Equally important, as George Hutchinson
points out in The Harlem Renaissance in Black
and White, were the “interracial dynamics” (15)
of this racial renaissance, particularly the support
and patronage provided by white philanthropists
and “interlopers,” specifically CARL VAN VECHTEN
and Charlotte Osgood Mason. Despite criticism
from black scholars like Nathan Huggins, who ar-
gues that, under the influence of these interlopers,
renaissance writers emphasized black exoticism,
and Chidi Ikonné, who concludes that whites,
particularly Van Vechten, author of the best seller
NIGGER HEAVEN, were a corrupting influence on
this movement, Hutchinson maintains, “there
were many different white positions (as well as
black positions) on African American literature,
and these positions tended to correlate with po-
sitions on the nature of American culture and
the meaning of culture in the modern age” (20).
White participation played a critical role in open-
ing the doors of mainstream publishers, including
Knopf, Macmillan, and Harcourt, Brace, to Afri-
can-American writers, including Hughes, McKay,
Cullen, and Toomer.
Various scholars consider the beginning of the
Harlem Renaissance to be 1903, the date of the
publication of DuBois’s Souls of Black Folk; 1910,
the date associated with the formation of the
NAACP; and 1916, the beginning of World War
I; similarly, whereas some scholars consider the
end of the renaissance to be 1929, at the start of
the Great Depression, others place it in 1940, the
date associated with Richard Wright’s emergence
as a major American writer following the publica-
tion of his naturalistic novel, Native Son (1940).
Regardless of the exact time line, during the first
quarter of the 20th century, African-American
culture was ebulliently celebrated from one end
of the color spectrum to the next. Popular culture
scholars often refer to this period as “the jazz age.”
Renaissance or not, as Huggins points out,
the experience of Harlem in the 1920s was not
for naught. It left its mark as a symbol and a
point of reference for everyone to recall....
The very name continued to connote a special
spirit, new vitality, black urbanity, and blackmilitancy. Through the activities of the writings,
the promotion of Negroes in the 1920s, Harlem
had become a racial focal point for knowledge-
able black men the world over. (303)BIBLIOGRAPHY
DuBois, W. E. B. The Souls of Black Folk. In Three
Negro Classics, 207–389. New York: Avon Books,
1965.
Huggins, Nathan Irvin. Harlem Renaissance. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1971.
Hughes, Langston. The Big Sea: An Autobiography.
New York: Knopf, 1940.
———. “The Negro Artist and The Racial Moun-
tain.” In The Portable Harlem Renaissance, edited
by David Levering Lewis, 91–95. New York: Pen-
guin Books, 1994.
Hutchinson, George. The Harlem Renaissance in
Black and White. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1995.
Lewis, David Levering. W. E. B. DuBois: Biography
of a Race, 1868–1919. New York: Henry Holt and
Company, 1993.
Locke, Alain. “The New Negro.” In The New Negro,
edited by Alain Locke, 3–16. New York: Albert &
Charles Boni, 1925.
Wall, Cheryl A. Women of the Harlem Renaissance.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999.
Wilfred D. SamuelsHarlem Shadows Claude McKay (1922)
Published by Jamaican-born poet and novelist
CLAUDE MCKAY. Harlem Shadows is among the
major works produced by luminaries of the HAR-
LEM RENAISSANCE. In fact, Harlem Shadows was the
first collection of poems published by a Harlem Re-
naissance writer. Although McKay spent more than
10 years during the time the renaissance was in full
bloom living and traveling throughout Europe, he
is considered a major voice of this historical junc-
ture in African-American history and culture.
Preceded by Song of Jamaica (1912) and Con-
stab Ballads (1912), which McKay published before
migrating to the United States in 1912 to studyHarlem Shadows 231