the culture of sports in the harlem renaissance
Reviewed by Duncan Jamieson, Ashland University
10 march 2018 archive
Begun following the 1919 race riots, the Harlem Renaissance emphasized intellectual, artistic, literary and social expression. As academics who study the movement have concentrated on the above categories, Daniel Anderson (assistant professor of English and Director of American Studies at Dominican University in River Forest, Illinois), has added an important element to the literature on the Renaissance. Centered in Harlem, located in northern Manhattan, it was known at the time as the New Negro Movement, after the anthology by Alain Locke. The movement survived the early years of the Great Depression, sputtering to an end in the mid-1930s, perhaps finished off by the Harlem riot of 1935.
Harlem existed as a bucolic village far from New York City. In the 1870s as the elevated railroad pushed north, so did the city, which annexed Harlem in 1873. The area became popular as an escape from the overcrowded neighborhoods south of Central Park, which led more well-to-do New Yorkers to the quiet streets of Harlem. Architects, including the likes of Stanford White, began designing ten to sixteen room brownstones for their discerning clients, while poorer whites and African Americans dwelled on the fringes. In the early twentieth century subway lines extended to Harlem and more people flooded in. The city's African American population began growing dramatically in the 1890s as the first generation born into freedom left the South for the perceived economic opportunities and increased freedom of the North. Their numbers were supplemented by immigrants from the Caribbean. When the housing bubble burst in the early years of the twentieth century whites fled and Harlem became increasingly black.
Anderson asks the question, where is the intersection of culture and sport? While too many scholars in many disciplines view them as separate and distinct entities, The Culture of Sports in the Harlem Renaissance makes a compelling case that they are closely intertwined, especially as both raised the awareness of the need for racial justice.
While the general public, both white and black, has always had a deep and abiding passion for sports of all kinds, the intellectual elite oftentimes does not show the same interest. This was certainly the case for African Americans during the Harlem Renaissance. Baseball was a popular sport and entertainment for African Americans everywhere, including teams located in Harlem. James Weldon Johnson alone of the Harlem Renaissance elite wrote of baseball. He saw it as popular entertainment, similar to the theatre. Negro League ball was much more lively and spontaneous than the white major leagues. It included a lot of banter between the players on opposing teams as well as pantomime and minstrelsy among the players on each team. Another Renaissance luminary, Claude McKay, who came to Harlem from the Caribbean, had an interest in boxing and cricket, seeing the former as representative of the working class and universal, while cricket stood for Great Britain and colonialism. Among those who demonstrated little intellectual interest in sport, though Langston Hughes was on a championship high school track team he never mentioned anything about sports in his autobiographical The Big Sea (1940). W. E. B. DuBois also had little interest in sports, but he did recognize the need for a balance between work and play. His interest in boxing was stirred by Jack Johnson's troubles with the law resulting from the Mann Act when he crossed state lines with his white girlfriend. Later, when DuBois wrote of Jesse Owens' triumph in the 1936 Olympics, he was more concerned with Owens' involvement with his white teammates than he was in his athletic accomplishments. DuBois never included any mention of sports while he was editor of The Crisis, the organ of the NAACP. With few exceptions, Renaissance intellectuals saw sports as too primitive and too middle class for serious treatment. Alternatively, sportswriters tended to cover that which was of interest to the middle class, who made up the bulk of newspaper readership. These same sportswriters also covered the theatre beat, treating both as entertainment for the masses. Romeo Daugherty, the dean of African American sports reporters, covered baseball and basketball along with the theatre as well as radical and separatist black politics. Additionally sportswriters saw the value of sports as an integral ingredient in the fight for racial equality and social justice.
Anderson, Daniel. The Culture of Sports in the Harlem Renaissance. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2017. ix + 209 pp. Notes, bibliography, index. $35.00 paper.
Copyright © 2018 by Duncan Jamieson