Images of Black Modernism: Verbal and Visual Strategies of the Harlem Renaissance

Acknowledgments

xi Acknowledgments There are a number of people who helped me bring this book to fruition. First, I thank Elizabeth Abel for being such a gracious and generous adviser. She has provided a model of mentorship and scholarship which I was very privileged to observe and learn from. I also received support and guidance from Maryemma Graham, Stephen Best, Valerie Smith, Abdul JanMohamed, Waldo Martin, Tyler Stovall, Saidiya Hartman, Ula Taylor, and Richard Hutson. Several of my former colleagues at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, read drafts of the manuscript. In particular, I thank Matthew Abraham, Olaf Berwald, Alexis Boylan, Allen Carroll, Allen Dunn, Amy Elias, Stan Garner, Tom Haddox, Heather Hirschfeld, Chuck Maland, and Alan Rutenberg. A very special thanks goes to Mary E. Papke for reading the full manuscript and providing engaging, constructive criticism and collegial support. While at the University of Tennessee I received grants and support from the John C. Hodges Fund and the university’s Humanities Initiative. I am also grateful to my colleagues at the University of Iowa who read this book in manuscript and offered other forms of support. In addition to my colleagues in African American Studies, these include Bluford Adams, Linda Bolton, Florence Boos, xii Acknowledgments Aimee Carlos-Rowe, Mike Chesar, Corey Creekmur, Mary Lou Emery, Ed Folsom, Claire Fox, Miriam Gilbert, Loren Glass, Kevin Koppleson, Ruedi Kuenzli, Priya Kumar, Teresa Magnum, Dee Morris, Kevin Mumford, Lauren Rabinovitz, John Raeburn, Harry Stecopoulos, Richard Turner, Deborah Whaley, and Doris Witt. I reserve very special thanks for my colleagues Horace Porter and Fred Woodard, who read the complete manuscript and shared their insights on African American literature. Thanks also to Hsuan Hsu for reading and commenting on several chapters, even while he was teaching and writing his own work; Carter Mathes for sharing his insights on black sound and music; and Jackie Fulmer. Sara Blair provided valuable knowledge about various photographic repositories and artists’ representatives. The staff at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University was extremely helpful and tremendously patient in explaining the intricacies of the James Weldon Johnson Collection. In particular I thank Alice Prochaska, University Librarian, and Patricia Willis, Curator of the American Division, and the staff librarians, especially Susan Klein and Leigh Golden. Thanks as well to Laura Wexler for letting me attend the Photography and Memory Group while at Yale. I am grateful to my editor at the University of Massachusetts Press, Bruce Wilcox, and to Myriam Chancy of Meridians. Allon Schoener graciously provided me with an image from the “Harlem on My Mind” exhibition. Bruce Kellner offered information about Carl Van Vechten and his relationship with the Crisis symposium, as well as some of Van Vechten’s photographic props. I completed this book while on a Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship, and I also received support from the University of Iowa’s Obermann Center for Advanced Studies. Sections of the book were discussed in workshops sponsored by the University of Iowa’s Center for Ethnic Studies and the Arts. I would also like to thank the University of Iowa Office of the Vice President for Research for its assistance with the cost of the illustrations. I thank my friends Shaden Tageldin and Jeff Walshire for providing perspective while I was writing the book. Finally, and most important, I thank my wonderful family for their sacrifices , for their plan As and Bs, and for making the year-long Ford postdoctoral experience possible for me. This book is especially dedicated to my first teacher, also known as Mom. * * * Acknowledgments xiii Materials by James Weldon Johnson, including lines from “The Creation,” “The Reverend Jasper Jones,” “Let My People Go,” and the “working titles” for God’s Trombones, are reprinted here by permission of Sondra Kathryn Wilson, Executor for the Estate of Grace and James Weldon Johnson. Photographs by Carl Van Vechten are reproduced by permission of the Carl Van Vechten Trust. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. The caricature by Miguel Covarrubias is copyrighted by Maria Elena Rico Covarrubias and is reproduced with permission of the National Portrait Gallery , Smithsonian Institution/Art Resource, NY. Photographs by Man Ray are copyrighted by the Man Ray Trust/Artist Rights Society (ARS), NY/ADAGP, Paris; copyrighted by The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY; CNAC/MNAN/Dist. Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, NY. Photographs from...