the Carthaginian princess, arrangements that they
are sure could “weaken Africa” and “[e]nslave Nu-
midia.” King Massinissa preserves his kingdom, re-
jects the suspicious overtures from imposters who
pose as messengers from Scipio Africanus, and pre-
pares to lead his kingdom into an even greater mo-
ment of triumph and power.
The Black Horseman,which Richardson de-
scribed as one of the “neo-romances” included in
the anthology, provides students and children with
romantic historical images. It was part of the larger
Harlem Renaissance-era movement to generate
enriching and diverse materials for performance
groups and their audiences.
Bibliography
Richardson, Willis. Plays and Pageants from the Life of the
Negro.Washington, D.C.: The Associated Publish-
ers, Inc., 1930.
Black King, The(1932)
A Southland film, directed by Bud Pollard, that of-
fered a negative and demeaning image of MARCUS
GARVEYas an ineffectual, illiterate leader.
Black MagicThelma Duncan(1931)
A play by THELMADUNCAN,a HOWARDUNI-
VERSITY graduate and teacher. The comedy,
which included African-American dialect, fo-
cused on a married couple, moments of miscom-
munication, and groundless suspicions, and it
merited inclusion in the 1931 edition of The Year-
book of Short Plays.
Black Manhattan James Weldon Johnson
(1930)
An accessible work of social and cultural history
by JAMESWELDONJOHNSONthat highlighted the
contributions, communities, and long-standing
history of African Americans in the city. Pub-
lished by ALFREDA. KNOPF, the same firm that
reprinted Johnson’s AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ANEX-
COLOUREDMANin 1927, Black Manhattanrep-
resented Johnson’s most extensive historical
effort to date.
The book is based in part on Johnson’s 1925
SURVEYGRAPHICessay “The Making of Harlem.”
ALAINLOCKErepublished this same essay later
that year in the highly recognized anthology enti-
tled THENEWNEGRO,a highly regarded collec-
tion of works by African-American writers. In his
preface to the Black Manhattan,Johnson assured
readers that it was “not my intention to make this
book in any strict sense a history. I have at-
tempted only to etch in the background of the
Negro in latter-day New York,” he stated, “to give
a cut-back in projecting a picture of Negro
Harlem” (vii). He relied on the research assistance
of Richetta Randolph, the memories and anec-
dotes of William Foster and Irving Jones, and the
expansive collection of African-American materi-
als that were part of the impressive Schomburg
Collection held at the 135th Street Branch of the
NEWYORKPUBLICLIBRARY.
Black Manhattan’s 22 chapters included
overviews of New York history from the 17th cen-
tury to the 20th, accounts of African-American
educational opportunities since the establishment
of the first free schools for people of color, and the
history of residential patterns that transformed
areas such as HARLEMand the borough of Brook-
lyn into thriving, lively places. In his cultural pro-
files, Johnson provided detailed notes about sports
figures, stage and vaudeville actors, and contempo-
rary entertainers such as his own brother J. Rosa-
mond Johnson and Bob Cole, Big JIMEUROPE,W.
C. HANDY, and PAULROBESON. The final chapters
were devoted to contemporary Harlem during the
age of the Renaissance. In these narratives, John-
son considered the impact of writers, most of them
male, the importance of literary prizes offered by
the major journals OPPORTUNITYand THECRISIS,
and the significant role that Harlem could play and
was playing in the “public opinion about the
Negro” (xvii).
Johnson began with a bold characterization
of Harlem. It was “not merely a colony or a com-
munity or a settlement,” he declared in his first
chapter, “not at all a ‘quarter’ or a slum or a
fringe—but a black city, located in the heart of
white Manhattan, and containing more Negroes
to the square mile than any other spot on earth.”
With confidence, he insisted that Harlem “strikes
the uninformed observer as a phenomenon, a42 Black King, The