The Harlem Renaissance: Illustrated Short Answer Exercises

Most of the following questions begin with a short thematic introduction, and all include at least one image. Please note that some questions ask you to read a primary or secondary text that is not included in your anthology.

Political Drawings in The Messenger

The “economics and politics” drawing appeared as a banner over a number of articles written by The Messenger's founding editor, A. Philip Randolph. Randolph was a civil rights and labor leader committed to socialism and trade unionism. He believed that since most African Americans in his time belonged to the working class, the only way they could improve their civil and political rights was by first improving their economic situation through unionism and worker solidarity. The drawing represents his view that American workers should overcome their racial divisions and recognize their common class interests.

1. How would you describe the two classes depicted in the “economics and politics” drawing? What political or economic interests unite the members of each class? Do you agree or disagree with this portrait of America ? Why? The second drawing appeared in the November 1919 issue of The Messenger. It represents "Negro Labor," "White Labor," and "Capital" as dogs fighting over a ham labeled "Profits." In the lower left corner an "agitator dog" says, "Drop that bone and get the ham. You are just working dogs!"

2. The only unlabeled item in this drawing is the bone. What do you think this represents, and why do you think the two "labor dogs" are fighting over it instead of the ham? What is the overall message of this drawing in less metaphorical terms? The Messenger carried a number of appeals for racial solidarity as a first step toward effective labor unionism. This advertisement for "The National Association for the Promotion of Labor Unionism Among Negroes," from the February 1922 issue, is one example. The explicit argument of such appeals was that the owners of the means of production ("capitalist exploiters") would profit in some way if they could encourage racial animosities among workers.

3. How would owners benefit from the perpetuation of racial strife among workers? Do you find this a convincing argument? Is it as applicable to today's economic and racial climate as it might have been to that of the 1920s?

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"I, Too, Sing America"

To call attention to the failure of American democracy to fulfill its promise of equal treatment under the law, some black writers and artists juxtapose the country's national symbols and patriotic rhetoric with images of discrimination, bigotry, and racial violence. W. B. Williams’s drawing is an ironic commentary on the unjust treatment of African Americans: flames in the shape of an American flag burn the body of a lynching victim with the first lines of our national anthem ("Oh say can you see/ By the dawn's early light") just visible in the foreground. This form of irony is part of a tradition that goes back at least as far as the abolitionist movement. Frederick Douglass, for example, employed a similar trope to great effect when, during his "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" speech, he asked his audience, "What have I, or those I represent, to do with your National Independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us?" Similarly, in her public speeches, Sojourner Truth often compared her experiences as a woman and as a one-time slave, to the nineteenth-century claim that America reveres its women and places them on a "pedestal."

1. Use two or three elements of this drawing to explain what specific promises of American democracy remain unfulfilled for African Americans, according to the artist. What exactly is "ironic" in the author's use of these elements? To conclude your response, consider whether this drawing is as politically relevant today as it might have been in 1919.

2. Look more closely at the speeches by Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth, and write about how one or both of these writers use irony to make the intended political statement. Be sure to consider the specific rhetorical context of the speech(es): what is the speaker's purpose, and whom is he or she addressing? Do these speakers reject America's promise of freedom and equality for all, or claim these as their own natural right? Quote at least once from the texts you consider.

3. Many of the writers of the Harlem Renaissance returned to this tradition of irony in the poems they wrote about life in Harlem in the 1920s and 1930s. Write about how Claude McKay's "America," Langston Hughes's "I, Too," or any other text of the Harlem Renaissance uses irony to convey the message of the incompleteness of the American dream.

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Plantation Labor

This photograph depicts the rigid economic divisions that existed between landowners and agricultural workers in the 1930s South. In many rural areas, large tracts of land were owned by a single person, such as the white landowner in the photograph, and then leased to tenants at a specific cash amount or at a "share" of the land's eventual harvest. Under the latter arrangement, "sharecroppers" were also furnished with food and supplies from a store owned by the landowner; when accounts were reckoned at year's end, sharecroppers often found themselves in debt to the landowner, requiring at least another year of agricultural labor. In this manner, many farm workers were caught within a system of labor that was very difficult to escape.

1. Many people see connections between sharecropping and the labor relations that existed under slavery. Identify some of the similarities and differences between the two systems of labor.

2. Many Harlem Renaissance writers wrote stories about how twentieth-century plantation labor reproduced some of the inequalities between blacks and whites that existed under slavery. Read "Blood-Burning Moon," part of Jean Toomer's Cane, and write about how the story of Louisa, Tom, and Bob might reflect upon the conditions that determined relationships (between men and women, blacks and whites) under slavery. What do you think Toomer meant by drawing upon these parallels?

3. The photograph depicts inequalities between landowners and black workers in the 1930s. In many ways these inequalities stem from the system of slavery. Read "Of the Coming of John" from Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk, or "A Summer Tragedy" by Arna Bontemps, or any other text that seems relevant, and write a paragraph about how the author seeks to tie inequalities of the twentieth century to those of the antebellum South.

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