ABSTRACT
The Harlem School.—Before 1925 there was little in American fiction about Negro life in northern cities. But when “the peasant moved cityward” in the great sweeps of migration, books about the urban Negro multiplied. The numbers of Negroes in northern cities grew by leaps and bounds from 1916 on. Although various cities beckoned—Pittsburgh with its steelmills, Chicago with its stockyards, Detroit with its automobile factories—it was Harlem that became the Mecca for the southern Negro, the West Indian, and the African. One historian of Harlem states that it contains more Negroes to the square mile than any other spot on earth. Harlem became a Mecca likewise for white pleasure seekers from downtown and abroad, who, hunting the new thrill with the desperate eagerness of the post-war generation, rushed to what they considered a place of primitive abandon, of unfailing “joy of life.” Cabarets sprang up like mushrooms; putting on a big time became a major industry. In revolt against Victorian prudishness and repression, and machine-age standardization, writers and artists escaped to dark Harlem for vicarious joy, and discovered an “exotic, savage world,” only a nickel’s subway ride from the heart of an over-civilized city. The Harlem Boom was useful to Negro writers, who were influenced by the growing race-consciousness of the “greatest Negro city in the world.” Some accepted the downtown version of pagan Harlem as gospel, others put in disclaimers, but all made eager contact with the literary world.
