Sketchbook Saturday

Sketchbook Saturday

This is a charcoal sketch I did in 1992. I still love working with charcoal because I like to smudge it for a smooth texture. I used to do my hair like this a lot so it may actually be a self portrait (kind of).  It was also how Janet Jackson did her hair in the Pleasure Principle video so maybe I was trying to draw her. Not sure now!

Sketchbook Saturday

This week is a four-in-one! I don't know exactly when these are from since they are just labled 1990s in the file.  I had kept my hair shoulder length or longer when I was in my teens but was considering chopping it all off into some cute short cut. The drawings below are of some ideas I had of what I wanted to maybe do.  The first two I think were what I thought one cut would look either curly or hot ironed. Notice the rat tail on the third one! I changed my mind and kept it long because I just loved my hair too much!

Sketchbook Saturday

Since I am going in chronological order through my scanned images, this one is another from 1989.  One thing about me since I am biracial and raised by my white mother and stepfather, I had a tendency to want to draw things that were particularly "ethnic" and this is one of those.  It is my attempt to be very clear that the girl I am drawing from my imagination is Black without making her face super dark.  I liked the challenge of being specific with the features while trying not to go overboard in any stereotype.

Sketchbook Saturday

I drew this from a photo of myself that my mom took back in 1989.  It was a snap shot that I submitted to an international model search contest.  I made it to the regional semi finals. I think the region was Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas but I only remember one person from Texas and the rest were from Tucson (where I lived at the time).  There may have been some girls from New Mexico and other parts of Arizona but it seemed like most of them were local.

Sketchbook Saturday

I was constantly trying to challenge myself in one way or another when I did sketches. This one from 1989 is multiple. I was working on getting the hair and the hands.  I was also practicing my face and expressions, specifically here the smile.

Sketchbook Saturday

This pencil sketch is labeled 1989 in my files.  Sometimes I would try to draw cartoon style instead of artistic or realistic. Although some would argue that cartoons are an art form! :-)

Black History Month 2015 - The Harlem Renaissance - Georgia Douglas Johnson

Georgia Douglas Johnson (image source: wikimedia)

The closing figure of the Harlem Renaissance for my Black History Month 2015 is the writer Georgia Douglas Johnson. This is another figure that did not specifically live in Harlem yet is indelibly associated with the era.

~~~

From Wikipedia:

Georgia Blanche Douglas Camp Johnson, better known as Georgia Douglas Johnson (September 10, 1880 – May 14, 1966), was an American poet, one of the earliest African-American female playwrights, and a member of the Harlem Renaissance.

Johnson's husband accepted an appointment as the Recorder of Deeds from United States President William Howard Taft, and the family moved to Washington, D.C., in 1910. It was during this period that Johnson began to write poems and stories. She credited a poem written by William Stanley Braithwaite about a rose tended by a child, as her inspiration for her poems. Johnson also wrote songs, plays, short stories, taught music, and performed as an organist at her Congregational church.

Poetry
She began to submit poems to newspapers and small magazines. Her first poem was published in 1905 in the literary journal The Voice of the Negro, though her first collection of poems was not published until 1916. She published four volumes of poetry, beginning in 1916 with The Heart of a Woman. Her poems are often described as feminine and "ladylike" or "raceless" and use titles such a "Faith", "Youth", and "Joy". Her poems appeared in multiple issues of The Crisis, a journal published by the NAACP and founded by W. E. B. Du Bois. "Calling Dreams" was published with the January 1920 edition, "Treasure" in July 1922, and "To Your Eyes" in November 1924.

Plays
Johnson wrote about 28 plays. Plumes was published under the pen name John Temple. Many of her plays were never published because of her gender and race. Gloria Hull is credited with the rediscovery of many of Johnson's plays. The 28 plays that she wrote were divided into four sections: "Primitive Life Plays", "Plays of Average Negro Life", "Lynching Plays" and "Radio Plays". Several of her plays are lost. In 1926, Johnson's play "Blue Blood" won honorable mention in the Opportunity drama contest. Her play "Plumes" also won in the same competition in 1927. Johnson was one of the only women whose work was published in Alain Locke's anthology Plays of Negro Life: A Source-Book of Native American Drama. Johnson's typescripts for ten of her plays are in collections in academic institutions.

(There is much more about her activism and work in the full wiki)

~~~

This is another female voice to add to the history of Black people in America. I find it interesting that Miss Johnson used a male pen name to bet her plays published. I have considered using a pen name sometimes just to see if it would change what people think of the words they are reading.I haven't gone through with that notion though.

Sketchbook Saturday

I am 90% sure that this pencil sketch from 1989 was drawn from a magazine picture. It was either an ad or from a fashion spread.  I'm not sure which but it was definitely from a photo.

Black History Month 2015 - The Harlem Renaissance - Angelina Weld Grimké (writer)

Angelina Weld Grimké (image source: wikimedia)

Today's writer is listed in the list in the wiki on the Harlem Renaissance even though she is considered a predecessor to the era. Since she is listed in the wiki, I will include her in this series.

~~~

From Wikipedia:

Angelina Weld Grimké (February 27, 1880 – June 10, 1958) was an African-American journalist, teacher, playwright and poet who was part of the Harlem Renaissance; she was one of the first African-American women to have a play publicly performed.

Grimké wrote essays, short stories and poems which were published in The Crisis, the newspaper of the NAACP, edited by W.E.B. Du Bois; and Opportunity. They were also collected in anthologies of the Harlem Renaissance: The New Negro, Caroling Dusk, and Negro Poets and Their Poems. Her more well-known poems include "The Eyes of My Regret", "At April", "Trees" and "The Closing Door". While living in Washington, DC, she was included among the figures of the Harlem Renaissance, as her work was published in its journals and she became connected to figures in its circle. Some critics place her in the period before the Renaissance. During that time, she counted the poet Georgia Douglas Johnson as one of her friends.

Grimké wrote Rachel – originally titled Blessed Are the Barren – one of the first plays to protest lynching and racial violence. The three-act drama was written for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which called for new works to rally public opinion against D. W. Griffith's recently released film, The Birth of a Nation (1915), which glorified the Ku Klux Klan and portrayed a racist view of blacks and of their role in the American Civil War and Reconstruction in the South. Produced in 1916 in Washington, D.C., and subsequently in New York City, Rachel was performed by an all-black cast. Reaction to the play was good. The NAACP said of the play: "This is the first attempt to use the stage for race propaganda in order to enlighten the American people relating to the lamentable condition of ten millions of Colored citizens in this free republic."

Rachel portrays the life of an African-American family in the North in the early 20th century. Centered on the family of the title character, each role expresses different responses to the racial discrimination against blacks at the time. The themes of motherhood and the innocence of children are integral aspects of Grimké's work. Rachel develops as she changes her perceptions of what the role of a mother might be, based on her sense of the importance of a naivete towards the terrible truths of the world around her. A lynching is the spectrum of the play; it authenticates the African-American experience.

The play was published in 1920, but received little attention after its initial productions. In the years since, however, its significance has been recognized as a precursor to the Harlem Renaissance, and one of the first examples of a political and cultural trend to explore the African roots of African Americans

~~~

I decided to include Angelina Weld Grimké in the series mostly because as a woman I need to see women's voices represented. In the wiki there were very few female names so I took what I could get.

Black History Month 2015 - The Harlem Renaissance - Augusta Savage

Augusta Savage (image source: wikimedia)

I decided to finish off the month with a few more women of the Harlem Renaissance. Today we'll look at sculptor Augusta Savage.

~~~

From Wikipedia:

Augusta Savage, born Augusta Christine Fells (February 29, 1892 – March 27, 1962) was an African-American sculptor associated with the Harlem Renaissance. She was also a teacher and her studio was important to the careers of a rising generation of artists who would become nationally known. She worked for equal rights for African Americans in the arts.

Augusta Fells (Savage) was born in Green Cove Springs (near Jacksonville), Florida. She began making clay figures as a child, mostly small animals, but her father would beat her when he found her sculptures. This was because at that time, he believed her sculpture to be a sinful practice, based upon his interpretation of the "graven images" portion of the Bible. After the family moved to West Palm Beach, she sculpted a Virgin Mary figure, and, upon seeing it, her father changed his mind, regretting his past actions. The principal of her new school recognized and encouraged her talent, and paid her one dollar a day to teach modeling during her senior year. This began a lifelong commitment to teaching as well as to art.

In 1907, Augusta Fells married John T. Moore. Her only child, Irene Connie Moore, was born the next year. John died shortly after. Augusta moved back in with her parents, who raised Irene with her. Augusta Fells Moore continued to model clay, and applied for a booth at the Palm Beach county fair: the initially apprehensive fair officials ended up awarding her a $25 prize, and the sales of her art totaled 175 dollars; a significant sum at that time and place.

That success encouraged her to apply to Cooper Union (Art School) in New York City, where she was admitted in October, 1921. During this time she married James Savage; they divorced after a few months, but she kept the name of Savage. She excelled in her art classes at Cooper, and was accelerated through foundation classes. Her talent and ability so impressed the staff and faculty at Cooper, that she was awarded funds for room and board, tuition being already covered for all Cooper students.

In 1923 Savage applied for a summer art program sponsored by the French government; despite being more than qualified, she was turned down by the international judging committee, solely because she was black (Bearden & Henderson, AHOAAA, p. 169-170). Savage was deeply upset, and questioned the committee, beginning the first of many public fights for equal rights in her life. The incident got press coverage on both sides of the Atlantic, and eventually the sole supportive committee member, sculptor Hermon Atkins MacNeil—who at one time had shared a studio with Henry Ossawa Tanner—invited her to study with him. She later cited him as one of her teachers. After completing studies at Cooper Union, Savage worked in Manhattan steam laundries to support herself and her family. Her father had been paralyzed by a stroke, and the family's home destroyed by a hurricane. Her family from Florida moved into her small West 137th Street apartment. During this time she obtained her first commission, for a bust of W. E. B. Du Bois for the Harlem Library. Her outstanding sculpture brought more commissions, including one for a bust of Marcus Garvey.

In 1923 Savage married Robert Lincoln Poston, a protégé of Garvey. Poston died of pneumonia aboard a ship while returning from Liberia as part of a Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League delegation in 1924.

In 1925 Savage won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Rome; the scholarship covered only tuition, however, and she was not able to raise money for travel and living expenses. Thus she was unable to attend.

Knowledge of Savage's talent and struggles became widespread in the African-American community; fund-raising parties were held in Harlem and Greenwich Village, and African-American women's groups and teachers from Florida A&M all sent her money for studies abroad. In 1929, with assistance as well from the Julius Rosenwald Fund, Savage enrolled and attended the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, a leading Paris art school. In Paris, she studied with the sculptor Charles Despiau. She exhibited and won awards in two Salons and one Exposition. She toured France, Belgium, and Germany, researching sculpture in cathedrals and museums.

(There is more in the wiki about her later works.)

~~~

As a visual artist I definitely found the story of a fellow female Black artist interesting. It somewhat makes me wish I was more serious about my own art.. We can't all be figures of Black History on a national or world wide level, but maybe I could do something on a smaller scale.

Black History Month 2015 - The Harlem Renaissance - Leslie Garland Bolling

Leslie Garland Bolling 

Today our Harlem Renaissance figure is Leslie Garland Bolling.

~~~

From WIkipedia:

The sculptor Leslie Garland Bolling (September 16, 1898 – September 27, 1955) was born in Surry County, Virginia, United States on September 16, 1898, the son of Clinton C. Bolling, a blacksmith, and his wife Mary. His carvings reflected everyday themes and shared values of the Black culture in the segregated South in the early 20th century. Bolling was associated with the Harlem Renaissance and is notable as one of a few African-Americans whose sculpture had lasting acclaim.

"Cousin on Friday"

Bolling said he grew up near lumbering operations and was always around trees. Reportedly he enjoyed whittling which would have provided him significant experience with carving various kinds of wood. His carving seems to have been an enjoyable and somewhat profitable hobby, but he viewed himself as a porter or messenger by occupation.

His hobby seems to have taken a serious turn about the time he produced some early figures for a group exhibition sponsored by the YWCA.] About 1928 these first figures attracted the interest of Carl Van Vetchen, a patron of the Harlem Renaissance movement. He began teaching wood carving to black youth in Richmond about 1931. He taught at the Craig House Art Center in Richmond until 1941. By 1938 Bolling and others had obtained WPA sponsorship for the Craig House. It was the only WPA sponsored art center in the segregated South for black youth.

His work began to achieve broader recognition as a result of the National Negro Exhibition of 1933 at the Smithsonian. Bolling participated in a number of art tours between 1934 and 1940, managed by the Harmon Foundation to showcase the artistic work of African-Americans.

Reflecting the growing significance of his sculpture, in January 1935, Bolling was honored when the then segregated Academy of Arts in Richmond, now the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts produced a one-man show of his carvings. This was followed by a show at the New Jersey state museum. Thomas Hart Benton was interested in his work and visited the extended show.

(images from wikimedia)

~~~

I really wish that I had studied more Black artists before now. I really enjoyed learning about a simple man who had a hobby that he turned into viable art.

Black History Month 2015 - The Harlem Renaissance - Billy Pierce

Only a few more days are left in February!  Today's figure from the Harlem Renaissance is Billy Pierce. I couldn't find an actual picture of him so I had to settle for the cover of the sheet music above.

~~~

From Wikipedia:

Billy Pierce (14 June 1890 – 11 April 1933) was an African American choreographer, dancer and dance studio owner who has been credited with the invention of the Black Bottom dance that became a national craze in the mid-1920s.

The Billy Pierce Dance Studio flourished and became one of the incubators for the cultural flowering know to posterity as the Harlem Renaissance. By 1929, Pierce's studio—the "largest of its kind" according to the Afro American newspaper—occupied five rooms in the bottom two floors of the building, for which Pierce paid annually $6,000 in rent (equivalent to approximately $82,407 in 2015 dollars

Pierce ran the studio and coached Broadway stars, but did not serve as an instructor for the 27 classes that were given to students in 1929. The Pierce Dance Studio was the professional home of his fellow African American choreographer Buddy Bradley, who devised dance routines for the eccentric dancer Tom Pericola, a white man. Pericola performed the Black Bottom with the Ann Pennington in the musical-comedy revue George White's Scandals of 1926 on Broadway, whereupon it became popular eventually supplanting Charleston on dance floors across America.

Along with the Black Bottom and the Charleston, among the specialities of the Billy Pierce Dance Studio were the Black Bottom with Taps, the Eccentric Buck and the Syncopated Buck, the Devil Dance, the Dirty Dig, the Flapper Stomp, the Harlem Hips, the Jungle Stomp, the Stair Dance, and the Zulu Stomp.

In the United States, African American choreographers like Pierce and Bradley generally worked uncredited. They also coached and developed routines for white performers, such as Bradley had coached Pericola. Before he became an Oscar-winning character actor, Clifton Webb was a song and dance man on Broadway, appearing in many musicals. He honed his dancing skills at Pierce's studio. Pierce developed the "Moaning Low" dance routine for "Cliff" Webb, as he was then known, and Libby Holman for The Little Show in 1931.

Along with Benny Rubin, Pierce did the choreography for the 1927 musical Half a Widow, one of the few Broadway shows for which he received credit. He also created "The Sugar Foot Strut" dance for the smash hit musical Rio Rita (1927) and developed a show-stopping routine for[Norma Terris, who played Magnolia in the original 1927 production of Show Boat and its 1932 revival. He also got credit for choreographing the dances in the 1932 musical revue Walk a Little Faster.

In 1930, he spent eleven months in Europe, working with directors such as Max Rheinhardt.

~~~

Since Billy Pierce was mainly behind the scenes and only known to people truly into the dance of the era, I had not heard of him before. I hadn't heard of the Black Bottom dance either.  I wish there was pictures or film of Billy Pierce himself.

Black History Month 2015 - The Harlem Renaissance - Leonard Harper

Leonard Harper and the Harperettes 

image source: http://blackamericaweb.com/2014/02/18/little-known-black-history-fact-leonard-harper-and-the-harperettes/

To continue the series on the Harlem Renaissance, today we will look at the producer Leonard Harper.

~~~

From Wikipedia:

Leonard Harper was a producer/stager/choreographer in New York City during the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s and 1930s born on April 9, 1899 in Birmingham, Alabama

Leonard Harper's works spanned the worlds of Vaudeville, Cabaret, Burlesque and Broadway musical comedy. As a dancer, choreographer and studio owner, he coached many of the country’s leading performers, including Ruby Keller, Fred Astaire and Adele Astaire, and the Marx Brothers.

His father, William Harper, was a performer. Leonard Harper started dancing as a child to attract a crowd on a medicine show wagon, traveling with the show throughout the South. In 1915, Harper first came to New York City, but quickly moved to Chicago and began choreographing and performing dance acts with Osceola Blanks of the Blanks Sisters, whom he married in 1923.

Leonard Harper and Osceola Blanks performed in his first big revue, Plantation Days when it opening at the Lafayette Theatre in Harlem in 1922-1923, and began producing floor shows in Harlem and New York thereafter.

In 1923-1924, Leonard offered the Duke Ellington orchestra the house band position at the speakeasies, Connie’s Inn in Harlem and the Kentucky Club in Times Square, where we has producing shows, and the Duke Ellington orchestra played as the house band at the Kentucky Club for the next for years.

By 1925, Leonard owned a Times Square dance studio where black dancers taught white performers black dances.

As a nightclub and Broadway producer, he counted Billie Holiday, Ethel Waters, Duke Ellington, Bill Robinson and Count Basie among his colleagues. He introduced Louis Armstrong and Cab Calloway to New York show business, and worked with Mae West, Josephine Baker, Lena Horne, Fats Waller and Eubie Blake.

Leonard Harper was part of the transition team when the Deluxe Cabaret was turned into the Cotton Club, producing two of its first revues during its opening.

Leonard Harper’s biggest milestone on the Great White Way was his staging of the Broadway hit “Hot Chocolates”, which made the songs “Black and Blue” and “Ain’t Misbehavin” classic Broadway show tunes.

Mr. Harper was one of the leading figures who transformed Harlem into a cultural center during the 1920s. His nightclub productions took place at Connie’s Inn, the Lafayette Theatre (Harlem) at the opening of the new Apollo Theatre, and at other theaters in New York.

Leonard Harper died in Harlem, NY, on Thursday February 4th, 1943.

Black History Month 2015 - The Harlem Renaissance - The Nicholas Brothers

To continue with the dancers of the era of the Harlem Renaissance, today we will look at the Nicholas brothers.

~~~

from Wikipedia

The Nicholas Brothers were an African-American team of dancing brothers, Fayard (1914–2006) and Harold (1921–2000), who performed a highly acrobatic technique known as "flash dancing". With a high level of artistry and daring innovations, they were considered by many to be the greatest tap dancers of their day.

Growing up surrounded by vaudeville acts as children, they became stars of the jazz circuit during the heyday of the Harlem Renaissance and went on to have successful careers performing on stage, film, and television well into the 1990s.

~~~

The first glimpse of the Nicholas brothers I ever had (since I have not watched many classic Black movies) was a link someone posted a few months back (see link below). They were EXTREME in their way of moving across the screen.  I would imagine to see them on stage would have been intense!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DF3KOLS9qLg

Black History Month 2015 - The Harlem Renaissance - Bill "Bojangles" Robinson

Bill "Bojangles" Robinson (May 25, 1878 – November 25, 1949)

Although Bojangles' time in Harlem was brief and seems to only be in the context of stops on his tours, he is included by the wiki author as part of the Harlem Renaissance. I have included him in this series for that reason and because he is a well known performer of the time frame.

~~~

From Wikipedia:

Bill "Bojangles" Robinson (May 25, 1878 – November 25, 1949) was an American tap dancer and actor, the best known and most highly paid African American entertainer in the first half of the twentieth century. His long career mirrored changes in American entertainment tastes and technology, starting in the age of minstrel shows, moving to vaudeville, Broadway, the recording industry, Hollywood radio, and television. According to dance critic Marshall Stearns, “Robinson's contribution to tap dance is exact and specific. He brought it up on its toes, dancing upright and swinging,” giving tap a “…hitherto-unknown lightness and presence.”[1]:pp. 186–187 His signature routine was the stair dance, in which Robinson would tap up and down a set of stairs in a rhythmically complex sequence of steps, a routine that he unsuccessfully attempted to patent. Robinson is also credited with having introduced a new word, copacetic, into popular culture, via his repeated use of it in vaudeville and radio appearances.

A popular figure in both the black and white entertainment worlds of his era, he is best known today for his dancing with Shirley Temple in a series of films during the 1930s, and for starring in the musical Stormy Weather (1943), loosely based on Robinson's own life, and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. Robinson used his popularity to challenge and overcome numerous racial barriers, including becoming the following:

one of the first minstrel and vaudeville performers to appear without the use of blackface makeup
one of the earliest African American performers to go solo, overcoming vaudeville's two colored rule
a headliner in the first African-American Broadway show, Blackbirds of 1928
the first African American to appear in a Hollywood film in an interracial dance team (with Temple in The Little Colonel)
the first African American to headline a mixed-race Broadway production
During his lifetime and afterwards, Robinson also came under heavy criticism for his participation in and tacit acceptance of racial stereotypes of the era, with critics calling him an Uncle Tom figure. Robinson resented such criticism, and his biographers suggested that critics were at best incomplete in making such a characterization, especially given his efforts to overcome the racial prejudice of his era. In his public life Robinson led efforts to:

persuade the Dallas police department to hire its first African American policemen
lobby President Roosevelt during World War II for more equitable treatment of African American soldiers
stage the first integrated public event in Miami, a fundraiser which, with the permission of the mayor, was attended by both black and white city residents
Despite being the highest-paid black performer of the era, Robinson died penniless in 1949, and his funeral was paid for by longtime friend Ed Sullivan. Robinson is remembered for the support he gave to fellow performers, including Fred Astaire, Lena Horne, Jesse Owens, and the Nicholas brothers. Both Sammy Davis, Jr. and Ann Miller credit him as a teacher and mentor, and Miller credits him with having “changed the course of my life.” Gregory Hines produced and starred in a biographical movie about Robinson for which he won the NAACP Best actor Award. In 1989, the U.S. Congress designated May 25, Robinson's birthday, as National Tap Dance Day.

~~~

The interesting thing is that the above is just the intro to the wiki!  I haven't really watched the full repertoire of Bojangles but my passing awareness of him was as a minstrel performer along the lines of Steppin Fetchit bur with more style (his tap routine in Shirley Temple movies for example). From what little I have read of him, I think the folks in Harlem probably regarded him in much the same way. In spite of that it is notable that he did break a lot of barriers in the entertainment industry as a Black man in the time when he was "colored" or "negro" at best. In a sense, he paved the way for the artists of the jazz movement that the Harlem Renaissance is most known for.  He may have played "safe" roles for his skin tone, but what actor even today doesn't? Plus he did the roles with a dignity that Steppin did not (in my opinion).

Sketchbook Saturday

I don't remember if I drew this back in 1989 from a magazine photo or from my imagination or a combination of both.  I do know that I was always trying to push myself and try to draw things I found difficult. I still find doing a whole person difficult.  I think I did a decent job here.

Black History Month 2015 - The Harlem Renaissance - Buddy Bradley

Buddy Bradley 

(image source: http://bohemiajam.weebly.com/ )

I had been going down the list of "Leading Intellectuals" of the Harlem Renaissance in the Wikipedia article, but the rest of the people listed are poets and I think I will save that for April and National Poetry Month. So I am going to go back to where I left off when I started the posts on notable persons with Josephine Baker. I'll be going back to the dancers, choreographers, and other entertainers and doing choreographer Buddy Bradley today.

The Wikipedia article for Buddy Bradley is not very good so I searched for other information and found the following items:
http://buddybradley.taplegacy.org/biography/
http://www.vam.ac.uk/users/node/9091 (from the UK)
http://www.streetswing.com/histmai2/d2budbrd1.htm

The abridged version is that Buddy was born aproximately 1908 and moved to the state of New York due to the death of his mother when he was a teen. When he was of age, he moved to New York City and that was where he came into the dance industry even though he was self taught and not trained in any school. Because of his color, he was never given credit for the moves he created and taught to white dancers in shows so he relocated to Great Britain and there he found the credit and open respect he deserved.

I like what the UK link said in the short paragraph:
Great dance teachers are rarer than great performers but are often unknown outside the dance world. British dance's debt to teacher and choreographer Buddy Bradley is huge. He brought American attack and professionalism to English dance in 1930s musicals. The list of stars who worked with him, either training or working out their routines, is breathtaking. In England they included [Jack Buchanan] Jessie Matthews, Anna Neagle, Jack Hulbert, and Elsie Randolph and in America, Fred Astaire and Eleanor Powell. This rare article [shown in the link] gives an insight into his teaching and an idea of the respect in which he was held within the profession.
Sadly, the image in the link when enlarged is too small to read the article it mentions.

Black History Month 2015 - The Harlem Renaissance - Nella Larsen

Nella Larsen (image source: wikimedia)

The next "leading intellectual" we will look at from the Harlem Renaissance is another female writer Nella Larsen.

~~~

From WIkipedia:

Nellallitea "Nella" Larsen, born Nellie Walker (April 13, 1891 – March 30, 1964), was an American novelist of the Harlem Renaissance. First working as a nurse and a librarian, she published two novels—Quicksand (1928) and Passing (1929)—and a few short stories. Though her literary output was scant, she earned recognition by her contemporaries. A revival of interest in her writing has occurred since the late twentieth century, when issues of racial and sexual identity and identification have been studied.

Nella Larsen was born Nellie Walker in Chicago on April 13, 1891, the daughter of Peter Walker, an Afro-Caribbean immigrant from the Danish West Indies and Marie Walker, née Hansen, a Danish immigrant. Her mother was a seamstress and domestic worker. Her father soon disappeared from her life, and her mother married Peter Larsen, a fellow Danish immigrant, by whom she had another daughter. Nellie took her stepfather's surname, sometimes using versions spelled as Nellye Larson, Nellie Larsen and, finally, settling on Nella Larsen. The mixed family encountered discrimination among the ethnic white immigrants in Chicago of the time.

In 1921 Larsen worked nights and weekends as a volunteer with Ernestine Rose, to help prepare for the first exhibit of "Negro art" at the New York Public Library (NYPL). Encouraged by Rose, she became the first black woman to graduate from the NYPL Library School, which was run by Columbia University.

Larsen passed her certification exam in 1923 and spent her first year working at the Seward Park Branch on the Lower East Side, where she had strong support from her white supervisor Alice Keats O'Connor, as she had from Rose. They, and another branch supervisor where she worked, supported Larsen and helped integrate the staff of the branches. She next transferred to the Harlem branch, as she was interested in the cultural excitement in the neighborhood.

In October 1925, Larsen took a sabbatical from her job for health reasons and began to write her first novel. In 1926, having made friends with important figures in the Negro Awakening (which became the Harlem Renaissance), Larsen gave up her work as a librarian.

She became a writer active in Harlem's interracial literary and arts community, where she became friends with Carl Van Vechten, a white photographer and writer. In 1928, Larsen published Quicksand, a largely autobiographical novel, which received significant critical acclaim, if not great financial success.

In 1929, she published Passing her second novel, which was also critically successful. It dealt with issues related to two mixed-race women who were friends and had taken different paths of racial identification and marriage. One married a man who identified as black, and the other a white man. The book explored their experiences of coming together again as adults.

In 1930, Larsen published "Sanctuary", a short story for which she was accused of plagiarism. "Sanctuary" was said to resemble Sheila Kaye-Smith’s short story, "Mrs. Adis", first published in the United Kingdom in 1919. Kaye-Smith wrote on rural themes, and was very popular in the US. Some critics thought the basic plot of "Sanctuary," and some of the descriptions and dialogue, were virtually identical to her work.

The scholar H. Pearce has taken issue with this assessment, writing that, compared to Kaye-Smith’s tale, "Sanctuary" is '... longer, better written and more explicitly political, specifically around issues of race - rather than class as in "Mrs Adis".  Pearce thinks that Larsen reworked and updated the tale into a modern American black context. Pearce also notes that in her 1956 book, All the Books of My Life, Kaye-Smith said she had based "Mrs Adis" on an old story by St Francis de Sales. It is unknown whether she knew of the Larsen controversy.

No plagiarism charges were proved. Larsen received a Guggenheim Fellowship in the aftermath of the criticism. She used it to travel to Europe for several years, spending time in Mallorca and Paris, where she worked on a novel about a love triangle, in which all the protagonists were white. She never published the book or any other works.

Larsen returned to New York in 1933, when her divorce had been completed. She lived on alimony until her ex-husband's death in 1942. Struggling with depression, Larsen was not writing (and never would again). After her ex-husband's death, Larsen returned to nursing. She disappeared from literary circles. She lived on the Lower East Side, and did not venture to Harlem.

Many of her old acquaintances speculated that she, like some of the characters in her fiction, had crossed the color line to "pass" into the white community. The biographer George Hutchinson has demonstrated in his 2006 work that she remained in New York, working as a nurse. She avoided contact with her earlier friends and world.

Larsen died in her Brooklyn apartment in 1964, at the age of 72.

~~~

I had not heard of Nella Larsen before embarking on this Black History Month examination of the Harlem Renaissance. I guess I have a LOT of reading to look forward to when I get a break in my homework from school!

Black History Month 2015 - The Harlem Renaissance - Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neale Hurston (image source: wikimedia)

I've been doing the names mostly in order that they appear in the Harlem Renaissance wiki and it took until now to get to a female voice of the era.

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From Wikipedia:

Zora Neale Hurston (January 7, 1891 – January 28, 1960) was an American folklorist, anthropologist, and author. Of Hurston's four novels and more than 50 published short stories, plays, and essays, she is best known for her 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God.

In addition to new editions of her work being published after a revival of interest in her in 1975, her manuscript Every Tongue Got to Confess (2001), a collection of folktales gathered in the 1920s, was published posthumously after being discovered in the Smithsonian archives.

(The wiki is very extensive so I am only putting the intro here. I suggest reading it in full to get all the information and history on this amazing woman.)

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I had heard the name Zora Neale Hurston, but I haven't really explored her works. There is so much to her that I didn't want to paste the whole wiki here.  I guess I now have some homework to find some of her work and read it!