What if the Harlem Renaissance had never happened?

[Elizabeth Wright]

I sometimes wonder how much longer it would have taken for the Civil Rights Act in the U.S. to be legislated had the Harlem Renaissance never occurred. I think without the work of Jean Toomer, Langston Hughes, Nella Larsen, Zora Neale Hurston, and Claude McKay, among many others, this movement towards a racial pride or new black cultural identity would have been a lot slower.

Of course much of the success of the Harlem Renaissance was owing to a voyeuristic white fascination with the ‘exotic’ world of Harlem and fueled by a deep intrigue in Jazz and Blues; however, as an artistic movement, it was still effective in moving civil rights forward. I can’t help but think that without Alain Locke promoting this New Negro Movement or W.E.B. Du Bois’ writing and speaking out for equal rights, that the inevitable hurdle to overcome would have taken much longer.

Music and literature has the power to change the world because it has the power to change the way that people think about and view the world. I think that if so many seminal works did not exist, the world would be a very different place today, and I almost don’t want to think about what that world would be. A world without jazz and the poetry of Hughes is not a world I want to live in.

What do you think the world would look like today if the Harlem Renaissance had never happened? How much later do you think it would have taken for the Civil Rights Movement to occur? How much different do you think the Civil Rights Movement itself would have been?

 

[Charles RB]

That got me wondering, so I look it up and see one of the reasons it happened was because of mass migration from the southern states. Harlem was the biggest centre of migration, so it got the biggest cultural explosion. So if this doesn't happen because somewhere other than Harlem got more people, then we'd be talking about the Other-Neighbourhood-Of-City Renaissance. Different people would come to prominence and the art might take different forms, but there'd be an equivalent unless the migration north never takes place.

 

[Thande]

That got me wondering, so I look it up and see one of the reasons it happened was because of mass migration from the southern states. Harlem was the biggest centre of migration, so it got the biggest cultural explosion. So if this doesn't happen because somewhere other than Harlem got more people, then we'd be talking about the Other-Neighbourhood-Of-City Renaissance. Different people would come to prominence and the art might take different forms, but there'd be an equivalent unless the migration north never takes place.

So that also begs the question of what the primary reason for the mass migration in question was. I have heard before the claim that it was primarily due to black people from the South being treated as human beings in the military during WW2 and then being expected to go back to Jim Crow when the war was over and they went home. On the other hand I think there were also some economic factors involved. Anyone want to weigh in?

 

[Charles RB]

Combination of economic factors and violent racism down south, it seems. You could probably POD the economic factors but, and I'd like to be wrong, you could probably only reduce the racism (unless it's a very early POD).

 

[mlp]

So that also begs the question of what the primary reason for the mass migration in question was. I have heard before the claim that it was primarily due to black people from the South being treated as human beings in the military during WW2 and then being expected to go back to Jim Crow when the war was over and they went home. On the other hand I think there were also some economic factors involved. Anyone want to weigh in?

That's essentially the main ones. "Push" and "Pull" factors both existed here, and NY/other big cities were where all the people were going to.
If there was a boom along the Californian coast, however...

 

[kichinichini]

So that also begs the question of what the primary reason for the mass migration in question was. I have heard before the claim that it was primarily due to black people from the South being treated as human beings in the military during WW2 and then being expected to go back to Jim Crow when the war was over and they went home. On the other hand I think there were also some economic factors involved. Anyone want to weigh in?

Do you mean WW1? The Harlem Renaissance started in the 20s.

It's hard to overstate how bad things were for black people living in the South and nobody needed a war to show that that situation was unjust. There was no guarantee that the law would protect your body, or even your home/farm or other assets of value.

Northern cities were booming and a lot of poor whites were moving north as well.

If there was a boom along the Californian coast, however...

There was. The Great Migration saw many people from the South (particularly Arkansas and Texas) go to Los Angeles, Oakland, and San Francisco.

 

[Elizabeth Wright]

That got me wondering, so I look it up and see one of the reasons it happened was because of mass migration from the southern states. Harlem was the biggest centre of migration, so it got the biggest cultural explosion. So if this doesn't happen because somewhere other than Harlem got more people, then we'd be talking about the Other-Neighbourhood-Of-City Renaissance. Different people would come to prominence and the art might take different forms, but there'd be an equivalent unless the migration north never takes place.

There was movement North because of racism, for sure. Even in the North though there was racism, even seemingly outside of the reach Jim Crow. A lot of Harlem Renaissance artists moved over to Europe around the 1930's to escape the persistent racism and inequality. Which is interesting in itself. Most of the Jazz movement in Paris and almost the entire Jazz movement in Germany (oh yes, Germany had a Jazz movement) is owing to artists wanting to escape systemic racism in the U.S. As sad as it is, the U.S. had the perfect set of cultural character traits that allowed for the creation of the art, literature, and music that we label under the Harlem Renaissance and the Age of Jazz. These artforms were about speaking out against the social injustice and giving a personal voice to the struggle. It was also about creating beauty and a new cultural image - a self redefinition in the face of constent mis-identification and a societally imposed image.

If you can't tell, I find this movement absolutely brilliant. It's sad that most human achievements or movements toward civilization and humanity have to come out of so much struggle.

 

[phx1138]

So that also begs the question of what the primary reason for the mass migration in question was. I have heard before the claim that it was primarily due to black people from the South being treated as human beings in the military during WW2 and then being expected to go back to Jim Crow when the war was over and they went home. On the other hand I think there were also some economic factors involved. Anyone want to weigh in?

I'd push the date back. My understanding is, it starts in the '20s, perhaps even in WW1, with blacks attracted north by war jobs (same as WW2), plus the Depression.

If not Harlem, IMO, Chicago & St. Louis are the leading candidates, since that's where the "jazz revolution" came from.

IMO, Prohibition had a lot to do with enabling integration: with speakeasies "force mixing" blacks & whites, integration more broadly became more acceptable. (I recognize this was a pretty superficial mixing, given the Cotton Club had a "color bar" at the door, but it beat a "no niggers" sign, which would have been commonplace elsewhere.)