HAGAN, HELEN E.
(1893–1964) Pianist, composer
As the Harlem community’s nightclubs and theaters offered jazz, blues, and theatrical performances showcasing extraordinary black talent, the concert hall in New York City can be counted among those opportunities to see great black talent, for instance, pianist and composer Helen E. Hagan. Hagan began her musical career at the age of thirteen when she began study at Yale University under the instruction of Horatio Parker. Her training as a pianist at Yale expanded to include study abroad, as supported by two university scholarships. Although Hagan had to return to the United States as a result of World War I, she went on to become the first black pianist to earn a bachelor of music degree from Yale University. In 1921, she made her New York debut at Aeolian Hall. Her performance served as a further extension of theatrical talents showcased in the production Shuffle Along, a new and successful musical comedy that was sweeping the theater community at the same time. Hagan, who won critical acclaim both in the United States and abroad, toured extensively into the 1930s and successfully wrote a full concerto for piano and orchestra. She later became a teacher in the black college system. —Lean’tin L. Bracks
HALL, ADELAIDE
(October 20, 1901?–November 7, 1993) Singer, actress
The Harlem Renaissance was an important time for Adelaide Hall, a multitalented performer in early black shows of the 1920s. Among her contemporaries were Valaida Snow, Florence Mills, Eubie Blake, Duke Ellington, Thomas “Fats” Waller, and Edith Wilson. Hall made her Broadway stage debut in Sissle and Blake’s pioneering musical revue Shuffle Along and had a career that spanned more than fifty years.
Born in Brooklyn, New York, the exact date of Hall’s birth is uncertain; it is either 1901 or 1904. She was the daughter of William Hall, whose background has been identified as white with German roots and German and African American; her mother, Adelaide Elizabeth Gerrard, was of African American and Native American descent. The family relocated to Harlem during the 1910s, and Hall and her younger sister sang at school concerts and other events. Adelaide’s career began to bud when she sang in J. Homer Tutt and Salem Tutt Whitney’s troupe and appeared in a number of their original musicals. Then she moved on to Broadway.
Hall was so successful in her Broadway debut that she was given a feature role in Miller and Lyle’s Runnin’ Wild (1923). She had two major successes at Club Alabam in New York City in 1925, and then was cast in Sam Wooding’s Chocolate Kiddies and toured Europe with the latter group. While on tour, she met and later married Trinidadian Bert Hicks, who became her manager. In 1926, Hall appeared in Tan Town Topics, and the next year in Desires of 1927. Around this time, she performed and recorded with Duke Ellington’s orchestra, singing “Creole Love Call.” After her contemporary, Florence Mills, known for her starring role in Lew Leslie’s Blackbirds, died, Hall was asked to return to Broadway with dancer Bill “Bojangles” Robinson in Blackbirds of 1928. She sang “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love” and “Diga Diga Doo.”
Hall appeared in several film shorts, including Dancers in the Dark (1932) and All Colored Vaudeville Show (1935), and she then toured Europe, becoming one of the few black female entertainers to be successful there and in the United States. Hall remained in Paris but returned to New York for appearances in the show Brown Buddies. She and her husband settled in London in 1938, where they opened clubs. She had her own radio series in London but continued to return to the United States for performances. Her one-woman show, created in 1977, led her to tour widely. Hall’s career was so successful that she was the subject of Sophisticated Lady, a documentary made for the British Broadcast Company in 1989. She died in London in 1993.—Jessie Carney Smith
HALL [LONG], JUANITA
(November 6, 1901–February 28, 1968) Singer, actress, choral director
Harlem Renaissance figures knew well the name Juanita Hall, who began singing in New Jersey clubs in the 1920s, and then joined popular black productions on Broadway and elsewhere. She still received acclaim later on and set the stage for African Americans to be included in the golden age of musical theater.
Juanita Long Hall was born in Keyport, New Jersey, to Abram Long and Mary Richardson on November 6, 1901. Her birth date has also been reported as 1902. Her heritage was African American and Irish. Hall began singing early on in church choirs and the local community. She had heard Negro spirituals sung at a revival meeting in New Jersey when she was twelve years old and developed a love for them. Two years later, she taught singing at Lincoln House in East Orange, New Jersey. While in her teens, she married actor Clement Hall, who died in the 1920s; she never remarried. Hall’s classical music training was at the Julliard School of Music, where she took courses in orchestration, harmony, theory, and voice; she also had private teachers in voice and acting.
Noted pioneers in black music with whom Hall had contact were Hall Johnson, Eva Jessye, and William C. Handy. In 1928, she broke into the chorus of the Ziegfield production of Show Boat, which helped catapult the talented performer into popularity. In 1930, she worked with the Hall Johnson Choir in the choral production of The Green Pastures, and from 1931 to 1936, she was the show’s soloist and assistant director. In 1935, Hall formed her own group, the Juanita Hall Choir, which was sponsored by the Works Progress Administration. She directed a 300-voice church choir at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York.
During the 1940s, Hall appeared in a number of dramatic and musical roles on the stage. These included The Pirates (1942); Sing Out, Sweet Land (1944); The Secret Room (1944); Deep Are the Roots (1945), and the film Miracle in Harlem (1949). Also in 1949, she was cast in the role of Bloody Mary in the Pulitzer Prize-winning play South Pacific, which propelled her into even greater fame. In 1954, she appeared in The House of Flowers and Flower Drum Song, both by Rodgers and Hammerstein. Hall’s numerous television appearances included on The Ed Sullivan Show, The Coca-Cola Hour, and The Perry Como Show. During the 1950s, she made a number of stage appearances. Her public appearances appear to have ended in 1966, with her one-woman show A Woman and the Blues. Hall died in Bay Shore, Long Island.—Jessie Carney Smith
HAMPTON, MABEL
(1902–1989) Dancer, activist
As the Harlem Renaissance welcomed the free and creative spirit of the new age, many individuals were also open with their creative and sexual choices. Mabel Hampton was a dancer in the nightclubs and theater groups of Harlem and part of the gay and lesbian community.
Hampton was born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in 1902, but with the passing of her mother while she was an infant and the later passing of her grandmother when she was seven, she developed a strong sense of self-reliance and independence. In 1909, at the age of seven, she moved to Greenwich Village, in New York City, and was placed in the care of her aunt and uncle, who was a minister. After being sexually abused by her uncle, Hampton decided that she had to leave. She subsequently purchased a bus ticket, thanks to a nickel from a stranger, and fled to New Jersey. On the same day that she arrived in New Jersey, Hampton met a kindly woman, Bessie White, who cared for her until she was seventeen. With the death of White, Hampton, who was again on her own, made a living as a domestic worker.
In 1920, Hampton was falsely arrested during a prostitution raid and sentenced to two years at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women. She was later sentenced to a second term for attending parties with other women, which was considered illegal. As a young woman, Hampton continued her relationship with other women, while being drawn into the excitement of the renaissance. She danced in the all-black chorus line at the “Garden of Joy” nightclub; became an actress at the Cherry Lane Theater; sang as a member of the Lafayette Theater Chorus; and performed with such well-known artists as Gladys Bentley, who was also part of the gay and lesbian community.
Throughout the years, Hampton continued to support the black community by contributing money to the civil rights movements and volunteering with the USO. She is also credited with being one of the founding members of the Lesbian Herstory Archives in 1974.—Lean’tin L. Bracks
HARMON, FLORENCE MARION
(1880–1936) Short story writer
Florence Marion Harmon published two stories, “Belated Romance” and “Attic Romance,” in the late 1920s, during the era of the Harlem Renaissance. Her stories were published in the Saturday Evening Quill, a literary journal based in Boston, Massachusetts.
Harmon was born in Lynn, Massachusetts, in 1880. In 1924, during the time that she attended Gordon College of Theology and Missions in Boston, her story “The House of Mirth” was published in the Gordon College yearbook. Her zeal for writing prompted her to join the Saturday Evening Quill Club. In 1928, she served as the secretary of this club. During the same year, her story “Belated Romance” appeared in the club’s literary journal. In 1929, another story, “Attic Romance,” was published in the QUILL. Although she published no additional stories, her published works reappeared in anthologies in subsequent decades; her biographies, while brief because little is known about her, appeared in such books as The Harlem Renaissance (1984). At the time of Harmon’s death in 1936, she was working as a dressmaker.—Gladys L. Knight
HARRISON, HAZEL LUCILE
(May 12, 1883–April 28, 1969) Musician, educator
The fifty years that Hazel Lucile Harrison performed as a concert pianist spanned the early part of the Harlem Renaissance and extended into the years after that cultural revolution ended. During her career, she became known in the African American community as the “Dean of Native Pianists.”
Harrison was born in 1883, in La Porte, Indiana, to Hiram and Olive (Wood) Harrison. Her father was a barber before becoming a business owner, and her mother operated a beauty shop at home. Hazel’s musical talent was recognized during her early years, and she honed her skills by taking music lessons. By the age of twelve, she often appeared on musical programs and gave dance music at social occasions. While still in high school, she studied with Victor Heinze of Chicago, who helped to boost her skills. In March 1902, she gave a recital in Chicago’s Studebaker Hall.
After graduating from high school in 1902, Harrison became a full-time piano teacher in La Porte, and in the fall of 1904, she embarked on a German tour, climaxing with an appearance in Berlin with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. She returned to La Porte the next year and continued to teach piano. In late 1911, she returned to Berlin and gave a series of recitals. When war broke out in 1914, she returned home and was hailed by the black press as the “world’s greatest pianist.” She then began her concert career in her homeland.
As Harrison continued to give recitals and go on tour, she also taught at Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University) in Alabama from 1931 to 1936, Howard University from 1936 to 1955, and Alabama State College (now Alabama State University) from 1958 to 1963. While most of her concerts were in black churches, in high school gymnasia, and on black college campuses—all due to limitations imposed by racial segregation—she made some appearances with major white orchestras, but under special circumstances. Harrison retired from Howard University in 1955, lived in New York City for three years, and continued to coach students. Her last major appearance came in 1959, in the campus auditorium of Alabama State College. After a brief illness, she died in Washington, D.C. She had two marriages, both ending in divorce.—Jessie Carney Smith
HARRISON, JUANITA
(December 28, 1891–?) Writer
As people from different parts of the world came to Harlem, New York, seeking to be entertained and enjoy the celebration of black culture, style, and creativity, Juanita Harrison traveled the world with a curiosity equal to those who came to Harlem.
Harrison was born on December 28, 1891, in Mississippi. With only a few months of schooling before the age of ten, she spent her life in a continuous role as housekeeper and maid. After seeing pictures of different places in foreign lands, her dream became one of a world traveler beginning at the age of sixteen. By the time Harrison reached the age of twenty-six, she had learned Spanish and French from the Young Women’s Christian Association and traveled to Canada and Cuba. At one point, she had saved $800 to further pursue her travels but lost it when the banking industry failed. In spite of this, she was able to earn and save enough money to generate $200 a year in interest, which allowed her to travel the globe. Her employer, George W. Dickson, and his wife Myra were instrumental in helping her achieve this goal.
In 1927, at the age of thirty-six, Harrison began her trip throughout the world and recorded her experiences in twenty-two countries in a journal. She was later encouraged by an employer, Mildred Morris, to publisher her works, inclusive of grammar and other errors, resulting from Harrison’s lack of education. In 1936, Harrison published her journal, My Great, Wide, Beautiful World. She shared her exuberance regarding her travels by relating everything from the food she ate to her ease in making friends. Although familiar with a world of racism and hate, Harrison’s work focuses on the richness of her experiences and offers no consideration of race as a hindrance in her travels. Her recorded adventures end in Hawaii, and little is known about whether her travels actually ended there or if she decided to continue to explore the world. Her work lends itself to the era of the Harlem Renaissance since only through a sense of self-actualization and determination could a little black girl from the South feel empowered and determined to follow her dream of seeing the world.—Lean’tin L. Bracks
HARVEY, GEORGETTE MICKEY
(1882–February 17, 1952) Singer, actress
Georgette Mickey Harvey was born in St. Louis, Missouri, to unknown parents. During the heyday of the Harlem Renaissance, she created a singing group called the Creole Belles that included Emma Harris. Her contralto voice was first recognized in her St. Louis church choir. Harvey longed for greener pastures and decided to use her gift as a theatrical performer, making her way to the bright lights of New York. She later formed a group, and her five girls traveled abroad to Belgium, England, France, and Germany. After success there, they returned to the United States as vaudeville performers and were in much demand. Harvey served as business and personal manager to the group. Around 1911, she moved her talented squad back to additional European countries and Russia. As an astute businesswoman, she wooed and amazed her clientele by being able to speak their language. Her troupe was particularly favored by Russian royalty. This heyday was short-lived, however, as the Russian Revolution swept through and changed everything. Harvey and her troupe were forced to flee with only small belongings. Her group traversed Siberia and was eventually separated. Harvey continued on through several Asian countries before returning to the United States. Although not as wealthy as before, she skillfully structured a new quartet of girls.
In 1927, Harvey played the role of Maria (created by Harvey herself) in Porgy and Bess, and she later appeared on Broadway in Mamba’s Daughters. She also performed in The Party’s Over (1933) and the powerful Stevedore (1934). Lost in the Stars (1949) was the last production Harvey appeared in. She died in New York City.—Angela M. Gooden
HAWTHORNE, SUSIE
(1896–December 5, 1963) Performer
Susie Hawthorne was a popular performer best known as the other half of the popular comedy duo with Jodie Edwards, her husband of more than forty years. The twosome, known as Butterbeans and Susie, primarily performed for African American audiences, touring numerous cities, among them Harlem, New York, during the era of the great Harlem Renaissance. Their performances, however, were not enjoyed by everyone, particularly Harlem’s most influential and race conscious.
Born in 1896, in Pensacola, Florida, Hawthorne took to the stage in the early twentieth century. Prior to marriage, she and her future husband had established their own careers. Hawthorne performed in the African American theater and sang blues; Edwards performed as a singer and dancer. On May 15, 1917, the couple married on the stage of the Theater Owners’ Booking Association theatre in Greenville, South Carolina.
In the wake of the marriage, Hawthorne (who had taken her husband’s surname) and her husband performed Butterbeans and Susie, which was a spectacular success, in minstrel and tent shows and theaters. In Harlem, they performed at the famous Lafayette Theater and the Cotton Club. Their Butterbeans and Susie comedic routine consisted of singing, bantering, and dancing. Their act, which entailed comedic conflict between the characters, who, like them, were husband and wife, was infused with sexual innuendo, violent threats, and complaints. At the end of the routine, the couple would make up; Hawthorne would sing an affectionate song, and Edwards would perform the laugh-generating dance known as “The Itch.” The Butterbeans and Susie routine was augmented through the stark visual contrast between the couple. Hawthorne wore a long and stylish gown, while her husband wore comical attire consisting of tight pants that were too short and a derby hat. In response to the popular pair, some critics, for example, some proponents of the New Negro concept in Harlem, were none too pleased. They complained that the Butterbeans and Susie routine played into the stereotypes that white society had imposed on blacks. In contrast, the New Negro was an image of a positive, progressive, and dignified African American. This concept was fleshed out in Alain Locke’s The New Negro (1925).
Although Butterbeans and Susie did not project the image of the New Negro, Hawthorne and Edwards’s routine resonated with many African Americans. Indeed, their popularity spawned several shows that were performed in several major cities in the South, on the East Coast, and in the Midwest. They also recorded blues songs and comedy routines on records. Hawthorne and Edwards continued to perform into the 1960s. Hawthorne was the first of this dynamic duo to die, ending their long and successful partnership.—Gladys L. Knight
HAYNES, ELIZABETH ROSS
(July 30, 1883–October 26, 1953) Sociologist, social worker, organization official
Elizabeth Ross Haynes
During the Harlem Renaissance period, Elizabeth Ross Haynes worked through various organizations to address the plight of black women in the work force to bring about social justice and remove racial restrictions in the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA).
Born in 1883, in Lowndes County, Alabama, Haynes was the only child of Henry and Mary (Carnes) Ross. She graduated from State Normal School in Montgomery (later Alabama State University), Fisk University in Nashville, and, much later, Columbia University in New York. Haynes was a volunteer worker with the YWCA, and in 1908, she began work for its student department of the National Board. She held this position until around 1925. In 1910, she married Fisk schoolmate George Edmund Haynes, a sociologist and a founder of the National Urban League. When he became director of Negro Economics, a division of the U.S. Department of Labor, she served as his assistant director. Elizabeth was also a volunteer for the Women’s Bureau of the Department of Labor. From January 1920 until May 1922, she was domestic service secretary in the U.S. Employment Service and became keenly interested in the plight of black women, particularly with regards to labor. In 1922, she wrote “Two Million Negro Women at Work,” which identifies the three main areas in which women in the labor force were engaged.
Haynes and her husband relocated to New York City in 1921. She remained active in her areas of interest and became the first African American member of the YWCA National Board, a post that she held from 1924 to 1934. This came at a time when the organization was highly segregated, and more than twenty years would pass before black women would be integrated into the life of the association. Haynes was active in interracial work with the Commission on Race Relations and the Federated Council of the Churches of Christ in America. She also had a keen interest in the black women’s club movement, particularly those social service activities that related to her background and experience. She chaired the National Association of Colored Women’s Industry and Housing Department. In 1935, Haynes was elected coleader of the 21st Assembly District in New York County. In addition, she was appointed to several commissions, including the New York State Temporary Commission on the Conditions of the Urban Colored Population and the New York City Planning Commission. She published two important black biographical works: Unsung Heroes (1921) and The Black Boy of Atlanta (1952). Haynes died in New York Medical Center.—Jessie Carney Smith
HAZZARD, ALVIRA
(1899–1953) Writer
Alvira Hazzard was part of a thriving black writers’ literary group in New England from the 1920s to the 1940s that provided a writer’s community and publication opportunities for those artists seeking to express themselves.
Hazzard was born in Northfield, Massachusetts, in 1899, the oldest of six children. She graduated from Worchester Normal School in Massachusetts. After completing her education, she moved to Boston and worked for a while as a Boston Public School teacher, and she was later employeed at Boston City Hospital. Hazzard became a member of the Saturday Evening Quill, a black writers’ group in Boston and Roxbury that included noted Harlem Renaissance writers Dorothy West and Helene Johnson. The group, which originated in 1925, published an annual journal under the name of the group to support the publication of their members’ work. Hazzard’s first published work was the play Mother Liked It in 1928, followed by Little Head in 1929, both published in the journal. She also published several short stories in the Boston Post, which was supported by the group’s president, who was one of the paper’s editors. Generally speaking, Hazzard’s plays and writings explore varying themes inclusive of those that dealt with the persistence of racial stereotypes and their limiting effect of devaluing individuals within society. She died from lymphatic leukemia.—Lean’tin L. Bracks
HEGAMIN, LUCILLE
(November 29, 1894–March 1, 1970) Singer
“Harlem’s Favorite,” as Lucille Hegamin was known in the early 1920s, was a refined and torchy blues singer whose career flourished after she moved to New York City around 1919. She graduated from singing in Harlem’s cafes to making appearances at major events and became a popular recording artist before a society with a rich appetite for blues singers. In Blues Who’s Who, Sheldon Harris writes that she had a “vigorous, powerful voice, deep and resonant, youthful and exuberant.” Hegamin remained popular during the most prolific periods of the Harlem Renaissance, the 1920s, but her career began to fade by the end of the decade.
Born in Macon, Georgia, on November 29, 1894, Hegamin became a popular local singer without formal music training. She sang in churches and theaters and, in 1909, began touring, performing in tent shows throughout the South with the Leonard Harper Minstrel Stock Company. She married her pianist, Bill Hegamin, and by 1914. he accompanied her as she sang in clubs and cabarets in Chicago. The “Georgia Peach,” as she was known then, performed at the Elite No. 2 Theater on South Side Chicago, with New Orleans pianist Tony Jackson. Hegamin popularized his classic “Pretty Baby” and W. C. Handy’s “Saint Louis Blues.” With her own band on backup, she sang in Seattle and Los Angeles in 1918 and 1919.
After Hegamin moved to New York in 1919, her recording career blossomed. Her ability to wail appealed to audiences, for voices like hers were popular in the emerging commercial fad for blues. Behind the “Mother of the Blues,” Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Hegamin was the next African American woman to record the blues. Hegamin promoted record sales during her tours and, in May 1922, teamed up with company of the show Shuffle Along. The next year, she joined the musical comedy Creole Follies in appearances in New York and Washington, D.C. By now she had become solo, as her marriage and business relationship with Bill Hegamin had ended. Between 1922 and 1926, Hegamin recorded extensively, cutting more than forty sides for Cameo Records. She then became known as the “Cameo Girl” and appeared in several shows held at the Lafayette and Lincoln theaters. These included Lincoln Frolics with Adelaide Hall in 1926, Midnight Steppers in 1928, and New Year’s Revels in 1930. For two seasons (1933 and 1934), she sang at the Paradise in Atlantic City.
When Hegamin’s popularity began to decline in the late 1920s, she gave up singing and became a nurse until she was rediscovered in the 1960s, when the blues were back in demand. In 1962, she recorded again, this time with Alberta Hunter and Victoria Spivey on the Spivey label. Her voice still had appeal both on recordings and during the few personal appearances that she made. The now revered blues elder died in New York City.—Jessie Carney Smith
HENDERSON [HENDERSON], KATHERINE
(June 6, 1909–?) Actress, singer, entertainer
Katherine Henderson was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1909, and at eight years of age, she started performing in minstrel shows and on the vaudeville circuit. As the niece of famed blues singer Eva Taylor and music producer Clarence Williams, and under the pseudonym Catherine Henderson, she found success under their guidance after moving to New York City. She worked with Taylor on her radio shows and made several recordings with Williams. As an actress, Henderson first appeared on Broadway in the musical revue Bottomland in 1927, and with the Kathleen Kirkwood in the Underground Theatre in Greenwich Village in 1928. She also acted in the theatrical production Keep Shuffling in 1929. Henderson continued as an entertainer until 1944, when she returned to St. Louis and went on to get married and have a family.—Lean’tin L. Bracks
HENDERSON, ROSA
(November 24, 1896–April 6, 1968) Blues singer, vaudeville entertainer
Rosa Henderson, born Rosa Deschamps in Henderson, Kentucky, is considered one of the best classic blues singers; she recorded more than 100 tracks. In the 1920s, female blues singers created a huge market for commercialized music by fusing qualities of rural music with elements of vaudeville and minstrelsy. Thus, music was as essential to the Harlem Renaissance in its use of folk culture as literature. This fusion is seen in the performances of Henderson, who entered the entertainment circuit by joining her uncle’s traveling circus in 1913. She was located in Texas until her marriage; little is known about this period.
In 1918, Henderson married Douglas “Slim” Henderson and became a member of a touring revue, the Mason Henderson Show. They toured throughout the South, performing in vaudeville productions prior to moving to New York. Here she appeared in black revues at the Lafayette, Alhambra, and Lincoln theaters, the major theater companies of the Harlem Renaissance, and was a popular singer with black audiences, as indicated by the number of songs attributed to her. She began a recording career that spanned nine years, from 1923 to 1931. During these years, she recorded on various labels, including Victor, Vocalion, Paramount, Ajax, and Columbia. Accompanists on these recordings include the instrumentalists Fletcher Henderson (piano, no relationship), Coleman Hawkins (tenor saxophone and bass saxophone), Bob Fuller (clarinet), Tom Morris (cornet), and Fats Waller (piano), as well as such groups as Fletcher Henderson’s Jazz Five, Fletcher Henderson’s Orchestra, the Three Hot Eskimos, the Three Jolly Miners, the Choo Choo Jazzers, the Kansas City Five, and the Four Black Diamonds. Recordings included “Afternoon Blues” (1923), “Doggone Blues” (1931), “Do Right Blues” (1924), “He May Be Your Dog But He’s Wearing My Collar” (1923), “Hey, Hey and He, He, I’m Charleston Crazy” (1924), and “Papa If You Can’t Do Better (I’ll Let a Better Papa Move In)” (1926). Henderson recorded under her name and several pseudonyms, including Flora Dale, Sally Ritz, Mamie Harris, and Josephine Thomas.
Henderson decreased her number of performances in the late 1920s after her husband’s death and, by the 1930s, had almost disappeared from the stage, although she performed for charities and benefits into the 1960s and began working in a department store. The mother of two children, she died of a heart attack in Roosevelt Island, New York, and is buried in Frederick Douglass Memorial Park.—Helen R. Houston
HEYWARD, DOROTHY KUHNS
(June 6, 1890–November 19, 1961) Playwright, author
During the Harlem Renaissance, the opera Porgy and Bess debuted on the American stage and became known as one of the greatest dramatic works of the era. It showcased the talents of playwright Dorothy Kuhns Heyward. A playwright, Heyward was born in Wooster, Ohio, on June 6, 1890. As a young adult, she moved to New York City to attend Columbia University with dreams of becoming a playwright. She worked for a brief time as a member of a chorus but soon stopped because of arthritic pain. She was awarded a fellowship in 1921, to spend the summer at the McDowell’s Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire. During her time at the colony, she met DuBose Heyward, who desired to be a poet and novelist. Kuhns and Heyward were both extended an offer to return to McDowell’s Colony in 1923. Heyward proposed to the young writer during their time there. The couple married in September 1923. During that same month, Dorothy was awarded a Harvard Prize for drama for her play Nancy Ann. A year later, the play opened on Broadway but closed after a few shows.
The couple returned to the McDowell Colony during the month of June. Dorothy tried to write a novel during this time, while beginning to adapt the novel Porgy, written by DuBose. The novel was developed into a play in 1927, and then an opera in 1935, with the contributions of Ira and George Gershwin. The opera, known as Porgy and Bess, was favorably received and viewed as a success. The play was seen as empathetic to the plight of blacks during this time period; however, it was later seen as stereotypical. The novel, set in DuBose’s hometown of Charleston, South Carolina, is based on the waterfront. The novel and play effectively use the Gullah dialect. The play was known as one of the great testaments of the American stage. In 1939, Dorothy later collaborated with her husband to adapt his novel Mamba’s Daughters as a play.
DuBose died in 1940; however, Dorothy continued adapting plays and writing. In 1943, she coauthored with Howard Rigsby the play South Pacific, which subsequently went into production. Unfortunately, the show only lasted for a few performances.
Heyward was, for the most part, unknown, except for her contributions as a playwright with Porgy and Bess and Mamba’s Daughters.—Andrea Patterson-Masuka
HILL, CHIPPIE [BERTHA]
(March 1905–May 1950) Dancer, singer
During the Harlem Renaissance, Chippie Hill stepped onstage at Leroy’s Club in Harlem, showcasing her talents as a dancer. Traveling with vaudeville shows in the 1920s, she worked with the Rabbit Foot Minstrels and the Theater Owners’ Booking Association. Her later move to Chicago marked the beginning of her recording career.
Born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1905, Hill’s family moved to New York a little more than ten years later. Her parents were John Hill and Ida Jones. In 1925, Chippie recorded “Low Land Blues” with New Orleans natives Louis Armstrong on cornet and Richard M. Jones on piano. They also recorded “Kid Man Blues” in that same year for Okeh Records. They went on to record a string of songs the following year, including “Trouble in Mind,” “Lonesome, All Alone, and Blue,” “Georgia Man,” “Pleadin’ for the Blues,” “Pratt City Blues,” “Mess, Katie, Mess,” “Lovesick Blues,” and “Lonesome Weary Blues.” “Trouble in Mind,” penned and composed by Jones, has endured the test of time via covers from such artists as Ruth Brown, Nina Simone, and Jerry Lee Lewis. Hill recorded with Thomas A. Dorsey on “Weary Money Blues” and “Christmas Man Blues.” While in Chicago, she performed with Joe “King” Oliver at the Plantation Café. The Elite No. 2 Club in Chicago was another night spot where she performed.
Hill married and had seven children. Around the finale of the Harlem Renaissance, she took time off from her career and did not return to performing until the late 1940s. She was hit by a car in 1950 and died.—Sarah-Anne Leverette
HITE, MATTIE [MATIE HITE, NELLIE HITE]
(c. 1890–c. 1935) Blues singer, cabaret singer
Mattie Hite’s history beyond her performance is sparse. She was born in New York City and thought to have been the niece of Les Hite, a 1930s saxophonist and big-band leader, and to have recorded under the name Nellie; some say this might have been her sister. Hite was known for her emotion-fraught renditions, risqué style, and performance of “St. Joe’s Infirmary,” which broadened the scope and opportunities for black female singers. Her popularity grew with her emotion-packed rendition of “St. Joe’s Infirmary,” the story of a dead lover, a tune later popularized by Cab Calloway.
Hite moved to Chicago for a brief period around 1915. She performed at the Panama Club and worked with such performers as Florence Mills and Alberta Hunter. She returned to New York City in 1919, and performed in cabarets and revues, both on Broadway and off. In 1921, she began her recording career on Victor Records with Julian Motley, but the recording was not released. Hite recorded with Fletcher Henderson in 1923, on the Pathe label; in 1923–1924, on the Bell label; and in 1930, with Cliff Jackson for the Columbia label. In spite of her innovative contributions, she was not financially successful; however, her voice has recently appeared on reissues and collections, for instance, the multivolume set The Female Blues Singers (vol. 9, on the Document label). This selection includes a cut of “St. Joe’s Infirmary (Those Gambler Blues).” Her last known performance was in New York City at the Lafayette Theater in 1932; little is known of her whereabouts after this.—Helen R. Houston
HOLIDAY, BILLIE [ELEANORA FAGAN]
(April 7, 1915–July 17, 1959) Jazz singer, composer
Billie Holiday
Even though she was a child during the 1920s heyday of the Harlem Renaissance, Billie Holiday emerged as a major jazz talent during the 1930s. Her earliest musical influences were Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong in terms of developing her unique singing style.
Born as Eleanora Fagan in either Philadelphia or Baltimore, Holiday’s father, Clarence Holiday, had been a guitarist and banjoist with Fletcher Henderson, another Harlem Renaissance musical figure who contributed to the careers of Bessie Smith, Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, and other artists as a pianist, arranger, and bandleader. Her mother, Sadie Fagan, was not married to Clarence when their daughter was born, but they did marry for a brief period during her early childhood.
Holiday spent the remainder of her childhood in Baltimore with other relatives while her mother sought domestic work in Philadelphia and New York. Holiday also did domestic work, babysitting, errands, and other odd jobs, but she was placed in juvenile detention for frequent school absences and suffered the trauma of rape before reaching her teenage years. Even with these early hardships, she developed an interest in music and singing after hearing the music of Smith, Armstrong, and others on a Victrola (early record player) while working as a maid in a brothel.
In the late 1920s, Holiday’s mother sent for her to come and live with her in Harlem; however, she had given up domestic work to become a prostitute. Both Holiday and her mother were arrested for vagrancy, a charge often associated with prostitution, in May 1929. While her mother was eventually released, Holiday was given a short prison sentence before the pair moved to Brooklyn. She then started working as a singing waitress in 1930, and gave herself the stage name “Billie,” after Hollywood actress Billie Dove, while her mother returned to domestic work.
After an unsuccessful audition at Harlem’s famed Small’s Paradise nightclub, Holiday eventually became a featured singer at other venues, including Covan’s, Mexico’s, Pod and Jerry’s, and the Hot Cha Restaurant. Around this time, she was introduced to such drugs as marijuana, yet she continued to draw attention for her singing talent. In 1933, the music entrepreneur John Hammond became interested in furthering Holiday’s career, which led to her first recording session with a small band led by Benny Goodman. His black pianist, Teddy Wilson, would play on and produce a number of important recordings for Holiday in later years.
The following year, she met saxophonist Lester Young, who became such a dear friend and musical collaborator that she later nicknamed him the “Prez” (short for president) of the tenor saxophone. Young had also played with Fletcher Henderson, and he and Holiday would later team up as members of the Count Basie Orchestra, as well as on other performances and recordings. He was also credited with giving Holiday her famous nickname, “Lady Day.”
In 1935, Holiday made her debut performance at the Apollo Theater on 125th Street, and after this success she became a national sensation, crossing the “color line” to tour as featured vocalist with the white Artie Shaw Orchestra, yet reacting strongly when she was exposed to racial discrimination, as well as other hardships, when the band toured in the South and other areas that supported segregation. The singer also appeared with Duke Ellington in the short film Symphony in Black, and her idol, Louis Armstrong, in the musical Stars Over Broadway.
Holiday’s successful records with Wilson led to her own contract with Vocalion in 1936, and even provided her with the opportunity to record with her father on at least one occasion. In late 1938, Holiday opened at Café Society, and the next year she recorded the controversial and daring song “Strange Fruit” for Commodore Records, whose lyrics describe a lynching in the South. The song was later noted as the greatest jazz vocal recording of the twentieth century in a poll conducted by National Public Radio. In the early 1940s, Holiday continued to work with other great jazz musicians, namely pianist Art Tatum, trumpeters Roy Eldridge and Buck Clayton, vibraphonist/bandleader Lionel Hampton, and saxophonist/trumpeter/arranger Benny Carter during the heyday of New York’s West 52nd Street as “Swing Street” and the “Jazz Capital of the World.” She also had affairs, brief marriages, and other problematic relationships with other men she encountered in the world of entertainment and nightlife.
Holiday’s drug addiction intensified, as she also became a heroin user in the early 1940s, and after her mother’s death in 1945. Some years earlier, an argument with her mother regarding money prompted Holiday to say, “God bless the child that’s got his own,” which she later turned into a composition that became one of her most famous songs. Except for a few true friends, Holiday was on her own in dealing with her problems and addictions (which also included heavy drinking), yet she was somehow able to continue performing at major events, including the Esquire Magazine Jazz Concert, Jazz at the Philharmonic, and performances at New York City’s Town Hall. In addition, she recorded for such labels as Columbia and Decca and appeared in another film, New Orleans, with Louis Armstrong.
Her romantic relationship with musician and fellow drug user Joe Guy led to Holiday’s arrest after a performance at the Earle Theater in Philadelphia in May 1947. Guy betrayed her to the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and had legal representation to secure his release, but Holiday was sentenced to prison at the Federal Reformatory for Women in Alderson, West Virginia, where she remained incarcerated until March 1948. Her conviction also resulted in the loss of her New York City cabaret card, a legal work permit for entertainers, which further jeopardized her performing career.
Supporters rallied behind Holiday after her release in March 1948, as she scored critical and commercial successes with a sold-out concert at Carnegie Hall later that month and a reunion with the Count Basie Orchestra at the Strand Theatre, but she was forced to travel to other cities for nightclub work until her New York City work privileges were reinstated. In 1949, Holiday was again arrested for narcotics possession while working at a club in San Francisco; however, she was later cleared of the charges.
As the 1950s began, Holiday was dropped from Decca, and she recorded for the Clef and Verve labels. Some music critics thought that her voice had been ruined by her alcohol and drug abuse, while others said that her artistry and interpretation of the songs and music reflected the realities of her life and transcended any technical limitations in her singing voice. Holiday persevered despite her personal issues and health problems, and achieved her dream of performing in Europe during a 1954 jazz tour of Scandinavia, Germany, Holland, Belgium, France, Switzerland, and England, including an appearance before thousands at the Royal Albert Hall in London.
She returned to the United States to perform at the first Newport Jazz Festival during the same year and received an award from DownBeat, the nation’s top jazz publication. Holiday’s personal life included the publication of her life story, Lady Sings the Blues, with author William Duffy in 1956, and a relationship with Louis McKay, who helped bring some stability to her life. Holiday married McKay in Chihuahua, Mexico, on March 28, 1957, and later that year, she reunited with Lester Young for a memorable television performance of the song “Fine and Mellow” as part of the CBS production The Sound of Jazz.
In 1958, Holiday completed an album entitled Lady in Satin, with a full orchestra led by Ray Ellis. Lady in Satin became one of her all-time best-selling recordings, and she made another brief European tour but was unable to complete what would have been her last public performance at the Phoenix Theatre in 1959, after attempting two songs. On May 30 of that year, she was admitted to Harlem’s Metropolitan Hospital, where she died on July 17. A requiem mass was held for her at New York’s St. Paul Roman Catholic Church on July 22, 1959. Her final album, Last Recordings, was released after her death.
Holiday’s last accompanist, pianist Mal Waldron, is one of many artists who have recorded musical tributes to Holiday in the years since her death. Singer/actress Diana Ross portrays Holiday in the 1972 film also titled Lady Sings the Blues and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. Poems by Harlem Renaissance author Langston Hughes (“Song for Billie Holiday”) and Frank O’Hara (“The Day Lady Died”) were among the first of many literary tributes to the late singer and composer, including a critically acclaimed stage play, “Lady Day at the Emerson Bar and Grill.”
Other posthumous awards and recognitions for Holiday include the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987, and an official U.S. postage stamp in 1994, fitting tributes to a woman who overcame an ongoing series of issues, challenges, and tragedies to achieve lasting fame and iconic status in the world of art, music, entertainment, and culture as arguably the “greatest female jazz voice of all time.”—Fletcher F. Moon
HOLLOWAY, LUCY ARIEL WILLIAMS [ARIEL WILLIAMS]
(March 3, 1905–1973) Poet, musician, educator
The Harlem Renaissance was enriched by the work of such poets as Lucy Ariel Williams Holloway, who, like countless other black female poets, had their works showcased in the journals Opportunity and Crisis. Holloway also shared her talent as a music teacher with black students in the South, where she taught for a time.
Holloway, also known as Ariel Williams, was born in Mobile, Alabama, to H. Roger Williams, a physician, and Fannie Brandon Williams, a teacher. She graduated from Talladega College in Alabama in 1902, and received a bachelor of music degree from Fisk University in Nashville in 1926. She then studied at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and received a second bachelor of music degree, with a major in piano and a minor in voice, in 1926. She did further study at Columbia University.
While a senior at Fisk, Holloway received fleeting national attention when she published the dialect poem “Northboun’” in Opportunity magazine’s 1926 contest; she was cowinner of the first and second prizes for writing. The poem was later published in anthologies by Countee Cullen, Arna Bontemps, James Weldon Johnson, and others. Holloway was director of music at North Carolina College for Negroes (later North Carolina Central University) from 1926 to 1932. She also taught music at Dunbar High School in Mobile from 1932 to 1936, Fessenden Academy in Florida in 1936–1937, and Lincoln Academy in North Carolina in 1938–1939. Fessenden and Lincoln were both under the auspices of the American Missionary Association. Holloway was the first supervisor of music for the Mobile Public School System, from 1939 to 1973. In addition to teaching, she was a pianist and gave local performances in Alabama. Lucy married Joaquin M. Holloway in 1936, and they had one child.
During the Harlem Renaissance, Holloway contributed to numerous periodicals and anthologies. Five of her poems were published in Opportunity, the official publication of the National Urban League and one of the leading journals that published works by and about African Americans during the Harlem Renaissance, between 1926 and 1935. Her works also appeared in Countee Cullen’s Caroling Dusk (1927) and James Weldon Johnson’s Book of American Negro Poetry (1922). In 1955, Holloway published Shape Them into Dreams: Poems (1955).—Jessie Carney Smith
HOLT, NORA [LENA DOUGLAS]
(1890 or 1895–January 25, 1974) Music critic, teacher, singer
Nora Holt
Nora Holt became one of the pivotal figures of the Harlem Renaissance. Through her scholarship, writings, and commitment to making music a key component of African American culture, she was one of the great proponents of musical excellence, and her social connections made her a celebrity during the Harlem Renaissance era.
Born Nora Lena Douglas in Kansas City, Kansas, Holt was the daughter of the Reverend Calvin N. Douglas, a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and Gracie Brown Douglas. She enjoyed a good deal of freedom during her childhood, and her parents encouraged her pursuit of music. Following high school, Holt attended Chicago Music College, where she earned her bachelor of arts in 1917, and her master of arts in 1918, making her one of the first African Americans to earn a master of music degree. While she studied for her master’s degree, she began writing music reviews for the Chicago Defender, a post she would hold from 1917 until 1921. In 1919, Holt cofounded the National Association of Negro Musicians (NANM). This organization was dedicated to making concerts and recitals necessary parts of the Harlem Renaissance movement. NANM was geared toward developing talent in young musicians and promoting African American musical expression. The organization was successful, expanding to more than twenty branches by the 1930s. In 1921, Holt edited and published the magazine Music and Poetry. The magazine gave her the space she needed to work on some of her own compositions, as well as highlight outstanding young, black artists. Holt worked to make African American music an institution, rather than a passing trend.
In New York City, Holt was known on the social scene for her sensual singing, platinum blonde hair, and love life. She married at least five times, and her affairs offered good sport for gossip columnists. Of all her marriages, the one with the wealthy Joseph L. Ray on July 29, 1923, attracted a good deal of attention. In photographs of that wedding day, Holt is wearing six-carat diamond earrings from her husband, and a black eye, rumored to be from her lover Gordon Jackson. The marriage to Ray lasted nineteen months, and their divorce was feature news for the tabloids.
Holt was one of the principal socialites of the Harlem Renaissance. Of all her friendships, the one she formed with Carl Van Vechten contributed significantly to her overall legend and legacy. The two first met in a Harlem speakeasy, and they went on to become lifelong friends. One of the great photographers of the Harlem Renaissance era, Van Vechten shot a series of portraits of Holt that captured her urbanity, sophistication, and beauty. At parties hosted by Van Vechten, she was known for offering a particularly sensual rendition of “My Daddy Rocks Me (with One Steady Roll),” a song that had been popularized by blues legend Trixie Smith. While more a critic and scholar than singer, Holt possessed good skill and virtuosity, and her performances were always playful. Her performances were also important in bringing the music of the Harlem Renaissance to social circles that perhaps would not otherwise have heard those songs. Holt’s influence on the Harlem Renaissance was so notable that she appears in Van Vechten’s 1926 novel Nigger Heaven as the character Lasca Sartoris, a beautiful and wayward young woman. This depiction added to the image of Holt as a modern woman.
Holt was actually anything but wayward. She was a serious scholar dedicated to the craft of music and cultural expression. Despite the attention she received in the gossip columns, she sought to live life on her own terms—and she did, enjoying a broad range of freedom and always exercising her intellect for the greater good. By 1937, having experienced firsthand the jazz and blues of Harlem Renaissance musicians, Holt moved to Los Angeles, where she taught music in public high schools until 1943. For a short stint, she also owned a few beauty parlors in Los Angeles.
When she moved back east, Holt became the first music critic for the New York Amsterdam News, and she wrote music reviews for the publication from 1943 until 1956, as well as for the New York Courier. In 1945, she was elected as a member of the New York Music Critics Circle. She remained one of the most influential advocates for African American artists, hosting and producing radio shows that highlighted emerging black musicians. When her voice was first heard on the air as she interviewed young musicians, she became one of the earliest black women to host a radio show.—Delano Greenidge-Copprue
HOPE, LUGENIA BURNS
(February 19, 1871–August 14, 1947) Organizer, activist
Lugenia Burns Hope, an activist and reformer, exemplified just what an effective community organizer could accomplish. Her commitment, actualized during the Harlem Renaissance era, resulted in many positive changes for the African American citizens of Atlanta, and it was a model of resistance against segregation and racism.
Hope was born Lugenia Burns on February 19, 1871, in St. Louis, Missouri, and her family later moved to Chicago as a result of difficult financial times. Hope had to quit school and work full time, which fostered her involvement in such community organizations as Kings Daughters and Hull House in Chicago. She continued her education by attending the Chicago Art Institute, the Chicago School of Design, and the Chicago School of Business, before meeting John Hope in 1893, marrying him in 1897, and moving to Nashville, Tennessee. Both John and Lugenia taught at Roger Williams University in Nashville.
After a year in Nashville, John and Lugenia moved to Atlanta, where John took a position with Atlanta Baptist College (later Morehouse College). John eventually became president of Atlanta University, the first black graduate school in the United States. Lugenia continued her community work, using the strategy of first discovering what the community needs were, in particular the West Fair neighborhood near the college. After sending Morehouse students door-to-door gathering information, she was able to secure space from the college to provide the community with childcare facilities, kindergartens, and recreational facilities. The core group of this effort became the Neighborhood Union, with Hope at the helm as chairperson from 1908 to 1935.
Hope’s organization worked with other groups, including women’s clubs and church groups, to address discriminatory practices and provide needed services that were unavailable to blacks. During World War I, the Neighborhood Union served African American soldiers through the Young Men’s Christian Organization (YMCA), but in 1920, Hope led a campaign against the YMCA for its segregation practices. Hope also collaborated with the Association of Southern Women against Lynching. In 1924, also under her leadership, the first African American high school in Atlanta and first public housing in the United States for African Americans were established. As her organization grew in accomplishments and prominence, Hope’s leadership became nationally known, and many of the innovative practices served as examples for other groups seeking reform and access. Hope’s prominence resulted in an appointment to President Herbert Hoover’s Colored Commission in 1927, and in 1932, she was selected as the first vice president of the Atlanta Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In this role, she introduced citizenship schools on voting and the constitution that were later utilized throughout the various branches of the NAACP.
Hope was a tireless activist and social reformer who became leader of the first female-run agency for the enhancement of the African American community in Atlanta. In her later years, and after the death of her husband in 1936, she experienced poor health. She moved several times to be near family and died of heart failure in Nashville, Tennessee.—Lean’tin L. Bracks
HORNE, LENA [LENA MARY CALHOUN HORNE]
(June 30, 1917–May 9, 2010) Singer, actress, civil rights activist
Lena Horne
Lena Horne began her career as an adolescent performer at the Cotton Club, Harlem’s most prestigious nightclub during the Harlem Renaissance. She went on to achieve enormous fame as a mainstream celebrity.
Horne’s beginning in life was fraught with difficulties. She was born Lena Mary Calhoun Horne in Brooklyn, New York, on June 30, 1917, to Edna and Edwin “Teddy” Horne. The couple divorced during Lena’s early childhood. Her father eventually moved to Seattle, Washington, and remarried; her mother struggled as she pursued her dream to be an entertainer and make a home for herself and her daughter. For much of her childhood, Horne was shuttled from home to home throughout numerous states, including New York, Georgia, and Florida (Miami). She lived intermittently with her father’s parents, in foster homes, with an uncle who was dean of students at Fort Valley Normal and Industrial School, and with her mother. Her grandparents, Edwin and Cora Horne, provided a stable life and exposed Horne to a comfortable lifestyle. Their light skin color (a product of racial mixing), education, economic standing, and manners planted them firmly in the community of blacks known as the black bourgeoisie or black elite. Cora participated in many African American organizations, for example, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Urban League, and the National Association of Colored Women. These groups promoted racial uplift and equality and protested racism and discrimination.
The stability Horne experienced with her grandparents was fleeting. Although her father sent her gifts and her mother promised her a permanent home, Horne periodically experienced loneliness, emotional trauma, and loss. She observed and experienced some of the indignities many blacks suffered in the racist white world. She suffered humiliation when some blacks ridiculed her for her light skin color. Even when Horne lived for brief periods with her mother, life was a desperate struggle. While Horne’s mother briefly made a meager sum as an actress working in Harlem’s famed Lafayette Theater, her dreams of stardom never came to fruition, and finding stable work was an ongoing trial. Nevertheless, Horne’s fate turned when her mother married Miguel Rodriguez, a Cuban. Horne finally found a permanent home with her mother and stepfather in New York City.
Work was still hard to come by for Horne’s parents. With not enough money to provide for the necessities of life, a decision had to be made. Either at Horne’s insistence or her mother’s, Horne was sent to the Cotton Club to audition for the covetous role as a chorine, also known as a chorus girl, in 1934. Although Horne discloses in her autobiography that she thought she did not sing or dance well, she had had some grooming. During her childhood, she had received dance lessons and some exposure to acting. Moreover, at a mere sixteen years of age, she was pretty, slender, and young. As it was widely apparent, Cotton Club dancers had to adhere to stringent rules: They had to be beautiful; at least five-feet, five inches tall; thin; and twenty-six years of age or younger. The young women also had to be light-skinned. The restrictions reflected the intensely discriminatory definitions of the ideal woman. The color restrictions spoke specifically to the color barriers that existed in mainstream society and the African American community. To Horne’s surprise, she was added to the Cotton Club’s payroll despite the fact she was underage and felt that she was without talent. Her employment with the club fulfilled the immediate need for financial support, as well as Horne’s ambitions for stardom.
Entrance into the star-studded Cotton Club was a stupendous achievement. Founded in 1923, by Owney Madden, an Irish gangster, the club was one of a handful of white-owned Harlem nightclubs that primarily catered to white audiences. The few African American customers that were allowed inside sat in the back of the room; the rest of the blacks worked as performers and waiters. The Cotton Club featured the chorus girls and other entertainment, including solo and group acts, singing, and comedy and dance routines. Such legendary band conductors as Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington set the bar high for fashion, music, and charisma. The dancers were notorious for their beauty, glamorous but scant wardrobes, and elegant dancing. Horne’s voice may have lacked maturity and skill, and her dance routines sometimes foundered, but the audience and management adored her.
Working at the Cotton Club was not easy. The obvious discriminatory practices at the establishment were generally not addressed by the African American stars, but it offered steady pay, recognition, and prestige. Menacing-looking mobsters sat in tables among the well-to-do, the occasional celebrity, and the predominately white clientele. Horne was sheltered from the myriad grown-up influences and potential harm by her ever-present mother and the other performers; however, the young performer had to work long and grueling hours and endure poor working conditions. The dancers had to share a cramped dressing room, and they were forbidden from using the nightclub restroom.
The difficulties of working at the Cotton Club were compensated, in part, by the money that Horne made and the opportunities that came her way as a result of her nightclub experience. She won a brief appearance in the movie short Cab Calloway’s Jitterbug Party (1934) and the role of a victim of a voodoo sacrifice in Dance with Your Gods (1934).
The following year, Horne left the Cotton Club. She sang and danced with Noble Sissle’s dance band, one of the hottest African American orchestras in the nation. Sissle helped groom Horne’s talents. Voice and dance lessons would play an important part in transforming the inexperienced Horne into a tremendous talent. Until then, Horne would have to endure many more trials and difficult times.
Horne was not an overnight success. Although she appeared to be a rising star, her status did not shelter her from hard times and discriminatory treatment. In 1937, she married Louis J. Jones. The marriage produced two children, Gail and Edwin “Teddy,” but the union was rocky from the start. Horne was ill-prepared for her new role as wife. Cooking, cleaning, and bending to the will of a demanding husband was new territory for her. Adding to her woes was the fact that her husband, like many African American men, had trouble finding work and respect in the white-dominated world. When Horne returned to her former employment as an entertainer, tensions mounted in the marriage. The couple eventually divorced in 1940, after a long separation, and the children were split. Jones kept their son, while Horne raised their daughter.
As she forged ahead, Horne broke new ground for African Americans in the industry and helped challenge the way African American women were depicted in films. Her work included singing, dancing, and acting in the all-black musical The Duke Is Tops (1938), as well as the Broadway musical Leslie’s Blackbirds (1939). In 1940, she sang with an all-white band, Charley Barnet’s Band. That same year, she worked in the Café Society Nightclub, an integrated club.
More opportunities awaited Horne in the 1940s. In 1942, she recorded her first album, Moanin’ Low. In the same year, she moved to Hollywood and signed on with the film giant MGM. She appeared in such classic films as Cabin in the Sky (1942) and Stormy Weather (1942), and mainstream magazines like Time and Life. Few African American women of her time received as much exposure in mainstream society. In the media, she was depicted as beautiful and talented. In many of her films, she took on roles that defied the mammy stereotype to which black women were usually relegated.
In the latter half of the decade, Horne performed for U.S. troops. She especially enjoyed performing and mingling with the all-black troops. In 1947, she married Lenny Hayton, a Jewish composer and conductor for MGM.
The 1950s were productive despite the fact Horne had been blacklisted for alleged association with Communism. She toured the nightclub circuit in the United States and Europe. She recorded four albums in 1957. Also in 1957, her name was removed from the Hollywood blacklist.
In successive decades, Horne climbed the heights of success and took part in civil rights activism. She appeared in television specials and programs and films, performed concerts, recorded albums, and received several honors. One of her most memorable roles was as Glinda the Good Witch in the musical film The Wiz (1978). Based on the American classic The Wizard of Oz, The Wiz recasts the film with black performers and soulful music. Other memorable moments included the times she made guest appearances as herself on such popular black television sitcoms as Sanford and Son (1972–1977) and The Cosby Show (1984–1992).
Amidst Horne’s busy schedule, she took time to get involved with the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. She met with civil rights leaders and was outspoken in her support of black equality. She participated in the March on Washington in 1963, and lent her voice and influence at civil rights rallies.
In the years following the movement, Horne remained a tour de force in popular culture into the new millennium and a symbol of pride for African Americans. She was ninety-two years old when she died.—Gladys L. Knight
HOUSTON, VIRGINIA A.
(?–?) Poet
Virginia A. Houston’s work was a regular presence in Crisis and Opportunity magazines from 1929 and 1931, but little is known about her life. Her work was highly respected because of its technical sophistication and sensitive presentation. Her content often criticizes black characters who disrespected themselves and denied their heritage, as she describes in her poem “Troubadour,” published in the July 1930 edition of Crisis. Houston’s poetry was also selected by Beatrice M. Murphy for her anthology of young Negro poets, Negro Voices, published in 1938. Late in life, Houston is known to have lived in Cleveland, Ohio, and she worked for the social service area of the city police department.—Lean’tin L. Bracks
HOWARD, GERTRUDE
(October 13, 1892–September 30, 1934) Actress
Gertrude Howard was an actress during the 1920s and 1930s, during the era of the Harlem Renaissance. She transcended boundaries as an African American actress, appearing in several predominately white films. Controversially, she was often cast in stereotypical roles that reflected the unequal social status of African Americans in mainstream society.
Born in Hot Springs, Alabama, on October 13, 1892, Howard appeared on Broadway in The Wife Hunters in 1911. In 1919, she moved to Hollywood to work in the world-famous film industry that was dominated by whites, necessitating African Americans to create their own film companies featuring all-black casts. Howard, however, broke through the barriers, appearing in a long list of films. She portrayed Aunt Chloe in Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1927). She also appeared as Queenie in Show Boat (1929), as well as in Hearts in Dixie (1929). Her character Beulah in I’m No Angel (1933) was a popular archetype that depicted African American women as the submissive mammy figure. The mammy figure, which originated during slavery times, was based on the African American women who were forced to care for the children of middle-class and upper-class white families. The figure, however, is problematic because the caricature is based on the presumption that these women were docile and content in their role as caretakers and in their inferior status to whites.
The problematic roles notwithstanding, Howard established a career that was available to few African Americans. She paved the way for others, for instance, Hattie McDaniel, who made their mark in the film industry. Howard died in Los Angeles, California.—Gladys L. Knight
HUNTER, ALBERTA
(April 1, 1895–October 17, 1984) Singer, composer, nurse
When the Harlem Renaissance reached full bloom in the 1920s, Alberta Hunter was already a seasoned performer and peer of such artists as Bessie Smith and Ethel Waters, as well as a survivor of a variety of hardships. Born in Memphis, Tennessee, as the second child of Charles E. Hunter, a sleeping-car porter who abandoned his family shortly after her birth, her mother, Laura Peterson Hunter, a domestic worker, resorted to work as a maid in a brothel to support herself and two daughters, including Alberta and older sister La Tosca.
The early life of Hunter became more complicated when her mother remarried between 1906 and 1907, as Hunter gained a stepfather and much younger stepsister. Hunter disliked the rest of her family, but she hated her stepfather, in particular, because he was abusive to her mother. Hunter was also sexually abused by the white boyfriend of their family’s white landlady and a black school principal. As a result, the future singer and composer became fiercely independent and aggressive, protesting her treatment by becoming disinterested in her personal cleanliness and appearance. She was eventually given the nickname “Pig.”
Hunter was offered the opportunity by one of her teachers to move to Chicago, with her mother’s permission. She did not ask her mother and left her hometown while still a teenager. Another woman she knew from Memphis helped Hunter get domestic work at a boarding house in the Hyde Park neighborhood, where she earned six dollars a week. Hearing that singers could make as much as ten dollars a week, she started looking for opportunities to perform, despite her inexperience. Several months later, she started singing at a brothel called Dago Frank’s, even though she only knew two songs when she was first hired.
By 1915, Hunter had sung at several other Chicago clubs and cabarets, and she reestablished a relationship with her mother when she came to Chicago to live with her. At the Panama Club, a top Chicago nightspot similar to the Cotton Club in Harlem, as it featured black entertainment for white patrons, Hunter became a popular attraction. She was one of the first to sing Maceo Walker’s “Sweet Georgia Brown” and W. C. Handy’s “St. Louis Blues,” and she later worked with such notable jazz musicians as trumpeter and bandleader Joe “King” Oliver and pianist Lillian “Lil” Harding Armstrong.
Hunter continued to enjoy success in Chicago by being very professional in her “show business” affairs and discreet in her personal life and relationships, but she also wanted to establish herself in New York. In May 1921, she made her first recording with the city’s Black Swan label, but she switched to Paramount the next year because she felt Black Swan favored Ethel Waters. She recorded her original composition, “Down Hearted Blues,” for Paramount, but it became an even bigger hit when recorded by Bessie Smith. Hunter received little (if any) compensation as composer of the song.
Despite their rivalry, in early 1923, Hunter appeared with Waters in a short-lived show called Dumb Luck. After a brief return to Chicago, Hunter returned to New York in April to open a new show known as How Come? at the Apollo Theater (then located at 42nd Street and Broadway). She settled permanently in New York and continued to work in revues and vaudeville on the Keith Circuit, which allowed her to tour less frequently and record for Okeh after she was dropped from Paramount for contract violations. Hunter’s presence on the Harlem scene led to associations with personalities the likes of Langston Hughes and A’Lelia Walker, but she also traveled to Europe in the late 1920s, where she performed in Paris and then London, where she worked with Noble Sissle and costarred with Paul Robeson in the touring production of the landmark musical Show Boat.
Hunter’s popularity began to decline during the 1930s, but she continued to perform in New York on the stage (in Mamba’s Daughters, with Ethel Waters) and radio, as well as record for Decca with Lil Armstrong. She also traveled to perform in major European cities, including Amsterdam and Copenhagen, as well as Paris and London, until the onset of World War II. During the war, she performed in parts of Asia with a USO tour and received the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Ribbon for her services.
Hunter continued to write religious and secular songs, and in 1952, she became one of the first of her race and sex elected to membership in the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers. She also went on another USO tour to Europe, Korea, Japan, and Okinawa during the Korean War era; continued to work in New York on Broadway and in clubs; joined a Colored Methodist Episcopal church, as it was known then, which met in the former Lafayette Theater; and continued to share a New York apartment with her mother until Laura’s death in January 1954.
Hunter then retired from show business to volunteer at a Harlem hospital; reported her age as being twenty years younger to qualify for a nurse training program; received her license as a practical nurse in 1957; and worked for twenty years until being “forced to retire” in 1977, at the age of eighty-two. Later that year, pianist Bobby Short invited her to appear at an event for another veteran singer, Mabel Mercer, which led to her rediscovery by the entertainment world and a personal “renaissance” as an acclaimed performer and celebrity in her last years, with numerous live and television performances at such venues as Cookery nightclub, Carnegie Hall, and the Newport Jazz Festival. She traveled to Europe and Brazil and even made a return to her birthplace in Memphis. In addition, she appeared on the Today Show in New York City,
In 1980, Hunter received the Handy Award as Traditional Female Blues Artist of the Year, but health problems forced her to retire from public performance in 1984. On October 17 of that year, she was found dead in her apartment. According to her wishes, she was cremated and interred next to her mother at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.—Fletcher F. Moon
HUNTER, JANE EDNA HARRIS
(December 13, 1882–January 19, 1971) Organization founder and director, nurse, black women’s rights activist
The plight of black women during the Harlem Renaissance was a tenuous one. Jane Edna Harris Hunter’s efforts to improve the lives of these women during that era was most noticeable in her work in the nursing profession and her success in bringing about complete integration of the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) for the benefit of black women.
Born in Pendleton, South Carolina, Hunter was the daughter of sharecroppers Edward and Harriet Milner Harris, who lived on the Woodburn plantation. After her father died when she was ten years old, her work as a live-in nursemaid and cook became necessary. She had preferred to continue her education at that time. She did so later and graduated with the equivalent of a secondary-education diploma from Ferguson-Williams College in Abbeyville, South Carolina. Jane married Edward Hunter, who was forty years her senior, but never let the loveless marriage deter her from pursing nursing training. She worked in Charleston and then enrolled in Cannon Street Hospital and Training School for Nurses. In 1904, she pursued advanced training at the Dixie Hospital and Training School for Nurses at the Hampton Institute (later Hampton University) in Virginia. A year later, Hunter relocated to Cleveland, Ohio, where she was once again forced to work as a domestic servant due to racial segregation in health care facilities. Still later, she was hired as a private duty nurse and masseuse for Cleveland’s wealthy families.
Hunter’s mother died in 1910, before the two could reconcile differences they had experienced early on. Hunter had been troubled by her own racial heritage (her father was the son of a plantation overseer and a black woman) and the snobbery she witnessed as a child when skin tone made a difference in her own church. Hunter finally accepted her background and began to devote her life to supporting the needs of black women. She called together eight of her friends who a similar backgrounds, and they founded the Working Girls’ Home Association, with Hunter as president. These women already belonged to the YWCA. The organization flourished and, in 1912, became the Phillis Wheatley Association to honor black poet Phillis Wheatley. It offered employment services and training in various professions to black women, and between 1913 and the 1960s, thousands of women lived there and received training. After moving to larger and larger quarters, the organization finally erected an eleven-story building. The association became a model for self-help groups through the United States.
In 1925, after completing studies at Cleveland Law School, Hunter passed the Ohio bar and then used her legal training and superb fund-raising skills to enhance other programs for black women. In addition, she became involved in real estate, stocks, and the black-owned Empire Savings and Loan Company. Hunter’s book A Nickel and a Prayer (1940) recounts the stages that led to the founding of the Phillis Wheatley Association. She officially retired in 1947 and, in 1960, moved to a rest home, where she died.—Jessie Carney Smith
HUNTON, ADDIE D. WAITES
(June 11, 1875–June 21, 1943) Activist, educator, organization official, clubwoman
During the Harlem Renaissance, Addie D. Waites Hunton was a staunch crusader for the advancement of the black race, particularly the causes of black women. Like several of her black female contemporaries, for instance, Elizabeth Ross Haynes, she worked through the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) and the National Association of Colored Women to achieve her goal.
Born in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1875, Hunton was the daughter of Jesse and Adelina (Lawton) Waites. Her father was the successful owner of a shipping business. After her mother died while Addie was still a young child, she lived with a maternal aunt in Boston. In 1899, she became the first African American woman to graduate from Spencerian College of Business in Philadelphia. For one year, she taught school in Portsmouth, Virginia, and then moved to Normal, Alabama, where she continued to teach and also became principal of State Normal and Agricultural College (later Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical State University). In June 1893, Addie married William A. Hunton, who had moved to Norfolk to become the first black professional youth secretary of the Colored Men’s Department of the International Committee of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA). The couple relocated to Atlanta and began their family of four children.
Addie worked at local Clark University and traveled with William when he attended YMCA conferences. This brought her some attention in the YMCA. She began to speak out publicly against racial segregation and wrote articles on black women’s issues. Violence in the area, including the Atlanta riot of 1906, left the parents anxious about the family’s safety, and they left for Brooklyn, New York, that same year. Addie was appointed secretary to the YWCA’s National Board in 1907, and she took tours of the South and Midwest in 1907–1908, during which she conducted a survey for the organization. From 1907 to 1910, she and her children studied in Europe. When she returned home, she continued her work with the Y and studied at the College of the City of New York. After her husband died in 1916, Addie worked in Brooklyn canteens as a volunteer to aid black soldiers. She joined two other black women—Helen Curtis and Kathryn Johnson—who were invited to France as YWCA workers, but they were assigned to supply units rather than the fighting units that they preferred. While there, Hunton offered a literacy course and discussion programs on race leaders, art, music, religion, and other subjects to the men who felt the sting of isolation and racial segregation practices in military service.
After returning home in August 1919, Hunton devoted the remainder of her life to matters of race and African American women. She and Kathryn Johnson coauthored Two Colored Women with the American Expeditionary Forces (1920), which reveals the racial segregation that black soldiers and black female volunteers experienced in France. She also held leadership positions on many national boards and in numerous organizations, among them the Council of Colored Work of the YWCA National Board, the International Council of Women of the Darker Races (president), and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (vice president and field secretary). Hunton was a founder and organizer of the National Association of Colored Women and a staunch suffragist. Her other writings include a biography of her husband entitled William Alphaeus Hunton: A Pioneer Prophet of Young Men (1938).
Hunton’s last known public appearance was at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, where she presided over a program honoring outstanding women of her race. She died in Brooklyn of complications resulting from diabetes.—Jessie Carney Smith
HURST, FANNIE
(October 1889–February 23, 1968) Novelist, short story writer, activist
Fannie Hurst was a prolific and highly successful author of Jewish descent who championed African American writers and causes as early as the Harlem Renaissance. The daughter of Samuel and Rose (née Kopel) Hurst, she was born in Hamilton, Ohio, and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, where her father was a shoe manufacturer. Hurst graduated from Washington University in 1909, and she moved to New York the following year to pursue a writing career. Although she married pianist Jacques Danielson on May 5, 1915, the couple maintained separate residences, and Hurst did not publically reveal her marriage until her fifth wedding anniversary. Hurst continued to use her maiden name, and she was determined that marriage would not interfere with her professional life.
Hurst’s career as a writer was characterized by longevity, popularity, and wealth. She published eight collections of short stories (1914 to 1937) and eighteen novels (1921 to 1964). More than twenty films (1918 to 1961) were based on Hurst’s narratives. Imitation of Life (1933), one of Hurst’s most popular novels, was adapted for the screen in 1934, and starred Claudette Colbert, as well as African American actresses Louise Beavers and Fredi Washington. In the book and film, two widows earn a living and raise their daughters, yet Peola, the African American daughter, abandons her mother and passes for white. Among the most prominent responses to the novel and/or film by Hurst’s African American contemporaries are Sterling Brown’s “Imitation of Life: Once upon a Pancake” (1935), which faults Hurst for her inclusion of stereotypical images, and Langston Hughes’s “Limitations of Life,” a satirical skit that was performed at the Harlem Suitcase Theater. The 1959 remake of the film features a white actress as Peola. By the end of the 1920s, Hurst received as much as $4,000 per short story, and her first novel, Star-Dust: The Story of an American Girl (1921), commanded $50,000 for book, film, and magazine rights.
Hurst used her celebrity status to encourage African American writers (including Zora Neale Hurston and Dorothy West) and to support their causes. When she served as a judge for Opportunity magazine’s writing contest in May 1925, she met Hurston, who was awarded two second-place prizes and two honorable mentions. While attending Barnard College, Hurston worked briefly as Hurst’s secretary, as well as her chauffeur and traveling companion. More than a decade later, Hurst wrote the introduction to Jonah’s Gourd Vine (1934). Three years later, Hurston wrote “Fannie Hurst: By Her Ex-Amanuensis,” which appeared in an October issue of the Saturday Review of Literature. After Hurston’s death in 1960, Hurst’s “Zora Neale Hurston: A Personality Sketch” was published in the Yale University Gazette (1961). Hurst was a member of the Writers’ League against Lynching, which was founded in 1933; the Board of Directors for the National Health Circle for Colored People; and the National Urban League. In a 1934 meeting of the New York Urban League, she advocated the use of federal funds for housing improvements in Harlem, and on August 4, 1946, her New York Times article, “The Other and Unknown Harlem,” sought to dispel misconceptions of residents after the Harlem Riot of 1943.
Although Hurst was a feminist and social activist, writing remained her passion. Her autobiography, Anatomy of Me: A Wonderer in Search of Herself (1958), was published six years after the death of her husband. At the age of seventy-seven, Hurst was working on manuscripts until a brief illness claimed her life.—Linda M. Carter
HURSTON, ZORA NEALE
(January 7, 1891–January 28, 1960) Folklorist, playwright, short fiction writer, essayist, novelist
Zora Neale Hurston
The author of four novels, two books of folklore, several short stories, essays, plays, and one autobiography, Zora Neale Hurston holds a place as one of the Harlem Renaissance’s most talented and productively diverse writers, offering audiences an in-depth look at folk life. Although most of her work was published after the period, her most influential texts appeared during the heart of the movement, and she was certainly one of the most prolific women of the time period.
Hurston was born to Reverend John Hurston and Lucy Potts Hurston on January 7, 1891, in Notasulga, Alabama. In 1894, the family moved to Eatonville, Florida, an African American town near Orlando; this setting became a central character of many of her works from which she drew her personal experiences and situations she witnessed.
As the second daughter of eight children, Hurston’s childhood was surrounded by a large family, and her parents were important figures in the community—John Hurston served as Eatonville mayor and Lucy Hurston as a schoolteacher. Zora attended Hungerford School and later a boarding school in Jacksonville, Florida, until the death of her mother in 1904. Her father remarried six months after becoming a widower, which Hurston disapproved of immensely. After her mother’s death, Hurston moved from relative to relative; this wandering may have contributed to the nostalgic picture she paints of Eatonville, Florida, in many of her texts. She once joined a Gilbert and Sullivan troupe as a personal maid, developing her love of the dramatic arts. The troupe ended in 1916, and Hurston grounded herself in Baltimore, enrolling in Morgan Academy (now Morgan State University). After graduating in 1918, she entered Howard University, became a member of the Howard Players, joined Alain Locke’s literary club, and was a regular member of Georgia Douglas Johnson’s literary salon, along with many other writers who would make up the younger generation of the New Negro writers.
At the encouragement and support of Locke, Hurston became a known figure during this time through her award-winning short stories. Her first, “John Redding Goes to Sea,” appeared in Stylus in 1921; set in Florida, Hurston shows the beginning of her talents with dialect that she would continue to use throughout her writing career. “Drenched in Light” (1924) appeared in Opportunity and won second prize; it was in 1924 that Hurston was persuaded to move to New York, at the height of the Harlem Renaissance. The following year, she was once again an award recipient for her work “Spunk,” also appearing in Opportunity and reprinted in Locke’s anthology The New Negro (1925). Spunk Banks is a bold character who bullies and humiliates the mild-mannered Joe Kanty by parading in public with Mrs. Lena Kanty, Joe’s wife. When Joe finally takes a stand, Spunk fatally shoots him, but soon thereafter, he suffers an accident at the sawmill. Hurston also enrolled in Barnard College on scholarship and studied anthropology under Frank Boas; in 1928, she was the first African American graduate of the institution. In 1927, Hurston married Herbert Sheen, a fellow Howard student, but they divorced in 1931.
“Sweat” (1926), published in the one issue of Fire! A Quarterly Devoted to the Younger Negro Artists—a literary magazine that Hurston coedited—is one of Hurston’s frequently anthologized short stories and often considered her finest short piece. Delia Jones is a God-fearing woman in an abusive marriage. Her husband Sykes torments her with snakes in hopes of getting her to leave their home, leaving Sykes to do as he pleases with his mistress. As Sykes’ abuse increases, Delia’s resolve to not be moved is also strengthened. Divine justice delivers death to Sykes through a rattlesnake bite meant for Delia, and he is all the more aware that she refuses to assist him to his last breath. Also in that issue, Hurston published a one-act play, Color Struck: A Play.
In need of financial support from 1927 to 1931, Hurston accepted the patronage of Charlotte Osgood Mason (called “Godmother”), a wealthy woman in New York, but the conditions included control of how Hurston’s research would be used. Also during this time, she collaborated with fellow period writer Langston Hughes on the dramatic comedy Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life, based on Hurston’s short story “The Bone of Contention.” Disagreement regarding the content caused their split as friends and working partners. Hurston eventually wrote a new version of the play, which led to arguments about authenticity and authorship. The play was not produced until 1991, at Lincoln Center.
Another popular story, “The Gilded Six-Bits” (1933), published in Story, examines a young married couple almost destroyed by a slick newcomer in town. Joe and Missy May are young and in love, satisfied at first with just one another and their clean, small home, but when Otis Slemmons comes to town and opens an ice cream parlor wearing a fancy suit and sporting a “solid gold piece” on his watch chain, both Missy May and Joe are seduced by his charms and pretty words, changing their definitions of success and happiness. Missy May is soon discovered with Slemmons when Joe comes home early from work; although Slemmons is chased away, the marriage is strained, and the couple begins to look at each other differently. When Missy May discovers she is with child, her fears of losing Joe increase all the more. The two find their way back to one another through the strength of their love, the hope in the future represented in their child, and the realization that the “solid gold piece” was, in fact, gold-plated. The story drew the attention of an editor who asked Hurston if she had a novel in the works; she immediately began working on her first book, even though she had reassured him that she had one already completed.
Jonah’s Gourd Vine (1934) is Hurston’s first published novel; the text is loosely based on the tumultuous marriage of her parents and the philandering ways of her father. The novel offers a glimpse inside the struggles and triumphs of African American families in postslavery, early migration from places of birth to begin anew, and the birth of all-black townships and what would eventually be called the “New Negro.” John Buddy Pearson, the protagonist, is a larger-than-life character in love with Lucy Potts, an upper-class girl who inspires him to better himself. From different backgrounds, John and Lucy marry despite the disapproval of her parents. John’s biggest flaw is his inability to control his wandering eye and stay faithful to his wife. The couple and their three children relocate from Alabama to Florida as a means of beginning anew—John finds his calling as a preacher and leads Zion Hope Church, with Lucy as first lady. His leadership skills also move him into the role of mayor of the all-black town of Eatonville, with the support and advice of his wife, but her sudden death weakens his resolve and he soon succumbs to his previous negative ways. When his reputation is lost, he turns to a former lover for support and remarries; this union ends in divorce, and John also loses his church position. The novel ends with a third marriage, another adulterous encounter, and John’s death by train accident.
Mules and Men (1935), Hurston’s first published book of folklore, solidified the author as versatile and enmeshed in folklore. Her mentor and anthropology professor at Columbia University, Frank Boas, supported her work as a unique contribution and new voice in the discipline. Hurston’s approach of a nonjudgmental persona as narrator allows the reader to enter into a world perhaps unfamiliar with a personable guide. The text is divided into two sections—the first in Florida and the second in New Orleans. The narrator returns home to Eatonville and neighboring Polk County to collect tales of Brer Rabbit and Brer Bear and set them to print before they are lost to the world. The collection includes seventy folktales as cultural artifacts. In section two of the text, the narrator journeys to New Orleans in hopes of collecting information on hoodoo, and with the assistance of Luke Turner—nephew of Marie Leveau, hoodoo priestess—she completes a personal initiation by lying face down on a snake for sixty-nine hours. This section also includes rituals for the reader’s interest, including how to get a man and how to keep a husband faithful. Hurston’s text was criticized by some as more fiction than folklore, but it also helped present her as an authority on African American folk life. Ultimately, this is the first book of folklore by an African American author, and its success propelled Hurston into demand by other anthropology scholars.
In 1936, Hurston received a two-year Guggenheim Fellowship, with which she traveled to Jamaica and Haiti for further research on diasporan folklore and voodoo. It was during this time, in a seven-week stint, that Hurston wrote what is considered her best and perhaps most important work: Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), her second novel. It explores the journey of Janie Crawford from young girl to woman and her desire to establish a voice and live her dreams. Raised by her aging grandmother, Nanny understands the life of black women as akin to the life of a mule, she explains to Janie; she longs for her granddaughter to have a different experience, one that she believes will come with marriage and protection. Janie instead believes that marriage should be like the honeybee pollenating the pear blossoms—a partnership for mutual fulfillment. But Nanny’s fears force Janie into a marriage with Logan Killicks, who is considerably older and a property owner. Despite protests, Janie acquiesces to the doomed marriage and allows Nanny to die in peace. The union is uneventful, with Janie relegated to the kitchen and house and Logan taking care of the farm, until he purchases Janie a mule of her own with which to plow alongside him. Janie quickly realizes that this does not fit her dreams, and she is easily persuaded to abandon that life and join fast talker and big dreamer Joe Starks, who is on his way to help start up the all-black town of Eatonville.
For Janie, Joe represents newness and the New Negro, leaving behind what Nanny wanted for her. Joe does indeed live up to his ego—becoming mayor and opening a general store and post office—but he also relegates Janie as part of his conquests, separating her from the community as Mrs. Mayor Starks. Joe strips her of any developing identity, silences her in public, and also insists that she cover her hair. He establishes himself financially, and they are able to live comfortably for many years. But his aging body and failing health make him insecure around his much younger wife, and he soon becomes verbally and eventually physically abusive. Janie refuses to continue her submissive role and finally matches his personal insults in front of the townsfolk, which then forces Joe into hiding and hastens his inevitable demise. Janie plays the grieving widow for a respectable amount of time but quickly moves on, taking charge of the store her husband left behind.
Reluctantly at first, Janie allows herself to be courted by Tea Cake, a much younger man who comes closest to Janie’s vision of the bee and the pear tree blossom. Although the townspeople suspect that he is simply after her money and she is acting like a foolish old woman, Janie boldly decides to move with him to the Everglades and work as a migrant worker. Her change in appearance suggests a newfound sense of freedom—free-flowing hair and overalls—but their union is marred by an incident of domestic violence in which Tea Cake hits her, an act he justifies as necessary to prove a point to others. Their union is nonetheless presented as passionate young love. In an attempt to survive a powerful hurricane, Tea Cake is bit by a rabid dog while protecting Janie and thereby goes mad despite medical attention. Janie must shoot and kill him in self-defense and is acquitted of the devastating act against her lover. The novel ends with Janie’s return to Eatonville, walking proudly in her overalls and unencumbered hair; she confidently tells her life story to her best friend Pheoby and is not concerned with the busybody talk of others. She has developed an authorial voice and is satisfied with her life as she looks out on the horizon.
Tell My Horse (1938) is Hurston’s second book of folklore—the culmination of her research in Jamaica and Haiti—and was not as favorably received as the first. Criticism of the text included that it contains too much political commentary and history of the islands in the first two-thirds; the latter third presents insight into voodoo practices in Haiti and descriptions of zombies. The text was successful in England.
In 1939, Hurston published Moses, Man of the Mountain; the biblical tale of Moses and Exodus always appealed to the African American community because of the experience with slavery and later Jim Crow segregation and the ultimate triumph of the oppressed. Going against the popular notion of the time, Hurston rewrites Moses as African and ultimately as a great conjurer. Here, Hurston is able to combine her talents as a fiction writer and folklorist. Moreover, she incorporates humor into the tale, further connecting the plight of the biblical Hebrews to the African American experience.
Hurston’s Dust Tracks on a Road (1942) chronicles her life through her fifties but begins in her beloved Eatonville, not her birthplace Alabama. The omission of her actual birthplace begins the illusion of revealing herself to the reader. She expresses a desire to explore the world and support herself as a writer, and she has much to say about love, religion, race, and politics. Although the original edition omits chapters that the publisher determined to be irrelevant to her life story, a more complete version of her memoir was published in 1955. Such a decision was perhaps an attempt to conform the text to the more traditional linear format. But as had already become Hurston’s style, the text is nontraditional, blending folklore, essay, and narrative. As the title suggests, the text explores Hurston’s journey from child to woman and the paths along the way. Once again, Hurston received mixed reviews; white critics gave favorable critiques, and the Saturday Evening Post awarded her the Ansfield-Wolk Award and $1,000. Black intellectuals were critical of the racial views she espoused and the omissions of the struggles of black life, and many claimed she was pandering to a white audience. New readings of the memoir have determined Hurston to be an expert at disguise and the text as an attempt to find an authorial voice as a black female writer.
Seraph on the Sewanee (1948) is Hurston’s final published novel and, although set in Florida, it departs from her traditional theme of African American communities and folklore; this novel explores white Florida “crackers,” descendants of the original pioneer settlers, and she attempts to show similarities between white and black Southern culture. Arvay Henson is a shy and emotionally dependent young woman who falls for Jim Meserve, a town newcomer whom she marries under duress even though Jim is condescending about Arvay’s background. They relocate to pursue citric farming and are prosperous; their first-born son, Earl, is born mentally challenged, and in a tragic sequence of events, Earl (as a teenager) sexually assaults a local girl, hides in the swamp, and is fatally shot by his father. Earl’s death leaves Arvay devastated and withdrawn for many years. Jim, unable to accept her passive state, leaves the marriage, which thereby propels Arvay to return to her roots, a process through which she comes to appreciate her background and gains a self-confidence that has been missing all along. Only then can she and Jim reconcile and redefine their relationship.
During that same year, Hurston was indicted for allegedly committing immoral acts with a ten-year-old boy; the accusation was proven groundless, but having to defend herself caused the author to withdraw from society. In the 1950s, much of her productivity was spent on conservative political essays published in the Saturday Evening Post, American Legion Magazine, and Negro Digest. Her most caustic essay was against the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, published in the Orlando Sentinel, in which Hurston argues that desegregation would harm the study of black culture.
With her health failing, Hurston suffered from hypertension and had a stroke in 1959, which left her debilitated. She died in Fort Pierce, Florida, and is buried in an unmarked grave in the segregated cemetery of Garden of Heavenly Rest. As her work was reexamined, she became recognized as a leading female figure of the time; in 1973, Alice Walker marked her gravesite with a stone that reads, “A Genius of the South.”—Adenike Marie Davidson