Nightlife in Harlem

APPLAUDING youths laughed with young prostitutes

And watched her perfect, half-clothed body sway;

Her voice was like the sound of blended flutes

Blown by black players upon a picnic day.

She sang and danced on gracefully and calm,

The light gauze hanging loose about her form;

To me she seemed a proudly-swaying palm

Grown lovelier for passing through a storm.

Upon her swarthy neck black, shiny curls

Profusely fell; and, tossing coins in praise,

The wine-flushed, bold-eyed boys, and even the girls,

Devoured her with their eager, passionate gaze;

But, looking at her falsely-smiling face

I knew her self was not in that strange place.

Dey comes to hear Ma Rainey from de little river settlements,

From blackbottorn cornrows and from lumber camps;

Dey stumble in de hall, jes a-laughin’ an’ a-cacklin’,

Cheerin’ lak roarin’ water, lak wind in river swamps.

An’ some jokers keeps deir laughs a-goin’ in de crowded aisles,

An’ some folks sits dere waitin’ wid deir aches an’ miseries,

Till Ma comes out before dem, a-smilin’ gold-toofed smiles

An’ Long Boy ripples minors on de black an’ yellow keys.

Oh, silver tree!

Oh, shining rivers of the soul!

In a Harlem cabaret

Six long-headed jazzers play.

A dancing girl whose eyes are bold

Lifts high a dress of silken gold.

Oh, singing tree!

Oh, shining rivers of the soul!

Were Eve's eyes

In the first garden

Just a bit too bold?

Was Cleopatra gorgeous

In a gown of gold?

Oh, shining tree!

Oh, silver rivers of the soul!

In a whirling cabaret

Six long-headed jazzers play.

We shall not always plant while others reap

The golden increment of bursting fruit,

Not always countenance, abject and mute,

That lesser men should hold their brothers cheap;

Not everlastingly while others sleep

Shall we beguile their limbs with mellow flute,

Not always bend to some more subtle brute;

We were not made eternally to weep.

The night whose sable breast relieves the stark,

White stars is no less lovely being dark,

And there are buds that cannot bloom at all

In light, but crumple, piteous, and fall;

So in the dark we hide the heart that bleeds,

And wait, and tend our agonizing seeds.

Put on yo’ red silk stockings,

Black gal.

Go out an’ let de white boys

Look at yo’ legs.

Ain’t nothin’ to do for you, no how.

Round this town. ---

You’s too pretty.

Put on yo’ red silk stockings,gal,

An’ tomorrow’s chile’ll

Be a high yaller

Go out an’ let de white boys

Look at yo’ legs

FASHION

"The heart of a woman goes forth with the dawn, as a lone bird, soft winging, so restlessly on, afar o'er life's turrets and vales does it roam

In the wake of those echoes the heart calls home."

“These people yapped loudly of race, of race consciousness, of race pride, and yet suppressed its most delightful manifestations, love of color, joy of rhythmic motion, naive, spontaneous laughter. Harmony, radiance, and simplicity, all the essentials of spiritual beauty in the race they had marked for destructions.”

"That brown girl's swagger gives a twitch

To beauty like a queen;

Lad, never dam your body's itch when lovliness is seen."

"It was . . . enough to suffer as a woman, an individual, on one's own account, without having to suffer for the race as well. It was brutality, and undeserved."

"Oblivious of the reek of flesh, smoke, and alcohol, oblivious to the oblivion of other gyrating pairs, oblivious of color, the noise, the grand childishness of it all."

"Everything that looks white ain't white in this man's country."

"Perhaps the lady had deftly encouraged confidences in her high, but gracious way ...With all her gentle manner and thoughfulness , she had a certain faint air of haughtiness and slight remote."

Musicians

“But let us break the seal of years/With pungent thrusts of song/For there is joy in dried tears/For whetted passions of a throng.” - Gwendolyn Bennett's "To Usward" poem

“This is a wine that must flow on/Not caring how or where,/So it has ways to flow upon/Where song is in the air.” - Countee Cullen's "Harlem Wine" poem

You and I/Offering hands/Being brothers,/Being one,/Being America.”

“Don’t you fall now-/For I’se still going’, honey, I’se still climbin’,/And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.” - Langston Hughes "Mother to Son" poem

"Jazz to me is one of the inherent expressions of Negro life in America; the eternal tom-tom beating in the Negro soul - the tom-tom of revolt against weariness in the white" - Langston Hughes "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain"

"Jamnin' at the Savoy" Romare Bearden

Excerpt from Nella Larsen's Quicksand

"Swing Dancing and the Blues" 1922 Frankie Manning

"America" Langston Hughes

Duke Ellington taken in 1945 at 400 Club in New York

Bessie Smith taken by Carl VanVechten in 1936

Quote from Black No More George Schuyler

Duke Ellington taken by Herman Leonard in 1958

Excerpt from Nella Larsen's Passing

"Black Woman with a Blue Dress" Miguel Covarrubias

"Octoroon" 1922 Archibald Motley

Ma Rainey

By: Sterling Brown

"Basin Street" Palmer Hayden

Bessie Smith taken by Carl VanVechten in 1936

Georgia Douglass Johnson's The Heart of a Woman poem

"Harlwm Belles" James Van der Zee

The Harlem Dancer

By: Claude McKay

Excerpt from W.E.B. DuBois' Dark Princess

Jazzonia

Langston Hughes

"Portrait of a Lady" 1948 Archibald Motley

Countee Cullen's To A Brown Boy poem

"Harlem Dancer" By James Van der Zee

"Sugar Shack" By Archibald Motley

Josephine Baker

Excerpt from Nella Larson's Quicksand

POETRY

"Wedding" James Van Der Zee

From the Dark Tower

By: Countee Cullen

"Holy Rollers" By Archibald Motley

Red Silk Stockings

By: Langton Hughes

A NIGHT IN HARLEM

Kathryn Farmer, DeLia Lloyd, Chelsea Yarborough

"Charleston" By Aaron Douglas

FASHION