The Black Chicago Renaissance

Front Cover
Darlene Clark Hine, John McCluskey
University of Illinois Press, Jun 25, 2012 - History - 208 pages
"The "New Negro" consciousness with its roots in the generation born in the last and opening decades of the 19th and 20th centuries replenished and nurtured by migration, resulted in the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s then reemerged transformed in the 1930s as the Black Chicago Renaissance. The authors in this volume argue that beginning in the 1930s and lasting into the 1950s, Black Chicago experienced a cultural renaissance that rivaled the cultural outpouring in Harlem. The Black Chicago Renaissance, however, has not received its full due. This book addresses that neglect. Like Harlem, Chicago had become a major destination for black southern migrants. Unlike Harlem, it was also an urban industrial center that gave a unique working class and internationalist perspective to the cultural work that took place here. The contributors to Black Chicago Renaissance analyze a prolific period of African American creativity in music, performance art, social science scholarship, and visual and literary artistic expression. Each author discusses forces that distinguished and link the Black Chicago Renaissance to the Harlem Renaissance as well as placing the development of black culture in a national and international context by probing the histories of multiple (sequential and overlapping--Philadelphia, Cleveland, Detroit, Los Angeles, Memphis) black renaissances. Among the topics discussed in this volume are Chicago writers Gwendolyn Brooks and Richard Wright, The Chicago Defender and Tivoli Theater, African American music and visual arts, as well as the American Negro Exposition of 1940"--
 

Contents

Culture Consciousness Politics and Place
77
Part III Visual Art and Artists in the Black Chicago Renaissance
165
Notes on Contributors
197

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (2012)

Darlene Clark Hine was born in Morley, Missouri on February 7, 1947. She received a BA from Roosevelt University in 1968 and a MA and PhD from Kent State University in 1970 and 1975, respectively. She is considered a leading historian of the African American experience who helped found the field of black women's history. She has taught at South Carolina State College, Purdue University, and Michigan State University. She has written numerous books including Black Victory: The Rise and Fall of the White Primary in Texas; When the Truth Is Told: Black Women's Community and Culture in Indiana, 1875-1950; Black Women in White: Racial Conflict and Cooperation in the Nursing Profession, 1890-1950; and Speak Truth to Power: The Black Professional Class in United States History.