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

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 [First Page] [46], (1) Lines: ——— 0.0pt ——— Normal PgEnds: [46], (1) C H A P T E R F O U R The Significance of the Frontier in the New Negro Renaissance The New Negro Renaissance refers to a flourishing movement of African American artistic expression that occurred in Harlem in the early decades of the twentieth century. Although the Renaissance was considered an eastern urban phenomenon, the movement included a significant number of artists who traced their roots back to the rural American West. In The New Negro (1925), Paul Kellogg claimed that the artists who immigrated to Harlem represented “another folk migration which in human significance can be compared only with [the] pushing back of the Western frontier.”1 This time, the “folk” were primarily African American rather than white, and they were moving in the opposite direction, relocating in a modern eastern metropolis. These “new Negro” residents, who resembled “the old pioneers” (273–74), were transforming Harlem into a vibrant artistic community. Kellogg’s comparison between nineteenth-century white frontier immigrants and twentieth-century urban African American artists is noteworthy because of the striking dissimilarities. Many white pioneers left “civilization” for sparsely populated western domains. African Americans, in “a reversal of that process” (275), journeyed mainly from southern rural locations to an industrial northeastern city. In “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” (1893), Frederick Jackson Turner argued that the exploration and clearing of wilderness had eventually led to the establishment of small frontier outposts, then larger communities, and finally urban centers of industry.2 Like Turner, Kellogg imagined the city, in this case Harlem, as the final frontier . But unlike Turner, who predicted that successful urban entrepreneurs would be the new pioneers, Kellogg imagined ordinary citizens—struggling artists and racial minorities—filling these roles (275). Kellogg’s “pioneers” the significance of the frontier • 47 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 [47], (2) Lines: 14 to ——— 0.0pt PgV ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [47], (2) were poor and socially marginal people of color. They were descendants of slaves who had been “sold or bartered” like chattel during an era when white pioneers were first making “their way into the New Territory and establish [ing] thriving communities.”3 Kellogg revised Turner’s frontier thesis, focusing on the contributions and achievements made by racial minorities.4 The artists who pioneered new forms of expression were members of the New Negro Renaissance. The movement began at the end of World War I when a loss of faith in European civilization, combined with the increasing popularity of the Freudian notion that “primitive” peoples were free from the constraints of modern society, resulted in a growing interest in the American Negro and his African origins.5 The bohemian artists in the New Negro Renaissance theoretically identified with a “primitive” African or nonAnglo culture. They were the opposites of white pioneers. Turner’s archetypal frontiersmen entered the wilderness in order to conquer “savagery” and introduce “civilization.” Renaissance artists pursued a different yet equally paradoxical goal. They went to the city and, instead of abolishing “savagery,” practiced “primitivism” in a cosmopolitan setting. Many works from the Renaissance have been described as examples of “primitive” art, including sculptures, paintings, and graphic designs influenced by American folk Negro or African sources; African American literature incorporating regional idioms or racial vernacular; jazz and blues; and anthropological representations of “black” rural practices. The term has been used to refer to works that are unsophisticated or “primitive” as well as those that are modern and highly refined. New York City, the home of the “primitive” during the New Negro Renaissance, was romanticized by African American writers as a mixture of the old world and new. In A Long Way from Home (1937), Claude McKay compared the city’s skyscrapers to pyramids.6 In The Blacker the Berry . . . (1929), Wallace Thurman referred to the people who lived in Harlem as “cliff dwellers.”7 Both Renaissance writers imagined the modern cosmopolitan American cityscape as an ancient, preindustrial, exotic locale. New York City...

Share