Harlem Renaissance Literature: Race, Class, and Protest

The Harlem Renaissance and Its Social Context

The Harlem Renaissance was a true flourishing of African-American arts, music, and literature that contributed tremendously to the cultural landscape of the nation. Much of its literature reflects the experience of the "Great Migration" of Black Americans from the rural South to the urban North. Those experiences included reflections on the intersections between race, class, gender, and power. Many Harlem Renaissance writers penned memoirs that offer insight into the direct experience of racism, such as Richard Wright's "The Ethics of Living Jim Crow." Poets worked with classic literary devices like symbolism and imagery to convey the intense emotions linked to experiences of prejudice and violence.

Emerging in conjunction with social and political justice movements such as women's rights and labor rights, the movement to empower Black communities through the arts also reached beyond the borders of the African-American community. For example, F. Scott Fitzgerald's novels and short stories addressed class conflict and income disparities. Works that comment on social injustice, income disparity, and class conflict together comprise the zeitgeist of the era.

Wright's 'Ethics of Living Jim Crow': Institutionalized Racism

In the second section of The Ethics of Living Jim Crow, Wright describes a shocking scene of violence that was all too common in southern Black communities: "One morning, while polishing brass out front, the boss and his twenty-year-old son got out of their car and half dragged and half kicked a Negro woman into the store. A policeman standing at the corner looked on, twirling his nightstick." This single, poignant image encapsulates the spirit of Wright's work, revealing the way racism had become fully entrenched in American society.

The police officer simply looks on, "twirling his nightstick," rather than intervening — demonstrating that racism was institutionalized and practically upheld by the law. This is precisely the logic behind the Jim Crow laws that somehow evaded oversight from Washington. Although Jim Crow violated every tenet upon which the nation was founded, it functioned as the dominant political and social institution in the South for generations. By enforcing Jim Crow, the sacred institutions of the nation — including its justice system — ensured that African-Americans could not access social or cultural capital, let alone financial capital. As a result, race and class became inextricably entwined.

Brown's 'Bitter Fruit of the Tree': Symbolism and Submission

In "Bitter Fruit of the Tree," poet Sterling Brown also uses an anecdotal format to describe the experience of discrimination and the way it affects social class and access to power. The poet reflects on his grandparents' generation and the way they had been taught to be submissive to white authority. Just as Wright documents systematic racism through his personal experiences, Brown shows how Black Americans had been told, "You must not be bitter," as if they should simply accept racism as a fact of life.

Brown's closing line directly answers a question Wright poses in The Ethics of Living Jim Crow — "How do Negroes feel about the way they have to live?" — when the poet writes, "my brother is bitter, and he does not hear." Bitterness and a profound mistrust of the white power establishment emerge as the only natural outcome of the systematic racism that both Wright and Brown illustrate in their work.

Conclusion: Literature as Political Activism

Literature of the Harlem Renaissance was essentially a form of political protest and a means to promote activism in favor of universal human rights. By examining Wright's prose alongside Brown's poetry, it becomes clear that Harlem Renaissance writers were engaged in a shared project: bearing witness to the devastation wrought by Jim Crow, exposing the intersections of race and class, and demanding — through the power of art — a more just and equitable nation.