The Harlem Renaissance Era recollects the dynamic years of one the most famous neighborhoods in the world. Harlem attracted many famous artist, their goals were to find outlets for group expression and self-determination, with the means to achieve equality and civil rights. Many African Americans during this era were writers, artist, and musicians making a well renounced contribute to the world's culture. Considering current terms like lesbian and bis**ual, it's sometimes hard to define the “s**ual identity of many famous black women during the Harlem Renaissance era such Zora Neal Hurston and Angelina Weld Grimke' and many other women. However, their work on and off the stage contributes to Harlem Renaissance identities that transgress both racial and s**ual conventions. At a time of racial segregation, but also of ideologies of uplift within the black community, social spaces existed in Harlem where s**ual “deviance” and race-mixing could be articulated and seen explicitly. Using songs, literature and scholarly work on social and cultural spaces of the time period from the early 1900's until the 1940's. This timeline speaks to an*lyze the certain deviance of women during this era.
1905-Niagara Movement-
Dedicated to equal rights for the African American Community.
Excerpt: W.E.B Dubois "The Souls of Black Folk"
"So far as Mr. Washington apologizes for injustice, North and South, does not rightly value the privilege and duty of voting, belittles the emasculating effects of caste distinctions, and opposes the higher training and education of our brighter minds -- so far as he, the South or the Nation does this -- we must unceasingly and firmly oppose them."
1909-W.E.B DuBois- NAACP
Excerpt:"National Association for Colored Women"
"Too long have we been silent under unjust and unholy charges; we cannot expect to have them removed until we disprove them through ourselves."
1910-1930 Great Migration-over 1 million southern black move to northern cities.
Excerpt-"The Promised Land" Young Richard Wright
"The North symbolized to me all that I had not felt or seen; it had no relation to what actually existed. Yet by imagining a place where everything is possible, it kept hope alive inside of me."
1916- Angelina Weld Grimke' publishes "Rachel" first full length play written.
Excerpts-"The Black Finger"
I have just seen a beautiful thing
Slim and still,
Against a gold, gold sky,
A straight cypress,
Sensitive
Exquisite,
A black finger
Pointing upwards.
Why, beautiful, still finger are you black?
And why are you pointing upwards?
1918 Geogria Douglas Johnson "The Heart of a Woman"
Excerpts-
The heart of a woman goes forth with the dawn,
As a lone bird, soft winging, so restlessly on,
Afar o'er life's turrets and vales does it roam
In the wake of those echoes the heart calls home.
The heart of a woman falls back with the night,
And enters some alien cage in its plight,
And tries to forget it has dreamed of the stars
While it breaks, breaks, breaks on the sheltering bars.
1917-World War I-
1925-Alain Locke publish “The New Negro”
Excerpt:
"With this renewed self-respect and self-dependence, the life of the Negro community is bound to enter a new dynamic phase, the buoyancy from within compensating for whatever pressure there may be of conditions from without."
1929-Jessie Faucet “Plum Bun”
Excerpt:
1935-“National Council of Negro Women founded”
Excerpt-Zora Neal Hurston "Their Eyes Were Watching God"