McKay and Toomer - Their Place in the Harlem Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance, also known as the New Negro Movement, began amidst a turbulent time of social and ideological change in American history – WWI had just been concluded, women’s suffrage had finally gained them the right to vote, and Modernism was reshaping the way people perceived art, literature, and philosophy. The world was changing, and African-Americans realized that this was the moment in which they needed to define themselves as a people. Author Gerald Early wrote that “the long-standing idea that the black possessed no sense of craft, that the idea of method was alien to his nature…” (141) best summarizes the perception of the black man prior to the Harlem Renaissance. However, Early continues, “[the black man] combated in two ways through the literature of the Harlem Renaissance: in poetry, where the idea of craft and method becomes both transparent conceit and the cultural politics of the mastery of intelligibility” (141). Thus, the Harlem Renaissance began.

Theoretically, the movement was supposed to be united in purpose, building up and redefining the African-American. In practice on the other hand, it was divided against itself over several issues pertaining to black identity and expression as it related to that of their white counterparts. Out of this division “two distinct black schools arose: the Countee Cullen antivernacular, mastery of traditional forms approach and the Langston Hughes, Sterling Brown, James Weldon Johnson school of reconstructed dialect and the operating belief that black expression was inherently and undeniably craftsmanship and discipline” (Early 141). Black artists sought to reconcile where their work fit in the world at large – was it something uniquely black regardless of form, and if not, “could [they] avoid mimicking European forms and still have great art?” (Patton and Honey 134). This proved to be the crux of the ideological dilemma for many black authors, scholars, and artists. However, this did not prevent several poets from blending the two and forming their own unique style.

A poet and writer, Claude McKay was one of the more radical figures of the New Negro Movement, the style of his works oscillating between the two aforementioned ideologies and often merging them. His poem, A Midnight Woman to the Bobby, is a great example of McKay’s ability to “harness the vigor, wit, and resistant spunk of the Jamaican idiom to English forms” (Norton 499) and reflects his Jamaican roots. McKay sought to illustrate the black experience in America in his Home to Harlem, which garnered much acclaim for its depiction of black culture, and profoundly influenced black expression.

Jean Toomer, on the other hand, was of a mixed ethnic background, allowing him to “pass” and exist within white culture. This allowed him a unique perspective of being an African-American who was witness to racial tensions, yet he avoided being the target of said aggression. His experiences in Georgia are profoundly evident in his masterwork Cane. Many of the poems in this collection utilize “the stark juxtapositions of Imagism to embody violent racial tension” (Ramazani, Ellmann, and O’Claire 557) in the South. Toomer’s Portrait in Georgia exemplifies this comparing the description of a white woman to a lynching – “and her slim body, white as the ash of black flesh after flame” (Toomer 560).

Early, Gerald. "Three Notes toward a Cultural Definition of the Harlem Renaissance." Callaloo. 14.1 1991. 136-149. Rpt. in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Thomas J. Schoenberg and Lawrence J. Trudeau. Vol. 218. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Literature Resource Center. Web. 21 Apr. 2010. http://go.galegroup.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/ps/i.do?&id=GALE%7CH1420090816&v=2.1&u=tall85761&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w.

McKay, Claude. “If We Must Die.” The Norton Anthology of Modern and ContemporaryPoetry. Vol. 1. 3^rd ed. Eds. Ramazani, Jahan, Richard Ellmann, and Robert O’Claire. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. 2003. 501-502.

Patton, Venetria K., and Maureen Honey. Revisioning The Harlem Renaissance. 130-143.

Ramazani, Jahan, Richard Ellmann, and Robert O’Claire, eds. The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry. Vol. 1. 3^rd ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. 2003. 498-557.