The Harlem Renaissance was a period in the 1920s when African-American achievements in art, music and literature flourished. Writers, musicians, and artists based in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City expressed their cultural experience and heritage in new ways. In this period, people like Langston Hughes (writing) and Duke Ellington (music) became famous for their innovative art.

One visual artist associated with the movement was William Henry Johnson, a painter whose vivid colors and narrative images portrayed many aspects of African-American life. This piece, entitled “Blind Singer,” uses bright colors and simple shapes, two hallmarks of Johnson’s painting.

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Blind Singer


William Henry Johnson (1901-1970)
Blind Singer, ca. 1940
Silkscreen
Prints & Photographs Division
Gift of the Harmon Foundation, ca. 1970 (151.10)
LC-USZC4-1782 / William H. Johnson arrived in Harlem in 1918 from Florence, South Carolina, at the onset of the Harlem Renaissance. Considered a major American artist, he attended the National Academy of Arts and studied under Charles Hawthorne. After graduation Johnson left New York to paint in Europe. Known primarily for his narrative, expressive style and the intense colors in his works, Johnson's work vividly depicts the lifestyles of African Americans in the first half of the twentieth century.

This picture details an African-American soldier leaving his family and going off to war. Serving in World War I and World War II was a major issue within the African American community, since African Americans were expected to fight for their country even though theyfaced inequality and segregation at home.

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Exhibition Sections:Top Treasures - Memory - Reason - Imagination

Off to War


William Henry Johnson (1901-1970)
Off to War
Silkscreen, ca. 1942
Prints & Photographs Division
Gift of the Harmon Foundation, ca. 1970 (73.5) / More than one million African American men and women served in World War II. Artist William Henry Johnson's war images often represented groups of soldiers in training camps, but this piece focuses on one soldier's parting from family and home. It bears the influence both of modern abstraction and of the Harlem-based New Negro Movement, which encouraged African-American creativity driven by its own innate identity and unconstrained by Western traditions.

Segregation in housing was widespread throughout much of the 20th century. Although this court case made it illegal for a city to tell African-Americans where they could and could not live, it did not prevent individual homeowners from refusing to sell houses to African-Americans because of their race. As a result, African-Americans and other non-white people were forced to live in segregated neighborhoods. Neighborhoods like Harlem were often the only areas where African Americans could find housing.

Another NAACP Victory

In the Supreme Court of the United States, October Term, 1916 [No. 231]. Charles H. Buchanan v. William Warley.
Pamphlet.
NAACP Collection, Manuscript Division. (7-20)
Courtesy of the NAACP

In order to keep people of color out of their neighborhoods, cities called for racial restrictive covenants that segregated housing. The NAACP attacked this practice in the courts in the case of Charles Buchanan v. William Warley. In the 1916 decision, the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional an ordinance mandating that African Americans live in certain sections of Louisville, Kentucky. As a result of this case, whites resorted to private restrictive covenants, in which individual residents agreed to sell or rent only to whites, and de facto housing segregation continued.

This image shows a Harlem dance club in the 1940s. The Harlem Renaissance was not limited to the work of visual artists such as Johnson; it also included poetry, literature, music, and dance.

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America from the Great Depression to World War II: Photographs from the FSA-OWI, 1935-1945

Display Images with Neighboring Call Numbers

New York, New York. Scene in Harlem.

Parks, Gordon, 1912- photographer.

CREATED/PUBLISHED
1943 May.

NOTES
Title and other information from caption sheet entry.

Transfer; United States. Office of War Information. Overseas Picture Division. Washington Division; 1944.

SUBJECTS
Nitrate negatives.
United States--New York (State)--New York.

MEDIUM
1 negative : nitrate ; 2 1/4 x 2 1/4 inches or smaller.

CALL NUMBER
LC-USW3- 024034-E

REPRODUCTION NUMBER
LC-USW3-024034-E DLC (b&w film nitrate neg.)

PART OF
Farm Security Administration - Office of War Information Photograph Collection (Library of Congress)

REPOSITORY
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.20540

DIGITAL ID
(digital file from intermediary roll film) fsa 8d28555

The Harmon Foundation was one of several organizations that supported African-American communities. They funded public works projects, offered scholarships, and granted awards for outstanding achievement in various fields. William H. Johnson received one of the prestigious Harmon Foundation awards for his art in 1929. In this letter, Countee Cullen thanks the Harmon Foundation for giving him their literature award.

The Harmon Foundation--Providing Wings for the Artists

Countee Cullen to George H. Haynes, December 7, 1926.
Holograph letter.
Harmon Foundation Records, Manuscript Division. (7-10)
Courtesy of the CounteeCullenPapers
AmistadResearchCenter
TulaneUniversity
New Orleans, LA.

The Harmon Foundation, established by endowments in 1922, provided playgrounds throughout the country, tuition payments and vocational guidance for students, educational programs for nurses, and awards for "constructive achievements among Negroes." The areas of competition for monetary awards to African Americans included business, education, farming, fine arts, literature, music, race relations, religious service, and science. The nomination files for these awards provide a rich source of information about African Americans during the Harlem Renaissance period.