James Weldon Johnson, Claude McKay, and Langston Hughes: Their Affinity with Afro-American Folklore and the Harlem Renaissance

   James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938), Claude McKay (1889-1948), and Langston Hughes (1902-1967), were just a few of the Black writers who were connected with the era called the Harlem Renaissance. In this period, they divulged their exposure of Black folklore in some of their works. One evidence of it was the use of Black vernacular language; another was use of dramatic lyricism commonly seen in jazz and blues music, and finally, the use of spiritual and African themes common in Black church songs. With these, it is necessary to look into not only several examples of the authors’usage of Black folklore, but also show an overview of several parts of this aspect of Black history.

  The Harlem Renaissance might have been an important reason why Johnson, McKay, and Hughes wanted to express literary usage of folklore. This was a time when Afro-American artists and writers of every genre flocked north to this New York district to try to take advantage of the area’s proximity to Manhattan. In this way, they wanted to find publishers, producers, and sponsors who were willing to help them in their talents. The approximate dates of the Renaissance are from 1910 to 1929.

In addition, the Harlem Renaissance’s attraction for these people, according to Fontenot, was “establishing the authentication of Afro-American culture.”[1]  They did this through a very through a very important aspect of Afro-American folklore--Black vernacular dialect. According to Fontenot, this folk language was “very important because of a complete negation of the Afro-American past.”[2] Moreover, he says this dialect has three main techniques: “slurring from one word to another...[and] use of staccato voice for emphasis.”[3]

    There sometimes was an aversion to Black dialect. According to Harris, Johnson became suspicious of his dialect when “[Paul Lawrence] Dunbar himself disparaged [that language]...preferring [to write more regular English].”[4] Moreover, Harris said that when he read the poem collection Leaves of Grass, Johnson found that the language focused “on the white stereotypes of black life...”[5]

    Despite this problem, Johnson uses Black folklore in other ways. He uses his exposure to the Negro spirituals (which was based on the songs performed by the slaves during the antebellum period) in some of his poems; a great example of this was Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing (a song which eventually became the Negro national anthem in the U.S.). Despite using English verse for vernacular dialect, Johnson stresses in the poem three things: unity, the power of faith and recognition of history:

The power of black music and song must disgorge and spread over every African-American so that their holocaust of slavery and oppression will never happen again. The use of this music will also create a sense of activism and unity in the Black’s long-lasting struggle for justice, freedom and happiness, and God’s faith will make possible.[6]

    In The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, Johnson delves into the roots of his experience with the Negro spiritual by revealing its basic parts:

         Most of these hymns[like Sweet Low, Sweet Chariot] are constructed to be sung in the [alternating “call and response” method used by the lead singer and the congregational singers]...[But there are a few Negro spirituals that involve]the leader and the congregation [starting off] together. Such a song is the well-known Steal Away to Jesus..[7]

     Most importantly, Johnson said that his main exposure to Afro-American folklore came when his mother “opened the [piano] and picked out hymns...[and also] played simple accompaniments to some old Southern songs which she sang.”[8]

    Moreover, in his preface to The Book of American Negro Poetry, Johnson stated that there were 4 sections of Black American folklore:

         The first two are the Uncle Remus stories...and the “spirituals”, or slave songs...[The Uncle Remus stories] constitute the greatest body of [folklore]that America has produced, and the [latter] the greatest body of folk song...The other two[parts]are the cakewalk and ragtime[9]

  Claude McKay, like Johnson, occasionally avoids the Black vernacular dialect in some of his works. A few exceptions to this include the poem To The White Friends, where the word “Afric’s” means Africa’s, and “think” means do you think.[10] Some of McKay’s poems focus on not only his experiences with the Harlem Renaissance, but also his exposure with Black communism, which was a response to fighting off capitalism that caused Afro-Americans to suffer racism. An example of it was St. Issac Church, Petrograd, where he treat this Russian place as if it was an image of a great god making its own “sacred” voices.[11]

     According to Louis and McKay, Claude McKay’s Home to Harlem “satisfied a consuming curiosity...about the nightlife--and the lowlife of Harlem. The novel...[exists] mainly for the purpose of taking the reader on a [12][Harlem tour].” Black vernacular dialectis only used in the characters’ dialogue. One example of this occurs in chapter 17, when the aspect of passing off as white in Harlem to avoid Black racism is evident. Mckay said that “[there] is no sure telling white from high-yaller these days...there are so many swell-looking quadroons and octoroons of the race.” [13]  In this case, the word “yaller” means a person who is partially black and partially of another race--and a great example of this is the Black mulatto.

McKay’s Harlem Runs Wild, a short story telling about the 1935 race riot in Harlem caused by militant Blacks trying to stop racism in that community, says that the main cause was the alleged beating of “[Lino Rivera]...[He was]caught stealing a trifle [from a white store in the 125th street shopping district]...” [14]The story takes place a few years after the Harlem Renaissance during the time of not only Black racism and depression but also Jewish racism as well. Jewish racism exponentiated not just in the United States, but in Germany, when Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party started the campaign to eliminate Jews. Tactics of elimination included harassment (such as not allowing Jews to walk on the sidewalk, and only on the area of the street where the storm sewers were), or through denigration (such as forcing Jews to wear the star of David upon threat of imprisonment), or by forced atrophy by detaining the Jews in concentration camps and slave labor camps, (where millions of Jews died). The Nazi party had its secret police, the SS, who arrested and/or killed anyone who acted or spoke against the party.

        Mckay's description about the arrest of Hamid almost mimics the subversive tactics of the Nazi Party:

         In the midst of the [riot] Sufi Hamid [member of the Negro industrial and Clerical Alliance ] was arrested....Before his arrest a committee of Jewish Minute Men had visited the Mayor and complained about an anti-Semitic; movement among the colored people and the activities of a black Hitler in Harlem. [This happened even though Sufi did not like Hitler or his ideologies.]

    It seems that the words “black Hitler” is used by McKay as a very derogative term; it also mimics the use of the so-called double-descriptive--common in Black dialect.[15]

    Langston Hughes, unlike McKay and Johnson, focused a little more on the use of jazz and blues in his works as well as using African themes. In the poem The Negro Speaks of Rivers, Langston uses the affinity of Africa and the United States as an important part of Black history:

         I bathed in the Euphrates.../I built my hut in the Congo.../I looked upon the Nile.../I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln/went down to New Orleans...[16]

    Another example was Hughes’ poem Harlem, which showed the correlation of the Renaissance’s demise to the shattered hopes of the Negroes who were a part of it:

         What happens to a dream deferred.../Maybe it just sags/like a heave load./Or does it explode?[17] 

    Still another example was Hughes’ reaction to seeing one of the great musicals in Black folklore in The Big Sea:

         Shuffle Along was a honey of a show. Swift, bright, funny, rollicking, and gay, with adozen danceable, singable tunes. [In the famous cast was a]choir director, Hall Johnson, and the composer, William Grant Still, were part of the orchestra. Eddie Blake and Noble Sissle wrote the music and played and acted...Miller and Lyles were the comics...Everybody was in the audience...including me..It was always packed.[18]

    Mother To Son is probably one of his best-known poems. Its use of contractions represent another example of the use of Black dialect:

         I’se been a-climbin’ on,/And reachin’ landin’s,/ And turnin’ corners,/And sometimes goin’ in the dark/Where there ain’t been no light...[19]

      Here, the prefix “a-” before a verbal gerund, and using “I’se” to mean “I have” were examples of neologisms--ways of making new words out of old ones.

    In Hughes’ The Blues I’m Playing, the blues expression is revealed in the character named Oceola Jones, a blues pianist. She says, “O, if I could holler/sang the blues,/ Like a mountain jack,/I’d go upon de mountain/sang the blues,/And call my baby back.”[20]

    This passage above uses the lyricism of the blues, anotherimportant form of Black folklore. According to Ralph Ellison, it “involved a compellingly rhythmical sound that relied on patterns of call/response between singer and audience [and occasionally] between singer and instrument...[it used] a stylized complaint of early trials and troubles...”[21]

.    The blues is just one of the main events that permeated the Harlem Renaissance. It originated as spirituals that were used by the Black slaves in the Southern United States, especially in the cotton plantations, to appease the mistreatment they faced under their strict masters. Then, in the beginning of the nineteenth century, jazz forms like Dixieland, ragtime, and even the Charleston modified the blues somewhat to new forms. The 12-bar blues emerged as the most common form in most jazz standards; an example of this is Duke Ellington's "C Jam Blues". The blues grew even further by the end of the nineteenth century with the rise of the electric guitar. Guitarists then made attempts to make the instrument imitate feelings associated with the blues; the best blues guitarist who did this was B.B. King. At that point, gospel music, which came from the spirituals, was now used with blues techniques. Blues singers from Etta James to Koko Taylor took advantage of this musical affinity.

   An excellent example of this is Hughes’ Weary Blues . Here,he doesn’t just describe his exposure with the blues--it moves the reader with its sensation:

         Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,

         Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,

            I heard a Negro play...

         He did a lazy sway...

         He did a lazy sway...

         To the tune o’those Weary Blues.

         With his ebony hands on each ivory key

         He made that poor piano moan with melody.

            O Blues!

         Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool

         He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool.

            Sweet Blues!

         Coming from a black man’s soul.

            O Blues!

         In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone

         I heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan--

           “Ain’t got nobody in all this world,

            Ain’t got nobody but ma self.

            I’s gwine to quit ma frownin’

            And put ma troubles on the shelf.”

         Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor...[22]

    It seems that Johnson, Mckay, and Hughes all used some aspect of Negro folklore, and their dialect seems to be the greatest evidence of this. With their embracing of the Harlem Renaissance, they tried to express in their writing their deepest thoughts of the Black race.

ENDNOTES

[1] C.J. Fontenot, Jr. Class Lecture, The Birth of the Harlem

  Renaissance (English 260). Urbana, Illinois, January 22, 1997.

[2] C.J. Fontenot, Jr.. Class Lecture, Major Writers of the

  Harlem Renaissance (English 260). Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Trudler Harris, ed. Dictionary of Literary Biography(Volume

  51): Afro-American Writers from the Harlem Renaissance to

   1940. Detroit: Gail Research Co., 1987. 170.5. Ibid., 171.

[5] Ibid

[6] JJames Weldon Johnson. “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing.” The Norton

  Anthology of African American Literature. Eds., Gates Jr.,

  Henry Louis and McKay, Nellie. New York: W.W. Norton and

  Company, 1991. 768-69.

[7] James Weldon Johnson. “The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored

  Man.” Ibid., 848-49.

[8] James Weldon Johnson. “The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored

  Man.” Ibid., 780.

[9] Johnson, James Weldon. “The Book of American Negro Poetry.”

Gates Jr., Henry Louis and McKay, Nellie. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1997. 862.

[10] Claude McKay, ed. “To The White Friends.” Ibid., 984.

[11] Claude McKay, ed. “St. Issac’s Church, Petrograd.” Ibid., 987.

[12] Claude McKay, ed. 982-83.

[13] Claude McKay. “Home to Harlem” Quoted in The Norton Anthology of

   African American Literature. Eds.., Henry Louis Gates Jr. and

   Nellie McKay.. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1997. 990

[14] Claude McKay. “Harlem Runs Wild”. Quoted in in The Norton Anthology of

   African American Literature Ibid., 994.

[15] Claude Mckay. “Harlem Runs Wild”. ”. Quoted in in The Norton Anthology of

   African American Literature Ibid., 995.

[16] Langston Hughes. “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”. Quoted in The Norton

   Anthology of African American Literature. Eds. Gates Jr.,

   Henry Louis and McKay, Nellie. New York: W.W. Norton and

   Company., 1997. 1254. 

[17] Langston Hughes. “Harlem”. Ibid., 1266

[18] Langston Hughes. “The Big Sea”. Quoted in The Norton Anthologhy of

   African American Literature. Eds. Gates Jr., Henry Louis and

   McKay, Nellie. New York: W.W. Norton and Company., 1997. 1283.

[19] Langston Hughes. “Mother to Son”. Ibid., 1255.

[20] Langston Hughes “The Blues I’m Playing. Ibid., 1282.

[21] Ralph Ellison,. “The Blues”, quoted in Norton, 22.

[22] . Langston Hughes. “The Weary Blues.” Quoted in The Norton Anthology of

    African American Literature. Eds. Gates Jr., Henry Louis and

   McKay, Nellie. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1997. 1257.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Fontenot, C.J., Jr. Class Lecture, The Birth of the Harlem Renaissance (English 260). Urbana, Illinois, January 22, 1997.

2. --------------------Class Lecture, Major Writers of the Harlem Renaissance (English 260). Urbana, Illinois, January 27, 1997.

3. Gates Jr., Henry Louis and McKay, Nellie, eds. The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1997.

4. Harris, Trudler, ed. Dictionary of Literary Biography(Volume 51): Afro-American Writers from the Harlem Renaisaance to 1940. Detroit: Gail Research Co., 1987.

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