Customer Reviews

Harlem Renaissance

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In this year 2005, the 1920s may be utterly distant. Yet during that decade, there was a cultural flowering in the American Negro community. Centred at Harlem. Huggins takes us to that place and time. The narrative is enhanced by one key trait. This book was first published in 1971. The research that went into it was done in the late 60s. Several influential persons of 20s Harlem were still around and the text gives their direct experiences, from interviews with the author.

In this way, Huggins provides a primary text for future students and historians. But given the 30 years that have elapsed since publication, that is who current readers are.

The book shows how even with the severe strictures on Negroes throughout much of the US, a spirited culture could still arise and thrive.

With great relish, professor Huggins has penned a gem. He has captured the essence of the spirit and the times of the gilded but still turbulent age of the 1920s. And although they were still far from achieving their full freedom, it was the first time since the "redemption" in the aftermath of the Civil War that the Negro actually could focus on what he would do with his freedom.

And what he did even in his thoroughly segregated circumstances was to explode into a self-conscious flowering of his own cultural instincts. The Harlem renaissance was not just a profound statement of blacks about their arrival on the American cultural scene, a self-conscious tossing away as it were of the final shackles of slavery, but also and more importantly it was the first incubation period of black liberation and cultural and political sophistication.

More than any other period, it was during the Harlem renaissance in which the black community came of age culturally and came together as one united front against racism using cultural tools and its intellectual power and substance on par with its white counterparts. Against all odds, they created a cultural oasis right in the middle of a sea of white hatred and racial recrimination. This flowering was something that was not only unexpected and shocking to the sensibilities of most whites, but shocking also to many blacks outside of New York, around the countryside. And although the flowering occurred across the board, its clearest expression took place in literature, art and music, which itself later was to become America's transformative art form.

Here for the first time we hear all of the clear voices of strong confident accomplished black intellectuals forging a path right down the middle of main street racist America and making their mark have weight equal to their numbers in the scheme of American society. The Harlem Renaissance was inspired by the black soldiers who had returned from WW-I. Having fought for freedom in a world war half way around the globe, they now came home committed to do the same on their own soil. As was to prove to be the case time and time again, theirs was not an easy task, but they did so without looking back and continued until the great depression kick the bottom out of the economy. Until then, they had put a lie to the mean-spirited myth that blacks were uncultured to the point of being less than human.

How they did it is what this book is all about. Why it cannot happen again and why blacks last mile of freedom has stalled in the present period of "so called full equality" is a question this book quietly begs and thus leaves unanswered. Nevertheless, this is still a clear five star effort.