and the relationship among art, history, and realism
continued throughout the Harlem Renaissance.
The tensions between more conservative thinkers
like DuBois and the emerging younger artists like
Hughes, WALLACETHURMAN,and ZORANEALE
HURSTONproduced some of the most dynamic and
volatile works and discussions of the period.
Bibliography
Lewis, David Levering. W. E. B. DuBois: The Fight for
Equality and the American Century, 1919–1963.New
York: Henry Holt and Company, 2000.
Negro Life in New York’s Harlem: A
Lively Picture of a Popular and Interesting
Section Wallace Thurman(1928)
An engaging narrative by WALLACETHURMANon
HARLEMand the diverse populations and cultural
activities of the NEW YORK CITY neighborhood.
Thurman provided information on the religious life,
artistic ventures, energetic social scenes, and range
of parties that included rent parties to raise funds to
cover housing costs, cabaret locations, and gambling.
The lengthy essay appeared first in triple fall/
winter issue of the Kansas-based Haldeman-Julius
Quarterlyin 1928. It was then republished as an
installment in the Little Blue Book Series that
the press produced. The monograph appeared in the
same year that Thurman attempted to publish
the promising but short-lived periodical, HARLEM:
A FORUM OFNEGROLIFE.
Bibliography
McIver, Dorothy Jean. Stepchild in Harlem: The Literary
Career of Wallace Thurman.Ann Arbor, Mich.: Uni-
versity Microfilms International, 1995.
van Notten, Eleonore. Wallace Thurman’s Harlem Renais-
sance.Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1994.
Negro Mother and Other Dramatic
Recitations, The Langston Hughes(1931)
A popular pamphlet published by the Golden
Stair Press that contained six dramatic mono-
logues composed by LANGSTON HUGHES. The
white artist Prentiss Taylor, who founded the
Golden Stair Press in Greenwich Village with
help from Hughes and CARLVANVECHTEN, pro-
vided illustrations that were described as “decora-
tions.” The press produced 1,700 copies, includ-
ing 17 rare hand-colored copies with Hughes’s
and Taylor’s autographs.
Priced at 25 cents, the pamphlet sold briskly,
especially when Hughes completed a rousing read-
ing and audiences flocked to local bookstores to
purchase copies of his works. According to Hughes
biographer Arnold Rampersad, the poet sold some
100 copies at a New York YOUNGMEN’SCHRIS-
TIANASSOCIATION branch, including some 18
copies sold in an elevator by the attendant. In the
fall of 1931 Hughes himself packed copies of the
work and took them with him to distribute during
what was planned as a lengthy eight-month lecture
and reading tour throughout the South.
The volume included the powerful title work,
“The Negro Mother,” and five other pieces: “The
Colored Soldier,” “Broke,” “The Black Clown,”
“The Big-Timer,” and “Dark Youth.” The title poem,
written in the first person, was a moving exhortation
from a woman to her descendants. “Children, I
come back today / To tell you a story of the long
dark way / That I had to climb, that I had to know /
In order that the race may live and grow,” declares
the resurrected narrator in the poem’s opening lines.
The female speaker goes on to recount the physical
labor that she endured, the evils of segregation, the
range of mistreatment, and the faith that sustained
her through life. The poem ends with an emphatic
reminder of the rights that long-suffering elders
have already won for contemporary people of color.
She encourages others to “march every forward,
breaking down bars. / Look ever upward at the sun
and the stars.” The highly evocative last lines of the
poem are directed at children of the race: “Oh, my
dark children, may my dreams and my prayers /
Impel you forever up the great stairs—/ For I will be
with you till no white brother / Dares keep down
the children of the Negro mother.”
Selections from the work also were included
in the 1938 production Don’t You Want to Be Free?,
a multi-genre piece that included a range of
Hughes’s dramatic works set to music.Bibliography
Berry, Faith, ed. Langston Hughes: Before and Beyond
Harlem.Westport, Conn.: Lawrence Hill & Com-
pany, 1983.376 Negro Life in New York’s Harlem