In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

“Temples for Tomorrow”: Introductory Essay Geneviève Fabre and Michel Feith Negro things may reasonably be a fad for others, for us they must be a religion.1 We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain, free within ourselves.2 The Harlem Renaissance is one of the most controversial moments in African-American literary and cultural history, yet it is considered a crucial era, a landmark, a site of memory for all those—scholars, historians, art or literary critics, writers and artists—who want to bear witness to its achievements . The terms that define it, “Harlem” and “renaissance,” may have been questioned (was Harlem so central? was there a real renaissance?), its premises, objectives, and agenda criticized, and still the name has been kept, the event has been celebrated, gauged in all its dimensions. New archives are created, anthologies keep appearing, and a stream of scholarly work is being published, each work revealing a greater diversity of voices, innovative viewpoints, and modes of expression. The selection of papers presented in this volume emanates from a conference held in Paris in January 1998. We did not try to be exhaustive and deal with all aspects of such a complex era. Following the lead of recent scholarship, we view it as both a very unique and specific moment—one centered around Harlem and the New Negro impetus publicized in Alain Locke’s 1925 anthology —and as part of a more general American and world context encompassing the problems of modernity, colonialism, and Pan-Africanism, of national identity and transnational, transcultural solidarities and networks. Historically, we have been attentive to the first signs of the Renaissance, even if we saw the mid-twenties as its center of gravity. Considering earlier expression of the ideas that were to prevail then, events that had deep resonance on—or were influential in the emergence or decline of—the movement, 1 led us to span a period that starts in the 1910s and extends well into the late 1920s and early 1930s. The Harlem Renaissance was a moment of hope and confidence, a proclamation of independence, and the celebration of a new spirit exemplified in the New Negro. Against the grain of enduring stereotypes, in defiance of disparagement or subservience, this rebirth and awakening seemed to herald a new age, calling for heightened race consciousness and pride, for resourcefulness and creativity. Such confidence came from an awareness of changing times, of better opportunities created by the Great War and the Great Migration that set African-Americans flowing through the United States and between continents. There was also the sense that the New Negro was definitely entering— and creating—American history and, at the same time, that a new scene and occasion were being offered for an unprecedented encounter with other New World blacks from the British and French Caribbeans as well as with Africans who were also “coming of age.” There was the exhilarating feeling that all could share in a great promise and dream of worldwide unity, in which emancipation could no longer be denied; that new configurations of racial attitudes would change images of the Negro. Finally, there was the naive hope that whites would participate in this “revolution” and be themselves transformed in the process. PRIDE OF PLACE The choice of place to carry on this project was deliberate and was to become highly symbolic. New York was the center of the arts and of the American publishing world; Harlem was the Negro mecca where many migrants “kept coming.” Charles S. Johnson and Locke tried to attract artists to the growing black metropolis with the hope of creating a cultural capital that would become a nexus of attention for both the black and the white worlds. Even though most of the Negro renaissance artists had only an indirect and fleeting contact with Harlem—because many came from elsewhere and moved on to other places—their names and work were to be associated with the movement, whether or not they were willing to acknowledge the affiliation. Whether “home to Harlem” or “a long way from home,” to borrow the expression from Claude McKay, one of the Renaissance’s wayward children, the bond to Harlem was real, secret, and sacred, and we have in fictional or autobiographical writings memorable and moving accounts of their first encounter with what Randolph Fisher called the “city of refuge.” Harlem, the locus of the Renaissance, became emblematic...

Share