HARLEM RENAISSANCE

February 20, 1998
		An exhibit in San Francisco explores the artistic and cultural legacies of the 1920s and 30s.

Questions asked in this forum: Why did the Harlem Renaissance use exotic, sensual images to celebrate African-American culture? How did the Harlem Renaissance affect the politics leading up to the Civil Rights Movement? With so many economic and cultural hurdles, why was Harlem Renaissance art so optimistic in tone? What was it about Paris that allowed African-American artists to achieve recognition there? Why did the Harlem Renaissance end?	David M. Brown of Seattle, WA asks: What was it about the French culture and Paris in particular that allowed the recognition of talented African-American artists, recognition that they could not find at home? France has colonized sections of Africa and has not been free from racism. So why has Paris been an escape, even later in this century for black artists like Dexter Gordon, etc?   Professor Richard Powell responds: Following WWI (and spurred on by relative economic prosperity and a spirit of optimism), Paris began to attract people from all parts of the globe, including significant numbers from the United States. Many African Americans musicians, stage and nightclub performers -- some of whom had first encountered Paris and French culture during WWI as soldiers -- returned to Paris during this period, eager to take advantage of Paris's international reputation as Europe's entertainment capital. The positive reception that African Americans perceived themselves as receiving in France can be attributed, to a great extent, to the comparatively more negative and prejudicial view that most white Americans held of black people during this period. In other words, in most part of the United States during the 1920s and 1930s, African Americans were the butt of jokes, ridiculed, and discriminated against while, in France, they were usually treated as fellow citizens of the world, deserving humane and sympathetic treatment like all other human beings. In addition, the fact that many African Americans were part of a burgeoning entertainment industry in France gave many of them the aura of celebrity which, in turn, came with many added social perks. Of course France wasn't entirely free of racism or prejudice, as seen in its historic and problematic relationship to its colonies in Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Caribbean, and as seen in its own cultural history of racial stereotyping. Yet France (and Paris in particular), because of its cosmopolitan and international character, was still a far more racially tolerant place than the United States was during this period, and African Americans, both at home and abroad, were aware of this. Professor Jeffrey Stewart responds: It is difficult to pinpoint what it is about French culture, and Parisian culture in particular, that was especially welcoming to Black writers and artists in the twentieth century. Perhaps one answer is that French culture seems to value more than American (and perhaps more than British) culture the intellectual and the artistic. When one thinks of, for example, the kind of authority that someone like Jean-Paul Sartre wielded in France as a writer, it is hard to imagine any American writer have such clout and authority here. It is simply that in France, the value placed on refinement, on aesthetics, and on the intellectual lifestyle is greater than it is here. So, it is possible to argue that the greater acceptance that Black writers and artists had in France is perhaps related more to them being writers and artists than African American. I think that race does have something to do with, although the kind of race sense that the French have may be slightly different from that which predominately in the United States, especially in the early part of the twentieth century. Perhaps because the French interaction with people of African descent is as people from Africa and their colonies, there may exist in France a more exotic sense of the person of color than exists here. That would then help explain why the people of color from the United States who emerged during the Harlem Renaissance, a movement that highlighted exoticism, fit better with the French mentality than with the American. In France there also seems to exist a fascination with the American. As such, the African American, who comes to France without, generally speaking, the negative stereotypical reactions of the "ugly American," may be the easier American to accept, explore, befriend, and learn from. Moreover, these artists and writers, and I am especially thinking of the jazz musicians here like Dexter Gordon or the writers like James Baldwin, come with something-- talent that enhances French life. In that sense, a great distinction is made in France between the African American jazz musician and the Algerian day worker. In regard to talented African Americans in France, I think that the best line comes from Maya Angelou in the film biography of James Baldwin, when she says, "Who wouldn't want them? They are so talented, so beautiful. Who wouldn't want them?" Well, we know the answer: middle America. Professor William Drummond responds: Mr. Brown of Seattle should take a look at a wonderful book by Tyler Stovall.  "Paris Noir:  African Americans in the City of Light" (Houghton Mifflin).  It's a readable and vivid book about black American ex-patriate life in Paris in the 20s.  The simple answer about why the French opened their arms is that the Parisians had a romantic attachment to the American Negro.  They were swept away by jazz and the exoticness of Josephine Baker. However, the French did not extend their tolerance to Africans from their own colonies.  Yes, it was a double standard.  Stovall writes (pp. 72): "The French seemed to regard blackness as something of value, an attitude noticeably absent in the United States.  One African American woman had the experience of going to a Parisian hair salon to get her hair straightened, only to have the coiffeuse curl it even more.  The hairdresser simply didn't understand why black women wanted straight hair while all her white customers wanted to make theirs as curly as possible!  Certainly by the end of the 1920s the public attitude of most Parisians toward black Americans took the form of friendly, if ignorant, curiosity, a vast improvement over the racial climate in the United States."