Harlem 1920–1960: Culture, Economy, and Identity

Introduction: Harlem as a Mirror of American Diversity

Harlem has indeed been a mirror of the diversity that sums up the essence of the American nation. It is the social, economic, and political environment in which African-American cultural individuality integrated and defined itself as a cornerstone of what is known today as the American nation. Despite the multitude of opinions arguing that there is no true American cultural identity, its existence is beyond any doubt, even if it cannot be fully captured in a cultural blueprint expressed through the traditional standards of European analysis. Indeed, the American culture lacks the time depth that characterizes, say, French or Italian culture — traditions with roots firmly planted in the Renaissance or the Enlightenment. Still, the specificity of American culture lies precisely in its novelty and its enormous diversity, which has offered a genuine sense of cultural identification for hundreds of millions of Americans.

In this framework, the African-American culture that developed in the poor homes of Harlem is essential for underlining the diversity of the U.S. cultural environment. At the same time, it stands as the fruit of the tormented existence of Black people — in some ways analogous to the actual struggling experience that gave rise to the United States itself.

African-Americans represent the symbol of a culture distinct from the European one that influenced and set the stage for the creation of the United States. Due to the historical circumstances that brought them to America, Black people were in many respects forced to adopt different means of expressing both their grievances and their cultural identity. In the 1920s and 1940s, Harlem became one of the most active places for the African-American population and a crucial point for the rediscovery of their cultural inspiration. Clare Corbould observed that "African-Americans heard the noise, or sound, of Harlem, rather differently. To them, it indicated a distinctive and valuable culture." This perception arose because African-Americans regarded culture — and the use of their national and racial elements of identification — as a tool for asserting their own identity against white criticism and exclusion.

African-American Cultural Identity in Harlem

The Black population in Harlem considered the expression of their cultural identity as a means to erase, or at least reduce, racial discrimination and mistreatment. As one review of McKay's Harlem: Negro Metropolis notes, Harlem represented an area in which African-Americans created a new social order to obliterate the old one built on race — an order rooted in custom and tradition. The new order of the Negro metropolis is neither absolute nor sacred to its residents, and is in some ways artificial, but it is pragmatic. In this Harlem, race is primordial, education is more than a social ritual, politics is empirical, amusement is both vocational and avocational, religion is a quest rather than a tradition, and any cause of the "lost" variety that involves race becomes an occasion for action.

The identification of the Harlem neighborhood with a distinct cultural framework was essential for the people living in its small and poor neighborhoods. Although many voices characterized Harlem as an insalubrious part of New York City, the matter was ultimately one of perception and point of view. Claude Brown, for instance, expressed his views on the neighborhood through the lens of his own childhood experience — born in Harlem, he began selling marijuana and cocaine at the age of sixteen. Given the vivid and largely negative accounts of Harlem that Brown offered throughout his books, his harsh perception of the neighborhood is understandable. However, many of the elements he described — dirty flats, slums, the oppressive presence of white police — in fact reflected the physical reality of an area in which Black people were unwelcome and consistently denied the right to belong. At the same time, Brown's autobiography, Manchild in the Promised Land, traces the evolution of both cultural and individual identity within the Black community as they tried to recreate and adapt their cultural life to a hostile environment. He notes his mother's devotion to God during trying times, suggesting the strong commitment of African-Americans to their religious beliefs.

From a broader perspective, it is fair to say that Harlem cannot be considered merely an outrageous place. It was also one in which a community — above all, the Black community — struggled to find and rebuild its cultural identity in order to be part of what is called American society.

There were different ways in which the cultural identity of African-Americans manifested in Harlem throughout the period from the 1920s through the 1960s. While some characterized the neighborhood as "a cancer in the heart of the city," it was due to the Black community in Harlem that jazz became available to broader audiences, along with various forms of interpretive theater. It is therefore fair to argue that Harlem represented a central point for the formation of an African-American identity.

The history of jazz music is inevitably linked to the evolution of Black Harlem. The sounds of jazz were described as "an entirely American-made, modern expression of primitivism." Jazz represents a combination of the African background the Black community carried and the experiences they accumulated throughout their existence in America. Many viewed jazz as the primitive sound of the urban space, an expression analogous to the image of the African-American in the city — an image that blended the idea of savagism with civilization. While some found it evolutionary, others considered it a regressive step and used it to label the African-American presence a "cancer in the heart of the city."

The existence of a distinct community inside a major city cannot be interpreted solely in terms of the financial burdens the respective group imposes on the wider majority. There are figures confirming great poverty among the dwellers of Harlem. The years preceding the Depression were marked by a rising population and a declining housing stock. The crowded spaces and precarious living conditions, as Winston McDowell suggested, were a shortcoming for the image New York wished to project to the world. The neighborhood symbolized, from the white majority's perspective, a pit for increased violence. Nonetheless, one cannot attribute the situation entirely to Black Americans and other minorities who had found shelter in Harlem. It would be fairer to say that, given the evolution of the Black community and the manner in which it settled in Harlem, the miserable conditions they endured were the result of white pressure and the Black population's limited ability to resist that pressure. Because whites were determined to control the entire city — including majority-Black areas such as Harlem — the latter developed a certain spirit of opposition and rebelliousness. The violence and behavior that gave the neighborhood its ill reputation were, in this light, reactions to the conditions African-Americans had been forced to endure through decades of exclusion.

An opposing view holds that the violence associated with the Black American man and the Harlem dweller is more a preconception than an evidence-based reality. Alain Locke's idea of the "Old Negro" can be situated in the Harlem framework. As Locke argues:

"The Old Negro had long become more of a myth than a man. The Old Negro, we must remember, was a creature of moral debate and historical controversy. His has been a stock figure perpetuated as an historical fiction partly in innocent sentimentalism, partly in deliberate reactionism. The Negro himself has contributed his share to this through a sort of protective social mimicry forced upon him by the adverse circumstances of dependence. So for generations in the mind of America, the Negro has been more of a formula than a human being — a something to be argued about, condemned or defended, to be 'kept down,' or 'in his place,' or 'helped up,' to be worried with or worried over, harassed or patronized, a social bogey or a social burden."

From Locke's point of view, the traditional Black person — the one most critics of Harlem held responsible for the neighborhood's negative image — is the product of historical and popular myth-making. Their arguments rest on historical assumptions and on events that were turning points in African-American history, especially during the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. The "Old Negro" associated with Harlem is thus the result of history, not of recent or contemporary events.

Given these historical preconceptions and stereotypes, it would be unwise to accept without question that Harlem was genuinely a cancer in the heart of the city, especially when no objective comparison is being made. Locke called for seeing the Negro of the present day through lenses unclouded by past controversy, noting that the days of "aunties," "uncles," and "mammies" were gone, and that it was "time to scrap the fictions, garret the bogeys and settle down to a realistic facing of facts."

This suggests that rather than relying on entrenched views about a community, one must acknowledge both the benefits and shortcomings of that community fairly. The increase in violence in Harlem was a real issue that could not be overlooked, but the undeniable cultural identity that African-Americans brought to the neighborhood must be recognized equally.

Artistic Expression and the Harlem Renaissance

It is important to appreciate the wide variety of the Harlem environment and the possibilities it offered from the 1920s through the 1960s. There were notable and representative figures in the Harlem framework — among them Countee Cullen, Richmond Barthé, and Wallace Thurman — who were regarded as extravagant characters partly because of their particular sexual orientation. From a traditionalist perspective, this might be said to have complicated the image of the serious artist, especially given that they were considered voices of the Black community. Yet each of them earned distinctive recognition. Countee Cullen was one of the most important writers for the emancipation of the Black community, with poems such as "Heritage" in which his portrayal of Africa is remarkable. Richmond Barthé is one of the best-known Harlem Renaissance artists, celebrated not only for his artistic output but for the tremendous effort he made in revealing the spirit of African emancipation to the world.

It is therefore difficult to determine the precise impact that the images created by these personalities had on the collective mentality of white individuals analyzing Harlem. There may be a predominance of a negative image — that of a depraved Black society — or of a creative and free-spirited one. Either way, these contrasting images represent a set of frameworks that ultimately determine one's perspective on the Harlem neighborhood: a cancer to the city, or a cultural spring.

The artistic manifestations and theatrical representations that first emerged on the streets of Harlem rather than on the famous stages of New York underscore the view of Harlem as a cultural framework rather than a neighborhood plagued by violence and gang fights. Harlem had long been perceived as an environment suited to freedom of expression, one in which artists could expose their work free from critical constraints. The particular sense of racial rebellion that had long placed Harlem in opposition to white communities nurtured a spirit of nonconformity and liberation from social, moral, and artistic limitations. A representative example is the 1936 WPA production of Macbeth, directed by a young Orson Welles, which opened in Harlem. As Corbould describes:

"When the WPA production of Macbeth, directed by a young Orson Welles, opened in Harlem in 1936, the eighty-five members of the Monarch Negro Elks band marched in spectacular uniforms behind banners reading 'Macbeth by William Shakespeare.' They brought 10,000 people out onto the street and led them to the theatre. Out the front of the playhouse, the Elks' band played an open-air concert. Northbound traffic stood still for an hour while police battled to clear a path through to the theater's foyer."

Throughout the history of Harlem, there was a constant willingness to defy conventional social norms without infringing on the liberties of other communities. This attitude was enabled by a cultural background rooted in coordinates that did not fit the traditional marks of early modernist art. Such initiatives represented an important step toward the emancipation and reorientation of the artistic spirit in America and New York because they offered artists and critics alike the opportunity to explore artistic possibilities without respecting boundaries that would otherwise have constrained interpretive desire. The Harlem background, which facilitated this kind of artistic experimentation, made an important contribution to the modernization of American art.

Religion offers another important example of Harlem's artistic valences. The belief in a supreme power that constantly protected Black people through the harsh realities of a segregated society was a strong bond that developed and maintained the unity of African-American communities — from the slave period through the Harlem Renaissance. This religiosity explains the deep attention given to Biblical themes. Unlike traditional representations, however, certain Biblical themes and characters were addressed through a Black perspective, offering a sense of innovation and individuality to the way art could be perceived through racial and cultural lenses.

An important figure in this respect was the African-American artist and poet Richard Bruce Nugent, who presented in the 1930s a distinctive interpretation of Salome — the Biblical character — not through conventional identifiable elements but in a more open and uncensored view. As one scholar describes his Salome images of 1930:

"His Salome images of 1930, for example, illustrate female bodies, many of them named for biblical characters, performing a sexy burlesque of hyperbolized gender. The curves of these dancing figures are sparingly outlined in transparent strokes, so that their bodies are denied a sense of corporeality. They are surfaces on which Nugent placed exaggerated attributes that seem to mimic gender, rather than to express its authenticity."

This approach did not betray ignorance of traditional artistic conventions; it was more a matter of innovation and free spirit — a sense of unrestricted interpretation. This innovative style is significant not so much for its concrete results as for the cultural essence it embodied: a new influx of originality and interpretive freedom, a break from dusty old forms of artistic expression.

From a cultural point of view, it is therefore difficult to deny Harlem its major contributions to what is today the true American culture. Albert C. Barnes underlines this fact, arguing that the contributions of the American Negro to art are representative because they come from the hearts of the masses of a people held together by shared yearnings and stirred by the same causes. "It is a sound art because it comes from a primitive nature upon which a white man's education has never been harnessed. It is a great art because it embodies the Negroes' individual traits and reflects their suffering, aspirations and joys during a long period of acute oppression and distress."

Harlem brought a new sense of innovation and new perspectives on the way elements of common life and even Biblical themes could be interpreted. Moreover, because the African-American community was treated as peripheral to mainstream American society, its exclusion from the normal cultural and social frameworks of New York enabled Harlem to become an ideal place for ideas of innovation and experimentation. From this point of view, Harlem was more a cultural haven than a poor, racially segregated environment.

Conclusion

Overall, it can be concluded that a definitive answer to the question of whether Harlem was a cancer in the heart of the city or a cultural emergence point for different minority groups is difficult to give. Various factors must be taken into consideration. On the one hand, there are the economic problems the Black community struggled with throughout the period, which prevented many from achieving a higher standard of living. But these economic distresses can also be seen as the result of the discriminatory attitudes of the white majority. The cultural dimension is equally important: Harlem was a point of reference for the Black community because it enabled artists to express themselves freely and explore their diverse beliefs. From this point of view, it would be fair to say that Harlem made an important contribution to the cultural spectrum of the United States.

Finally, the political environment — not necessarily in terms of formal political leaders, but of community activists and organizers — played a significant part in determining Harlem's place on the New York map. The Jewish community proved to be skilled entrepreneurs, the Puerto Ricans worthy representatives of their nationality, and the African-Americans a vital force in the life of the city. Nonetheless, according to certain theoretical frameworks, these groups will never fully assimilate and will always remain potential targets of discriminatory behavior. What is certain is that Harlem's legacy cannot be reduced to either its miseries or its cultural glories alone — both were real, both were intertwined, and both were products of the same history of exclusion and resilience.