African Americans

B

Dance

Like music, African American dance is rooted in African and African American traditions. In Africa, dance is often an integral part of religious ceremonies. The degree to which African slaves were able to retain African dance forms in North America depended on their masters. In some parts of North America, dancing was frowned upon by some Protestant slave-owners as sinful. Since these slave-owners defined dancing as crossing the feet, slaves adapted their dances to conform to European beliefs, creating a shuffling motion with the feet that would be less offensive to Europeans. In places such as New Orleans and New York City, however, slave-owners allowed their African slaves to preserve their music and dance. Blacks often performed in public squares or at private ceremonies, and were sometimes rewarded with money or extra food for their virtuosity. Blacks also helped establish dance as a profession in the 20th century. In films and on stage, black dancers displayed their skills before both black and white audiences.

Beginning in the 1920s, tap dance became one of the best-known forms of dance performed by blacks. African American tap dancers, such as Bill “Bojangles” Robinson and the Nicholas Brothers, became famous throughout the world. In the mid-20th century, black dance companies headed by Katherine Dunham, Pearl Primus, and others began preserving and reinterpreting African American and Caribbean dance forms.

Other African American dancers mastered European dance forms, often producing innovative combinations of the African and European traditions. Arthur Mitchell, the first African American to become a principal dancer with a leading ballet company, the New York City Ballet, founded the Dance Theatre of Harlem in 1968. The company performs both traditional ballets and commissions new works that reflect the African American experience. Alvin Ailey, a student of the modern dance pioneer Lester Horton, founded the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater in the late 1950s. The troupe quickly became one of the best-known American dance companies in the world.

Blacks also participated in the creation of nonprofessional dances. As with music, African American dance forms have greatly influenced popular culture. Many of the most popular dances of the 20th century, such as the Charleston and the Lindy Hop, are believed to have originated among African Americans.

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VI

Literature

A

Early Writers

Poems, short stories, autobiographies, novels and plays written by African Americans provide a unique window into the black experience. Most slaves were denied the opportunity to learn to read. The achievement of literacy, and especially the publication of poetry and autobiographies, demonstrated to many people that blacks had the ability to create works of literary merit and achieve the same accomplishments as whites. Lucy Terry, an African-born Rhode Island slave who obtained her freedom in 1756, composed the first known poem by an African American. Terry’s poem, known as “Bars Fight,” which recounts a battle between Native Americans and whites that took place in 1746, was preserved in oral form until its publication in 1855. In 1773 African American poet Phillis Wheatley published Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, the first African American work of literature to be widely distributed.

Wheatley and other early African American writers focused on expressing Christian sentiments rather than proving the equality of blacks or ending slavery. However, beginning in the late 18th century, African American authors increasingly used their poetry, fiction, and autobiographical works to attack slavery and inequality. In the 1840s former slave Frederick Douglass became a leading writer and abolitionist, campaigning tirelessly for the end of slavery and inequality in the United States. Douglass, who escaped slavery in Maryland in 1838, wrote three autobiographies: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845), My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), and The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1892). Many other black writers told their own stories of enslavement and escape in books and in speeches, including William Wells Brown, William and Ellen Craft, Harriet Jacobs, and Sojourner Truth.

While the autobiography was the most popular form of African American literature during the 19th century, African Americans also described their lives in poetry and fiction. Poet George Moses Horton, a Virginia slave, wrote of his desire for freedom in The Hope of Liberty (1829). William Wells Brown's Clotel; or, The President's Daughter (1853) was the first novel written by an African American author. Published in Britain in 1854, Clotel is a fictional account of slave children allegedly fathered by U.S. president Thomas Jefferson. The first novel published in the United States by an African American author and the first novel written by a black woman, Harriet Wilson's Our Nig (1859) detailed the difficulties faced by Northern free blacks. Free black writer Frances Ellen Watkins Harper published several volumes of poetry and four novels, as well as many stories, essays, and letters that balanced her desire for artistic expression with her commitment to abolition and women’s rights.

Independent black theater flourished in northern cities for a brief period in the 1820s. The first play by a black writer was Henry Brown’s The Drama of King Shotaway (1823), based on a slave insurrection on the island of Saint Vincent in the West Indies. The script of the play has since been lost. By the 1830s white officials had shut down black theaters, claiming they caused disorderly conduct.

After the Civil War, black writers continued to publish autobiographies, fiction, and poetry that reflected and interpreted the experiences of African Americans. Charles Chesnutt became the first black writer of fiction to receive widespread support from the mainstream white publishing industry. Between 1899 and 1905, Chesnutt published two collections of short stories and three novels, and became the most influential black writer in the United States. Up From Slavery (1901), by educator Booker T. Washington, continued the tradition of black autobiography. Poet Paul Laurence Dunbar wrote many of his poems in African American dialect.

B

The Harlem Renaissance

During the 1920s, African American literature attained new popularity in the mainstream and among blacks. Among the most important developments of this period was the rise of a cultural movement known as the Harlem Renaissance. This movement received its name from the largely African American Harlem neighborhood in New York City that was home to many of the foremost black artists, musicians, and writers of the day. Poets, such as Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and Angelina Weld Grimke, produced works that faithfully reflected the black experience but appealed to wider audiences. Novelists, such as Nella Larsen, Zora Neale Hurston, Wallace Thurman, Claude McKay, and Jessie Fauset, enjoyed similar success. Harlem Renaissance poets and novelists gained contracts with major publishing houses, won national awards, and published their works in national magazines. Wealthy white people eager to contribute to the flowering of black arts often provided financial support and encouragement to the writers of the Harlem Renaissance. The first Broadway drama written by an African American was Willis Richardson’s The Chip Woman’s Fortune, staged in 1923. Richardson, Hurston, and Hughes all wrote and staged plays during this time. The literature of the Harlem Renaissance explored a wide spectrum of black life. While Hurston’s novels depicted African American life in the rural South, Fauset’s novels focused on middle-class urban blacks in the North. Thurman criticized color consciousness among blacks, while McKay critiqued the Harlem Renaissance movement itself.

C

The Post-Harlem Renaissance Period

The end of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1930s did not halt the production of black literature. Rather, the success of the Renaissance movement laid the foundation for continued black efforts in literature. The Harlem Renaissance had established literature as part of the movement for black civil rights. Most individual white patrons were unable to continue supporting black artists during the Great Depression and World War II (1939-1945). However, the NAACP and the Urban League, through their magazines Crisis and Opportunity, continued to publish black writers and provide monetary support. Mainstream publishing houses also continued to show interest in black writers. The first novel published by African American writer Richard Wright, Native Son (1940), was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection. Novelists such as Wright, Ann Petry, Chester Himes, and Frank Yerby specialized in urban realism, describing the triumphs and tragedies of black life in the large cities of the United States. Many critics consider the novel Invisible Man (1952), by Ralph Ellison, to be one of the greatest literary works of the mid-20th century. The book’s unnamed narrator explores African American political movements and individual emptiness.

The works of playwright Lorraine Hansberry and poets Gwendolyn Brooks and Robert Hayden echo the themes of urban realism. Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun (1958) was the first play by a black woman to be produced on Broadway. One year later, Hansberry became the first black and the youngest writer to win the New York Drama Critics Circle Award.

D

The Black Arts Movement and Beyond

The Black Arts movement of the 1960s produced writers even more stark in their depiction of urban realities and black political anger than their forerunners in the urban realism school. These writers, such as poet Nikki Giovanni and playwright Amiri Baraka, brought confrontational directness and the language of black America to their works. Their works breathed new energy and urgency into the poetry and drama of the era.

Since the 1960s, black writers have continued to explore the black experience, increasingly gaining national and international recognition. Works such as I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970) by Maya Angelou and Brothers and Keepers (1984) by John Edgar Wideman have continued the tradition of black autobiography. August Wilson has explored the central conflicts facing blacks in each decade of the 20th century in an ongoing cycle of ten plays, which have won great acclaim and earned two Pulitzer Prizes. From 1993 to 1995, Rita Dove served as poet laureate of the United States, the first black woman to fill that position. Novelist Toni Morrison won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1993.

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