LITR 5535 American Romanticism UHCL 2003 sample student research project

Colonial Period Attitude
(1760 - 1820)
Heroics
(Strangeness) Dreaded Primitive
Pre-Abolition Period
(1820 - 1845)
Sentiment
(Domestic Familiarity) Domestic Pet
Abolitionist Period
(1845 - 1865)
Melodrama
(Moral Controversy) Moral Issue
Early Reconstruction Period
(1870 - 1885)
Comedy
(Pity) Ward
Late Reconstruction Period
(1885 - 1895)
Farce
(Hatred) Scapegoat
Industrial Period
(1895 - 1920)
Problem-discussion
(Bewilderment) Bogey and Pariah
Contemporary Period
(1920 - Present)*
Aesthetic Interest
(Curiosity) Flesh and Blood Human,
with Nature's Chronic
but Unpatented Varieties
* i.e. Locke's present (1940)
Source: Alain Locke's "American Literary Tradition and the Negro"
Both sides of this debate exhibit elements of Romanticism. The use of art for propaganda side wanted to romanticize African Americans by portraying only good qualities and middle class values; in short, to show that they were just like everyone else. The art for art's sake focused more on depicting the reality of Harlem's lower class culture. In effect, this side was rebelling against the idea that blacks must become like whites to overcome stereotypes. They promoted the 'blackness' of their culture, and sought a shared identity or racial consciousness.
These opposing viewpoints are derived from the literary history of African Americans. Between the time of Reconstruction and the early period of the Harlem Renaissance, there existed three main genres of literature, which were written by black writers and by white writers who portrayed African Americans. These genres were the Plantation tradition, protest literature, and novels of "passing."
The plantation tradition was instigated by Southern whites after the Civil War who were "seeking, through romanticized images of Plantation life, to recover for the nation the forms of power and racial order that the war and Reconstruction had dismantled" (MacKethan 579). The North embraced this type of literature:
  Northern magazines such as Scribner's, the Century, Harper's,
  Atlantic Monthly invited syrupy visions of the Old South delivered
  in dialect by its slave labor force recast as family retainers and
  hovering mammies. Thus the reunion of North and South, and
  the effective establishment of a politics of white racial supremacy,
  were accomplished through a literary design in which pastoral
  nostalgia masked the violence of the slave past and stereotyped
  African American characters became advocates for their own
  disempowerment. (MacKethan 579-80)
The second genre, protest literature, originated with Phyllis Wheatley, around the time of the American Revolution. While Wheatley's style was of "genteel piety and classical verse," she used her poetry mainly to "assert human equality and freedom and to express her opposition to slavery" (Bruce 601). Slave narratives are a part of this genre of protest literature also, such as Frederick Douglass' autobiographies.
The third genre in the literary tradition is novels of 'passing.' While this genre sometimes is used for protest, other times it is not. The characters in these novels who attempt to 'pass' for white are doing so for a myriad of reasons, e.g. to escape slavery, avoid racism, or improve their economic opportunities (Little 548). A few examples of this type of genre are William Wells Brown's Clotel, or The President's Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States (1853), Frances Ellen Watkin Harper's Iola Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted (1892), Charles Waddell Chestnutt's The House Behind the Cedars (1900), and James Weldon Johnson's The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912). This genre shows romantic tendencies in that the novels usually contain "the taboo of interracial sex, and the built-in dramas of concealed identity, tangled deceptions, fear of exposure, guilt, and the search for identity" (Little 548). The protagonists are crossing boundaries and are on a quest to define themselves. In these novels, the majority of characters ultimately decide not to pass for white, and as such this genre "has largely been used to promote racial loyalty and solidarity" (Little 548). The young writers of the Harlem Renaissance will utilize all three of these genres, but with the addition of their own distinctive voices.
Like the elders of the Harlem Renaissance, the younger generation of writers would also confront the issue of how African Americans should be presented in literature. And also like the elders, their viewpoints would diverge. While it is difficult to place the poets and novelists of the Harlem Renaissance into one philosophy on art or the opposite philosophy (since at various times both views are present in their works), they generally exhibit tendencies towards one of the philosophies more than the other in the majority of their works. Therefore while Countee Cullen, Jessie Fauset, Nella Larsen, and Claude McKay mainly use their art for propagandist or political purposes; and Jean Toomer, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, and Wallace Thurman lean more towards the use of art for art's sake, I will not neglect to point out in the following discussion where they diverge from those views.
Claude McKay (1890-1948) was born in Jamaica to "relatively prosperous peasants" (Hathaway 489). In his youth he "studied classical and British literary figures and philosophers as well as science and theology" (Hathaway 489). McKay's earliest poetry was written in traditional English forms, but later he was encouraged by his mentor Walter Jekyll to write "dialect poetry rooted in the island's folk culture" (Hathaway 489). His first two volumes of poetry, Songs of Jamaica (1912) and Constab Ballads (1912), are primarily written in dialect. McKay immigrated to the United States in the fall of 1912, and after studying agriculture at Tuskegee Institute and Kansas State College, he moved to New York City in 1914 (Hathaway 490).
In New York, McKay became "increasingly involved with political and literary radicals" (Hathaway 490). His third volume of poetry, Spring in New Hampshire (1920), reflects his changing political stance; his previous use of dialect is gone, and the poems are divided between commentary of race relations in America and nostalgic images of life in Jamaica (Hathaway 490). Dissatisfied with American leftist efforts to combat racism, McKay escaped to the Soviet Union in 1922 and spent six months traveling throughout the country, attending Communist symposiums and lecturing on art and politics (Hathaway 490).   While in Russia, McKay "republished a series of articles he had written for the Soviet press under the title Negroes in America (1923), which delivers a "Marxist interpretation of the history of African Americans" (Hathaway 490).
In 1928, when McKay was recuperating from illness in France, he published his first novel, Home to Harlem, which is his most widely read work. Even though the novel describes the lower class culture of Harlem, rather than middle class values, Home to Harlem is inherently propagandistic. The central theme of the novel is the internal conflict undergone by an educated, intelligent African American (Stoff 133). Ray, through his friendship with Jack, the 'natural, instinctive man', he realizes he has "been robbed by his 'white' education of the ability to act freely and impulsively" (Stoff 133).
According to Stoff's interpretation of McKay's work, "only the instinctive primitive can survive happily in white civilization, its dehumanizing tendencies are irrelevant to his innately free existence" (Stoff 134). While McKay's politics and philosophy are at odds with most of the Renaissance elders, he still uses his art for propaganda purposes, in this case to condemn the African American intellectuals who have traded their own culture for the middle class values of white America. In his last novel Banana Bottom (1933), McKay offers a Jamaican heroine whom is adopted by white missionaries (Stoff 142). Unlike Ray, Bita Plant, "who rejects the civilized value system but not her intellect, can move easily from one world to another without impairing either instinct or intellect" (Stoff 142).
Like the characters in his novels, McKay himself was "forever seeking fulfillment of his desires to escape color-consciousness and recapture lost innocence" (Stoff 146). McKay, in his later life, stated that "As a child, I was never interested in different kinds of races or tribes. People were just people to me" (Stoff 128). It was in America that he became aware of his race consciousness through bigotry and discrimination. McKay, for the rest of his life, strove to transcend racial boundaries, but ultimately failed. Many other Renaissance writers, such as Jessie Fauset, would also explore racial boundaries.
Jessie Redmon Fauset (1882-1961) also viewed art as a means for political or propagandist ends. In her personal life, as in her art, Fauset strove to depict the middle class values of which she saw as the way to freedom and equality for her race. In one very revealing episode in which her personal inclination conflicted with social propriety, Fauset chose to stay within the boundaries of society set for her. On a trip to Africa, Fauset had visited alone the section of Algiers named the Kasbah. She returned the next day with two companions, only to be warned by a Frenchwoman that the "quarters are too dangerous to visit without an escort" (Wall 34). Notwithstanding the fact that she had been there alone already and now had two companions, Fauset adheres to the proper conduct that the Frenchwoman informs her of.
Fauset had earned degrees from Cornell University and the University of Pennsylvania, and had worked as a high school teacher for fourteen years before becoming involved in the Renaissance (Wall 35). During the years she spent as literary editor of The Crisis, from 1919 to 1926, she was also the "most prominent black woman writer" (Wall 36). Fauset published "poems, reportage, reviews, short stories, and translations" in addition to her four novels (Wall 36).
Being strictly conservative, Fauset "adapted the conventions of the sentimental novel to her own purposes," which were to "explore the impact of racism and sexism on black Americans' lives and represent the means by which black Americans overcame these oppressions and got on with the business of living" (Wall 66). However, the black Americans Fauset fictionalizes are middle-class, like herself, and firmly adhering to the values of the dominant society. The novels she wrote, There is Confusion (1924), Plum Bun (1929), The Chinaberry Tree (1931), and Comedy: American Style (1933), are social critiques of African American middle class life, and a condemnation of the racism and sexism that constrains African Americans. Wall asserts the basic theme of Fauset's novels is "propriety for the New Negro woman was virtually a racial obligation" (80).
Fauset, in her art as well as her demeanor, attempts to dispel the stereotype of African American women as exotic, overtly sexual beings. Fauset displays the "fundamentally political nature of her novels" through her attempts to "challenge the myths of mulatto fiction by precursory white writers" (McLendon 270). In creating the image of the proper middle class African American woman, Fauset had to suppress her sexuality, and to conduct herself within the boundaries of social propriety. To Fauset, this was not a bad thing; she believed that her behavior, and the like behavior of other African Americans, would uplift her race from injustice and prejudice. In her preface to her third novel Plum Bun, Fauset describes her literary philosophy:
  I have depicted something of the home life of the colored
  American who is not being pressed too hard by the Furies of
  Prejudices, Ignorance, and Economic Injustice…. And behold
  he is not so vastly different from any other Americans. (Sato 67)
Her novels depict that, given the freedom to educate their minds without enduring prejudices or economic hindrances, all African Americans can achieve just as well as any other American. In other words, that African Americans do not possess any inborn, or inherent characteristics that distinguish them from whites; it is all a matter of social and economic boundaries that differentiates the African American race.
Like her contemporary, Nella Larsen also fictionalized middle class society; however in Larsen's works, there are undercurrents that imply middle class values are not always 'good.' Nella Larsen's only two novels, Quicksand (1928) and Passing (1929) were 'novels of passing' but unlike their predecessors, these two novels are "more complex and ambitious" (Davis 560). In these works, Larsen "explores the relationships between appearance and reality, deception and unmasking, manipulation and imaginative management, aggression and self-defense" (Davis 561). Perhaps Larsen is able to delve deeper into the consciousness of people torn between two worlds because she herself had experienced living in both the 'white' world and the 'black' world.
Larsen's mother was an emigrant from Denmark, and her father was from the Virgin Islands. During her early childhood, she lived in a "white working-class neighborhood of Chicago," and attended an elementary school which consisted mainly of the "children of German and Scandinavian immigrants" (Wall 91). However, Wall reports that Larsen suffered "alienation" in her home life, and was "ostracized at school and in the neighborhood" (Wall 91).
In her teen years, Larsen attended Wendell Phillips High School, and later "enrolled in the high school department of Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee" which put Larsen among middle class African Americans (Wall 92). But Larsen left Fisk after only one year, apparently "she was no more at home in an all-black community than she had been in a white one" (Wall 92). After leaving Fisk in 1908, until she enrolled at New York's Lincoln Hospital Training School for Nurses in 1912, there exists no evidence of her life in the intervening four years (Wall 92). Larsen says that she spent some time in Denmark attending the University of Copenhagen, but Wall asserts that "in fact, Larsen did not leave the United States" (Wall 92). Wall further states that what Larsen did in that period of her life "remains a mystery," that Larsen "went to great lengths to conceal" (Wall 92).
After graduating from nursing school in 1915, Larsen accepted a position as an "assistant superintendent of nurses at Tuskegee Institute" (Wall 92). While working at Tuskegee, Larsen discovered that "along with their academic and vocational training, students were also schooled in subservience and docility" (Wall 92). Larsen left Tuskegee after one year. She returned to New York, where she quickly became discontented with nursing and obtained a position as an assistant with the New York Public Library; this move put her in contact with the New Negro intelligentsia (Wall 92).
Larsen's personal life, like her characters, exhibits a continuous quest to establish an identity for themselves. But Larsen, if she ever did succeed in her quest for a sense of self, adroitly concealed it from her contemporaries and from the rest of the world. This concealment of her self is described by Wall in an interview with a reporter:
  The interview concentrated on more personal concerns. The
  "unforgivable sin" was being bored, so [Larsen] selected only
  amusing and natural people, not too intellectual. She would
  never "pass," because "with my economic status it's better
  to be a Negro. So many things are excused them. The chained
  and downtrodden Negro is a picture that came out of the Civil
  War." And while she claimed to be "not quite sure what
  she wanted to be spiritually," she knew she "want[ed]
  things - beautiful and rich things." (Wall 120).
Wall describes many more instances of Larsen's flippancy in public, detailing the "considerable lengths" that Larsen utilized to "project a frivolous image" (Wall 120). The reasons for Larsen's deceptive image is unclear, but Wall surmises that "behind its mask, one supposes, [Larsen] felt safe" (Wall 120). This "masquerade of femininity" is a major theme in Larsen's novels, as also is transgressing social, racial, and gendered boundaries. The themes Larsen employs mark her as a Romantic novelist.
Like Nella Larsen, Countee Cullen is also "something of a mysterious figure" (Early 194). The place of his birth is unknown, and not much is known of his childhood, except that he was adopted by Frederick Cullen, a Methodist minister, and his wife sometime before 1918. Cullen was enormously popular in literary circles, and the Negro intelligentsia hailed him as a "major crossover literary figure" since
  Here was a black man with considerable academic training who
  could, in effect, write 'white' verse - ballads, sonnets, quatrains,
  and the like, much in the manner of Keats and the British Romantics,
  (albeit, on more than one occasion, tinged with racial concerns) with
  genuine skill and compelling power. (Early 195)
Thus, Cullen was viewed as a man who could be "assimilated" while still maintaining his "racial self-consciousness" (Early 195). It may be, however, that Cullen didn't manifest a struggle with his identity as an African American in the world of white intellectualism because he had a more pressing identity conflict: that of his unorthodox sexual desires (homosexuality) against the Christian insistence of heterosexuality.
  Cullen embraced a particular form of public "blackness" in his
  position as poet, but that very public position, which he eagerly
  wished to maintain, conflicted with a very different form of
  "blackness" embodied in his private desires for black men. The
  tension between these different modes of being produced the
  creative tension out of which much of Cullen's poetry was
  born. (Powers 664)
Cullen embraced many themes in his five volumes of poetry: Color (1925), Copper Sun (1927), The Ballad of the Brown Girl (1927), The Black Christ and Other Poems (1929), and The Medea and Some Poems (1935). However, the majority of Cullen's poetry, in the style of "traditional lyric poets" of English romanticism, deal with love and thwarted love and sexual desire and sexual repression (Canaday 107).
This conflict between "public responsibility and private desire" is explored in Cullen's "Heritage" and "The Black Christ." Both protagonists in these poems experience an internal struggle to express their sexual longings while being constrained to repress desire by society's mandated moral propriety. In "Heritage," the protagonist resolves to "Quench my pride and cool my blood / Lest I perish in the flood" (Powers 667). The tragic consequences of fulfillment of sexual desire are exhibited in the poem "The Black Christ." Through Jim, we can see a struggle between sexual desire and social propriety:
  While the narrator in "Heritage" struggles against the expression
  of desire, finally killing it to preserve his body, Jim expresses
  his desire openly and defiantly. Sexual expression becomes a
  means of challenge, of throwing down his "gage." He is lynched
  in short order. (Powers 673)
Like the novels of Fauset and Larsen, Cullen's poetry explores such romantic themes as desire and loss, transgressing racial, social, and sexual boundaries, and creating a sense of self. Langston Hughes will also explore many of these themes, but his poetic style was not based on classical English forms. Rather he uses black vernacular and the rhythm of jazz and blues to construct the melody of his poetry.
Langston Hughes (1902 - 1967) was a true Renaissance man, being a poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, autobiographer, and writer of children's books (Rampersad 368). He was born in Joplin, Missouri, and spent most of his childhood in Lawrence, Kansas, but also lived in Illinois, Ohio, and Mexico (Rampersad 368). Hughes earliest influence was his maternal grandmother, Mary Langston, who intrigued the young Hughes with stories of her first husband who died at Harper's Ferry and her second husband, Hughes' grandfather, who was also a "militant abolitionist" (Rampersad 368). His literary influences include Walt Whitman, Carl Sandburg, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and Claude McKay (Rampersad 368). From his familial and literary influences, Hughes derived a love for personal expression, free verse, black dialect, and racial pride.
Hughes' first two volumes of poetry, The Weary Blues (1926) and Fine Clothes to the Jew (1927) exhibit Hughes' experimentation of fusing "jazz and blues with traditional verse" (Rampersad 369). While these volumes were "received reasonably well by the white press," the black community generally condemned the poems as presenting "racial defects before the public" (Taylor 93). But Hughes was not one to let his peers' critical judgment hinder his artistic freedom. In his 1926 essay, "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain," Hughes attempts to prove that one can exhibit racial pride and still maintain artistic integrity:
  We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express
  our dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white
  people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, it doesn't
  matter. We know that we are beautiful. And ugly too. The
  tom-tom cries and the tom-tom laughs. If colored people
  are pleased we are glad. If they are not their displeasure
  doesn't matter either. We build our temples for tomorrow,
  as strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the
  mountain, free within ourselves. (Wintz 153)
Like Claude McKay before him, Hughes rejects the view that African Americans must accept the middle-class values of the dominant society to become unfettered by societal boundaries. Hughes looks at the streets of Harlem, not with the eye of middle class society, but with the eye of the poet. Thus, he does not focus on the poverty and crime-stricken atmosphere that is shameful to the black intelligentsia. Hughes sees beauty all around him: in the music, the speech patterns, the dances, the nightclubs, and the platonic friendships and sexual relationships that exist in Harlem. And he glories in it. Hughes sees nothing to be ashamed of in personal feelings of love, sex, and desire (like Walt Whitman). While Hughes' later poetry took on aspects of political and racial protest, his earliest poems place him undeniably in the Romantic tradition.
In his only novel on African Americans, Jean Toomer also found beauty in the "vernacular culture" among the people in Sparta, Georgia, where Toomer spent two months working as an interim principal at the Sparta Agricultural and Industrial Institute in 1921 (Byrd 733). Nathan Pinchback Toomer (1894 - 1967) changed his name to Jean after his move to Greenwich Village and reading Romain Rolland's Jean Christophe (1904), in an effort to "solidify his emerging identity as a writer" (Byrd 733).
Toomer's experimental novel, Cane (1923), is described as "a record of his discovery of his southern heritage, an homage to a folk culture that he believed was evanescent, and an exploration of the forces that he believed were the foundation for the spiritual fragmentation of his generation" (Byrd 733). Although Toomer continued writing after the publication of Cane until the time of his death, he did not have any other works of fiction published during his lifetime (Byrd 733).
After coming under the influence Georgei I. Gurdjieff, a Russian mystic and psychologist, Toomer never returned to depicting African American life (Byrd 733). This change in subject matter could be attributed to Toomer's efforts to "transcend" the "narrow divisions of race" (Byrd 734). Due to his desire for transcendence of racial boundaries, Toomer's later writings do not employ any racial themes; also this desire led Toomer to disassociate himself from Cane, the "work that has earned him a central place in the African American literary tradition" (Byrd 734).
Despite Toomer's later rejection of racial themes, many of the Harlem writers were considerably influenced by Cane, such as Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston. Hurston, the most prolific black woman writer in her lifetime, is the most extraordinary, intriguing, but ultimately tragic, participant in the Harlem Renaissance.
Zora Neale Hurston (1891 - 1960) grew up in Eatonville, Florida, the "first incorporated black community in America" (Wall 376). Perhaps her isolation from white racism and discrimination during her childhood and her mother's encouragement to "jump at da sun" contributed to her strong sense of self and her audacity in crossing racial, social, and gendered boundaries (Wall 376). Indeed, in exploring Hurston's life and experiences, it is difficult to believe that Hurston herself discerned any boundaries attempting to be foisted on her. Hurston describes her literary aesthetics as:
  Every phase of Negro life is highly dramatized. No matter how
  joyful or how sad the case there is sufficient poise for drama.
  Everything is acted out. Unconsciously for the most part of course.
  There is an impromptu ceremony always ready for every hour of
  life. No little moment passes unadorned. (Wall 163)
In her four novels, Jonah's Gourd Vine (1934), Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939), and Seraph on the Suwanee (1948); in her two works of ethnography, Mules and Men (1935) and Tell My Horse (1938); a memoir, Dust Tracks on a Road (1942); and "more than fifty published short stories, essays, and plays," Hurston exhibited a "keen sensitivity to the rhythms of southern black speech" (Wall 141).
But Hurston did not limit herself to dramatizing Negro life; she also dramatized herself. Her contemporaries believed Hurston to be ten years younger than what she was. Her ability to pass off her age exhibits her extraordinary skill in 'acting.' She had the ability to pass back and forth between high and low culture, black or white. I do not mean to imply that she could 'pass' for white, or that she did so. I mean that she could adapt herself to the manners of high society, middle class society, or working class society with no apparent difficulty. Wall describes many instances of Hurston's crossing boundaries, too many to inscribe here. But the anecdotes of Hurston's personal life clearly show she is unafraid, and what is more, she is unabashed to 'go where no [woman] has gone before.'
Tragically for Hurston, once the Negro was 'out of vogue', she experienced, as did most of her fellow artists, a swift decline in fortune. Although Hurston continued to write until her death, she largely went unpublished. She ended her life where she began: in domestic service. At the time of her death in 1960, none of her works her in print; likewise with Jessie Fauset and Nella Larsen (Wall 204). The only person of the Harlem Renaissance who "truly enjoyed a lengthy career" was Langston Hughes (Wintz 230).
In Wallace Thurman's short life and short artistic career, one can discern tragic circumstances even more devastating than those of Hurston. Thurman (1902 - 1934) was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, and attended the University of California (Ferguson 729). He tried to create a literary movement in California like the one in Harlem through his establishment of Outlet, a "magazine similar to those being published" in Harlem (Ferguson 729). After the journal's failure within six months, Thurman moved to Harlem in 1925, where he continued his artistic career in various forms: novelist, editor, poet, playwright, and literary critic (Ferguson 729).
Thurman's dream was to "become editor of a financially secure magazine" (Henderson 150). He worked at several magazines in New York before becoming involved with Hughes, Hurston, and others to launch the journal Fire!! (1926), which intended to distance itself from the "social commentary of established contemporary journals such as The Crisis, Opportunity, and The Messenger" (White 279). Fire!! folded after one issue, leaving Thurman with a thousand dollar debt it took him four years to pay back (Ferguson 730). Thurman started another magazine in 1928, Harlem, A Forum of Negro Life; this journal had a slightly longer life than Fire!! but it failed also (Ferguson 730).
Thurman then turned his talents to writing novels. His first novel, The Blacker the Berry (1929), contains "a variety of controversial themes including homosexuality, intraracial prejudice, abortion, and ethnic conflict between African Americans and Caribbean Americans" (Ferguson 730). His second novel, Infants of the Spring (1932), is a satiric evaluation of the Harlem Renaissance and the "judgment rendered is harsh and unsparing" (Ferguson 730). A third novel, written in collaboration with Abraham L. Furman, The Interne (1932) is "an expose of unethical behavior at City Hospital on Welfare Island (now Roosevelt Island)" (Ferguson 730). Ironically, City Hospital would be where Thurman would spend the last six months of his life two years later.
Despite his literary successes and his being considered "spokesman for the younger group of black Renaissance writers," Thurman was prone to bouts of depression and "self-hatred" (Henderson 167). Thurman's "erotic, bohemian" lifestyle and excessive alcohol consumption wreaked havoc on his none too healthy body (Henderson 147). He died on December 22, 1934 at the age of 32. Thurman's friend, Arna Bontemps, described Thurman as: "He was like a flame which burned so intensely, it could not last for long, but quickly consumed itself" (Henderson 147).
Bontemps' description of Thurman could just as easily be seen as a description of the Harlem Renaissance itself. While African American literature and art existed before the Renaissance and continued after the Renaissance, during this period of time the nation's attention was riveted on those several streets in New York City. Whether this attention by the white community was good or bad is a complex issue. Many white people were genuinely interested in the folk and modern culture of African Americans, but it is also true that many of them were only thrill-seekers. But however that may be, the legacy of the Harlem Renaissance still continues to intrigue modern America. It is an important part of our history and culture, both black and white. Many of the issues and themes explored by the Harlem writers, (a search for identity, crossing boundaries, desire and loss, repression and rebellion, nostalgia, etc) are inherent in all cultures, and thus is something everyone can identify with. In the end, the Harlem Renaissance succeeded in transcending racial barriers.
Although in this journal I focused on just a few elements of the Harlem Renaissance that I learned from my research, there is so much more to be discovered about this intense, vibrant period in American history. As I stated in my introduction, I knew very little about the Harlem Renaissance before beginning this quest, and there is much that I learned that was not included in this journal, e.g. the historical and social context that led to the Harlem Renaissance (increased number of lynchings and race riots, tightening of restrictions placed on blacks, the psychological effects of World War I on African Americans, etc.). Besides the people mentioned in this journal, I learned quite a bit about many other participants in the Harlem Renaissance that contributed greatly to the movement. I have included in an appendix a chronological list of the major works of the Harlem Renaissance, borrowed from Cary Wintz.
Because of the limits of this journal, I had to neglect many of the people, white and black, who supported the young artists, with encouragement, subsidies, or living expenses. But these patrons, such as Charlotte Mason, played an important role in the Harlem Renaissance also and should not be buried in obscurity anymore than the artists. I have endeavored to give other students an overview of the Harlem Renaissance in hopes to pique their interest as mine was. It is up to us to keep these artists from sinking into oblivion as many of them did at one time.
Let us not fail them.
It is an old platitude that the more one learns, the less one knows. This is undoubtedly true. I have learned quite a bit about the Harlem Renaissance, but through this research, I see that there is so much more that I do not know about it. This is not an end to my quest; I am now even more intrigued with this period of literary history. The artists that I have discussed in this journal are the ones that most interested me; therefore I plan to continue this discovery of the Harlem Renaissance by beginning with studying the works of those eight artists. I am particularly drawn to Zora Neale Hurston, so her novels and essays will be the first that I explore. I am also interested in Langston Hughes' and Wallace Thurman's works, but I intend to examine many others also, particularly Jessie Fauset, Nella Larsen, James Weldon Johnson, and Jean Toomer.
The primary issue that my research has interested me most is the theme of 'passing' and transgressing boundaries. This concept is not limited to people transgressing racial barriers, but could also be applied to social, economic, and gendered boundaries. Thus the issue takes on a broader context, one worth exploring in more detail. Why do people attempt to oppose boundaries, and what are the consequences if they do?    I might have the seeds of my thesis here!