The Chicago Black Renaissance

Brian Sanz

Objectives for Class

• Discuss different aspects of the Chicago Renaissance such as:

• Literature• Dance• Music• Art• Media• Explain the popular enthusiasts of these sub

sections and their accomplishments.

Media

• Newspapers and magazines, such as the Chicago Defender, Chicago Sunday Bee, Negro Story Magazine, and Negro Digest, also played an important role spread of literature during the Renaissance.

• These publications showcased work by established authors, provided jobs for writers as journalists, and encouraged emerging writers by printing their work.

• Without these publishers many parts of the Renaissance would have gone un-noticed

Literature

• The spirit of the city, conflict between the races, and questions of identity inspired many artists.

• Popular authors consisted of Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Arna Bontemps, Margaret Walker, and Gwendolyn Brooks.

• These influential authors pushed the renaissance forward.

Richard Wright

• In 1936, Wright founded the South Side Writers Group.

• Membership included Bontemps and Walker, who provided inspiration and encouragement to budding writers and space to experiment with new themes and subjects.

• The publication in 1940 of Native Son catapulted Wright into national prominence.

Dance• Dance halls and social clubs became important for black

Chicagoans who sought release and pleasure after working in stockyards, factories, and steel mills.

• At the other end of the spectrum, Katherine Dunham organized Ballets Negros and in 1931 presented one of her compositions, “Negro Rhapsody,” at the Beaux Arts Ball in Chicago.

• In 1945, she founded the Katherine Dunham School of Arts and Research.

• Dunham's race consciousness and appreciation of black aesthetics emerged in her choreography and her ethnographic studies of West Indian dance.

Art• Visual art also played a large role in the renaissance• William Eduard Scott, Charles White, and Archibald John

Motley, Jr. all received training at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and captured the dynamic spirit of black Chicago.

• Scott painted impressionist landscapes, portraits, and murals, including the murals depicting black achievement on the walls of the Tanner Art Gallery in the Chicago Coliseum when it was the site of the American Negro Exposition in 1940.

• White worked with the mural division of the Illinois Federal Art Project and became a prominent graphic artist.

Art cont.

• Motley's early works provoked controversy with his depictions of jazz culture and celebration of black sensuality.

• His paintings, joyous celebrations of the vitality of urban black life, provide vivid images of black social activities in the 1920s and 1930s.

• Cortor was among the first African American artists to take the beauty of black women as his major theme. In 1946, Life Magazine published one of his full-length seminude.

Music

• The Renaissance witnessed the emergence of jazz, the evolution of gospel music, and the rise of urban blues.

• In 1922 King Oliver invited trumpeter Louis Armstrong to join his Creole Jazz Band in Chicago.

• Armstrong quickly passed Oliver, demonstrating an impressive skill as an improvising soloist.

Louis Armstrong

• Armstrong was an amazing trumpeter and jazz musician.• He was a foundational influence on jazz music• He was also a singer and was famous for his deep raspy

voice.• He would vocalize sounds as opposed to lyrics, known as

“scat singing”• Once in Chicago, he became wildly popular with the

locals.• He remained in Chicago for the next 3 decades where his

radio recordings and tracks dominated Chicago jazz.

Music cont.

• Thomas Dorsey, known as the “Father of Gospel Music,” wrote over four hundred songs that revitalized black religious music.

• A distinctly urban music, gospel featured pianos, tambourines, drums, cymbals, and steel tambourines.

• Contralto Mahalia Jackson was most responsible for the acceptance and widespread popularity of gospel music.

• She arrived in Chicago in 1927 and by 1945 was selling millions of records featuring Dorsey's compositions, including “Take My Hand, Precious Lord.”

Thomas Dorsey

• Dorsey was the son of a Baptist preacher; his mother was the church organist.

• At eleven, he left school to take a job at a local vaudeville theater.

• Six years later, Dorsey left Atlanta for Chicago. He was part of the Great Migration north.

• In Chicago, Dorsey found success almost immediately. He was known as the “whispering piano player,” called to perform at after-hours parties where the pianist had to play quietly enough to avoid drawing police attention.

Thomas Dorsey cont.• Dorsey committed himself to composing sacred music, but

mainstream churches rejected his songs.• Then, in August 1932, Dorsey’s life was thrown into crisis when his

wife and son died during childbirth.• In his grief, he turned to the piano for comfort. The tune he wrote,

“Take My Hand, Precious Lord,” came, he says, direct from God.• Dorsey co-founded the National Convention of Gospel Choirs and

Choruses in 1933.• Six years later, he teamed with Mahalia Jackson, and the team

ushered in what was known as the “Golden Age of Gospel Music.” Dorsey soon after this became known as the father of gospel music.

• He died in 1993.

Conclusion

• The Chicago Renaissance was a very important time in American history

• The achievements made set the stage for the rest of the country to develop artistically and show the true capability of the African American population.

• This time in history played a large role in the upcoming campaign for civil rights, showing that blacks were just as educated, creative, and talented as the whites across the country.

END