiting an unusual treat.

Tonight, the Savoy is hosting two renowned orchestra leaders: the 4'1" Harlem transplant William Henry Webb, better known as Chick, and the Chicago-born king of swing of Eastern European and Jewish descent, Benny Goodman. That's quite a lot of talent. Let me explain. See, Chick is a legendary drummer in Harlem, and any New Yorker worth talking to knows about his Chick Webb Orchestra. But nationally, Benny Goodman is said to be the best. So is it true?

Well, the idea is to figure that out tonight in what has been dubbed the "Battle of the Century." The 4,000 to 5,000 here this evening are eager to learn, as the New York Age puts it, "If it was true that a white orchestra could outplay a Negro orchestra, it was considered a distinctively Negro-type music." Yes, Harlem's Short King versus the King of Swing in a friendly face-off. What's not to love? At about 11:00 p.m., Benny emerges.

Oh, this crowd is going nuts at the sight of him. He asks Chick to switch bandstands. And ever gracious, Chick responds, "Okay, we'll change. You take our number one bandstand and we'll take the number two. It don't make no difference to us. Be our guest." Smiling and confident, the spectacled Benny strikes up the band. He plays familiar tunes as the black and white crowd out on the floor forget to dance and just watch and cheer. The set ends with a 15-minute ovation.

Well done, Benny. But now it's Chick's turn. Wanting perhaps to one-up Benny, the short and handsome bandleader sits down at his drum set, nailed down to the stage because that's how hard he swings, and leads his band in a rendition of a song that Benny first made popular, King Porter Stomp. Whew, nothing says I can beat you like playing your opponent's own stuff.

The crowd loves it. The Savoy rings with sounds of thousands jumping, jiving, and wailing just as much as it does the sound of music as Chick Webb, his lead vocalist, Ella Fitzgerald, and his orchestra go to town. So, who won? The New York Age seems to see it as a tie, reporting that, quote, the colored band outplayed the white band in some pieces and was outplayed in others. Close quote.

Yet, the Harlem newspaper also notes that Benny does have two black musicians in his otherwise white band and speculates that "he will probably be the cause of other white leaders adding Negroes to their bands." The paper also urges black musicians to practice more because the competition should never have been that close. That said, perhaps the Harlem newspaper is too harsh of a critic on its hometown orchestra.

Trumpeter Roy Eldridge remembers the drumming duel between Chick Webb and Benny's drummer Gene Krupa as a Chick win by a landslide. To quote him, "Gene worked hard and played good. He even broke one of his drum heads, but he couldn't do anything with Chick. That little man was mean, baby. He was mean." And gracious as ever, Gene physically bowed down to Chick that night. He later says that, "I will never forget that night. Chick Webb cut me to ribbons.

There are more musical battles we could talk about. Not to mention more talented writers, poets, singers, composers, musicians, artists, and creatives. But I'm afraid we have to end our tale somewhere. So while the band plays its encore, let's wrap it up. What do we make of the Harlem Renaissance?

Some scholars will want to debate the appropriateness of the word Renaissance, but surely this moment of the 1920s and to a lesser extent the 1930s in which a new generation of Black Americans, or the New Negro as Professor Alan Locke termed it, asserted themselves against Jim Crow segregation deserves its own designation and name, regardless of technicalities.

Like all movements, it couldn't accomplish everything it wanted. We saw that in spades while at Harlem's white patrons-only Cotton Club. And for some Black artists, the answer was leaving. For instance, it wasn't long after Josephine Baker's performance in Shuffle Along, which we covered in the last episode, that she left for France. She'll hardly look back, later taking French citizenship.

Yet, the Harlem Renaissance nonetheless facilitated a meteoric rise in Black art that contributed immeasurably to the world, to America as a whole, and to Black identity within America. To quote historian Nathan Ervin Huggins:

Close quote.

But perhaps it's in going right to the source, to those who lived through the period, that we find what a post-Great Migration Harlem meant for its residents. Even beyond all of the intellectual stuff, as important as that is. James Weldon Johnson sums this up quite nicely. In nearly every city in the country, the Negro section is a nest situated somewhere on the border. In New York, it is entirely different.

Close quote.

And so, we conclude our tale of this miracle straight out of the skies. But you know, our next story has something straight out of the skies as well. A white, 3-inch, 5-ounce leather-covered sphere with two red seams, flying at you at record speed. Let's just hope you have a glove to catch it. Next time, we'll catch the story of America's favorite pastime, baseball. ♪

History That Doesn't Suck is created and hosted by me, Greg Jackson. Audio of Cab Calloway was recorded in 1982 at the White Plains Public Library in White Plains, New York, and used with their permission. We are grateful to the library and encourage listeners to support your local public library for the services they provide.

Episode researched and written by Greg Jackson and Riley Neubauer. Production by Airship. Sound design by Molly Bach. Theme music composed by Greg Jackson. Arrangement and additional composition by Lindsey Graham of Airship. For a bibliography of all primary and secondary sources consulted in writing this episode, visit hcdspodcast.com.

David Rifkin, Denke, Durante Spencer.

Thank you.

And Zach Jackson.

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