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The Politics of Art: The New Negro, 1920–1935

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2009

David Levering Lewis
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Extract

From the early 1920s until the mid-1930s, artistic tremors rolled through Afro-America. Dramatic societies, literary clubs, and poetry groups sprang up in Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Indianapolis, Nashville, and Topeka, among other places. In Boston, the Quill Club launched the Saturday Evening Quill periodical; in Washington, D. C., there was Howard University's Stylus magazine and the freewheeling and remarkably productive soirées of Georgia Douglas Johnson's Saturday Nighters; Philadelphia's literati published the intriguingly promising review, Black Opals. But most of this ferment remained inchoate and, at best, decidedly amateurish. Only in Harlem was there sustained and professional artistic output—although much of its music was tested in and imported from Chicago.

Type
Research Article
Information
Prospects , Volume 3 , October 1978 , pp. 237 - 261
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

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References

NOTES

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22. February 23, 1923, C-90, WWF.

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41. August 19, 1923, C-90, WWF.

42. The publication of White's first novel has a most unusual history. To satisfy Saxton's squeamishness, White rewrote one of his characters into a model of noblesse oblige, sought the opinion of H. G. Wells, H. L. Mencken, Joel Spingarn, Will T. Alexander of Atlanta (director of Commission on Interracial Cooperation). See the correspondence between White and Saxton from July 17 to October 8, 1923, C-90, WWF.

43. Copy of interview in a Savannah, Georgia, newspaper, June 24, 1925, C-92, WWF.

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60. E. R. Nance.

61. “The Black City,” 6 (01 1924), p. 13.Google Scholar

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64. DuBois, W. E. B., “Criteria of Negro Art,”Google Scholar in Crisis, , 10 1926Google Scholar, cited by Waiden, , DuBois, p. 280.Google Scholar

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66. Letters exchanged between White, Embree, Wood, in WWF.

67. White, to Van Doren, I., 01 13, 1925, C-92, WWF.Google Scholar

68. White, to Hayes, , 01 5, 1925, C-92, WWF.Google Scholar

69. Hayes, to White, , 05 31, 1924, C-91, WWF.Google Scholar

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80. March 11, 1927, Box 59: Alain Leroy Locke Collection, Moorland-Spin-garn Research Center, Howard University. Hereafter cited as ALLC.

81. January 4, 1927 (McKay correspondence), ALLC.

82. Locke to Mason exchanges, ALLC.

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85. Mason, to Locke, , 03 4, 1928, Box 56, ALLC.Google Scholar

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87. Locke, to Mason, , 04 29, 1934Google Scholar, Box 58, ALLC.

88. Locke, to Mason, , 06 21, 1934, Box 58, ALLC.Google Scholar

89. Locke, to Mason, , 11 21, 1934, Box 58, ALLC.Google Scholar

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