Jean Yellin lecture, "Bibliography Problems With the Harlem Renaissance," at the University of Iowa, August 1970

Speaker 1: The following is a lecture by Jean Yellin, delivered at the 1970 Institute of Afro-American Culture held on the campus of the University of Iowa. The institute held August 9th through the 21st, focused on the culture of Black America, commonly referred to as the Harlem Renaissance. In this recording, Jean Yellin, Assistant Professor of English at Pace College in New York speaks on Bibliography Problems with the Harlem Renaissance. Jean Yellin: I'd like to begin by quoting the introductory words of a paper which you're no doubt familiar with, written by Abraham Chapman called the Harlem Renaissance in Literary History and published in CLAJ in 1967. He says "If I had to base my discussion of Negro Renaissance in literary history and the evidence to be found in the general and standard literary histories uses textbooks and reference works in the colleges today. My task would be very easy indeed. I could summarize my findings by saying that the general American literary histories with very rare exceptions, do not recognize the existence of any flowering of Negro expression, or any Negro literary movement or they have noticed, a student running across a reference to the Harlem Renaissance might conclude after checking most of the standard references, that it was all a figment of Negro imagination." Jean Yellin: That situation has not changed really at all in the three years since Chapman wrote this article, I come not to give you a resume of Chapman's unfortunate unhappy findings, but to carry this one step further, you can't write a literary history until you've assembled the literary materials and the process of assembling the materials involves the compilation of bibliography as all of us who have tried to put together a course, know only too well. And so what I've tried to do is find the resources in literary bibliography and in reference works which are available to us as teachers, and see what could be compiled in terms of reading lists and research lists and lists to work with as we work up our courses. Jean Yellin: The word is not good. But let me start with what we know about and then get to some surprises that come. You see, I've done some of this before, and so I really wasn't surprised to find that the standard tools in American literature do not yield the information that we're searching for. For example, Chapman talks about literary history of the United States, which is the first thing we all turn to, that's available to us for a quick reference and points out that in the 1948 edition, the index which is 28 pages long, has no listing of Harlem Renaissance, or that little lock, or for that matter, even of Frederick Douglass and I don't want to extend my comments to deal with the handling of all of Black writing and culture, I will just try to focus on the invisibility of the Harlem Renaissance. Jean Yellin: The Renaissance is not only invisible and literary history United States, it's invisible in the Bibliography to Literary History United States, which we all use a standard in American literature courses. There are 12 references under the topic Negro writers in writing and then when they revised in 1959, they have Bone and Whitman added and that's all and the next revision in 1963 yields nothing further. So we say, well, LHUS is really outdated. And they really weren't looking at things in the way we look at things and so you start going to the working materials of the trade. Jean Yellin: And well, I turn next to Lewis Leary's contemporary literary scholarship, a critical review, which was published in 1958. And which purportedly is an informal discussion of trends. In the study of literature over the last 30 years, it's presented as a guide to teachers. We find the section and surprisingly, written by Leslie Fiedler, on American literature, nowhere mentions the Black man as a writer or the American Negro theme. You can go to our WB Lewis's essay on contemporary American literature, and you can't find anything and then you go in desperation to the index just wildly looking for the most noted Black writers in America, for instance, right in Ellison, and you can't find them listed in the index. Jean Yellin: So you decide, okay, that's not going to work. And you turn to all tick and write, a selective Bibliography for the study of English and American literature. You probably have the book. It's a standard handbook and you try and use it and you can't, there is no Black literature here. There is no Harlem Renaissance here. There are no... this is a guide book to reference works and there's no way to get there using this. I brought some of the books with me because last year, I lectured assuming that everybody had the books and they didn't and they want to see them. So whatever fit in my suitcase, I brought and I have a few of them with me. Jean Yellin: If you then turn to Jones and Ludwig, which is another standard guide to American literature and its background since 1890. And you say, well, good, this is going to be 20th century, his has got to deal with the Renaissance. But no, it doesn't. Even if you go through the code words that you quickly learn that is, you know you can't look up Black and you know you can't look up Afro-American I mean, that's not going to yield anything. So you try Negro and that doesn't work. And then you start trying code words like miscellaneous, or like other, or like special, and you just go, right? Jean Yellin: And sometimes you find things sometimes you do not. In this case, I really thought I had something, I knew that the handling of Negro letters was while, this is the handbook for at one point. The Black man is a region in the United States. They do Eastern, Midwest, Northern Southern Negro at one point in their frantic attempts to figure out how to handle this body of material, but they are equally interesting as they apparently try to approach the whole Renaissance. I had thought I had found it, you see if you look under... How do we do this? Jean Yellin: Now, if you look under American literature from 1920 to 1963, World War I and its aftermath, the 20s you find a topic that says the revival of the exotic, which sounds like we might be getting somewhere, and then you turn to page 178 and you find James Branch Cabell, John Erskine, Hergesheimer, Robert Nathan, Dorothy Parker, Carl Van Vechten, but not Niger Heaven, and Elinor Wylie. And that's the revival of the exotic in the 20s. You go to [Goethes], now I'm being unfair to [Goethes] because I don't have the new edition which is a 1970 copyright, and haven't seen it Jean Yellin: I only have the second edition, which is probably what most everybody's using, with the '63 copyright. [Goethes] handles this somewhat better in a topic he calls Literature On or By Racial and Other Minorities. And here he does list works by Porter, [Loggins, Nelson, Butcher], Saunders Redding, Whiteman, Bone, Gloster and [Isaacs]. Now this is really much better coverage than any of the other handbooks have indicated. However, something wild happens when he has a section called Studies of 20th Century Literature. And we find the Chicago Renaissance and The Fugitives. And we don't find the Harlem Renaissance, he does not include a subject index and so that would not be appropriate to look for here. If you go to what is another absolutely standard thing, I didn't bring it with me, Lewis Leary's articles on American literature 1900 to 1950. And this is one of the first things that teacher in American literature turns to looking for critical materials. Jean Yellin: There is a subject heading Negro, with cross references to several headings which start out special-special-special. And under this subject heading, we find 86 References. 86 References covering a 50 year period of American thought and criticism on American writers. Astonishing. And the references include one article from The Crisis in 1946 and one article from Opportunity in 1948. And that's it. There isn't any Harlem Renaissance. Jean Yellin: The same kind of thing happens even more dramatically when you turn to Marshall an Analytical Index to the Journal American Literature, the first 30 volumes March 1929 to January 1959. There is a subject index, there is no Harlem Renaissance though there is the Hudson River School. There's no Langston Hughes, there's no Alain Locke there's no James Weldon Johnson name your own caste, they're not there. If you go to the PMLA Bibliography, in the last couple of years, some interesting things start happening. And I don't want to bore you. But I checked through this for a few years. And I started only in 67. Because I know the story before that. Jean Yellin: In 67, and no, that's three years ago. They're only. Let's see, there's a thing called 20th century and then miscellaneous critical discussions on the literature of the 20th century. One fourth of these articles have Black themes. That's very high. But there isn't a single thing on the Harlem Renaissance. There's one reference to Countee Cullen, nothing to Du Bois, one reference to Langston Hughes, nothing for Johnson, nothing for Locke, nothing for McKay, one for Toomer. There is no critical material listed here. Jean Yellin: You go to 1968. And you find many fewer articles. Actually, the reason there were so many in the 67 listing is the anchor and beyond had come out and they listed each article separately. So it looked like a lot, right? In 68, under general miscellaneous discussions of the 20th century, three out of 32 deal with Black themes, one of them is Chapman's article showing that the Renaissance has been ignored. There's one article on Cullen, two on Hughes, characteristically one of them not in English, there's been a great deal of critical work as those of you who are specialists in Hughes know, in other languages two on Johnson, nothing on Toomer, nothing on Locke, nothing on McKay and so on and so on. Jean Yellin: The following year, there are six miscellaneous articles, eight on Hughes, one on Du Bois, one on Johnson, one on Toomer. And in '69, which is the most recent, while there are 11 miscellaneous articles on Black themes and literature, not one deals with the Harlem Renaissance. The same kind of thing happens When you go to American Literary Scholarship An Annual, those of you who deal with materials know that this does come out year after year. I've checked through from '63 on. They have bibliographic articles from CLAJ, since CLAJ started publishing, however, they started handling Black letters under miscellaneous category for the first couple of years. And after that they had a section they called Mostly Ethnic that yielded four articles and that's all. No Countee Cullen, no Du Bois, no Johnson, no Locke, no McKay, no Toomer. I don't want to go through this over and over, you get the picture. Jean Yellin: However, in the 1966 volume, they include Countee Cullen in their discussion of 20th century poetry up until 1930. They include nothing about the fiction of the Renaissance however, in their discussion of fiction for the same period. And in the most recent one that I have, which is '67, and I think they're behind in getting them out, or else, they don't want me because I pay my money. Speaker 3: [crosstalk]. Jean Yellin: [crosstalk], they have done something quite different. They are now including Black writers of the Harlem Renaissance period in their general period discussions. This is I think the first time they've done this, they have an article from CLAJ on the Renaissance and the discussion on 20th century fiction, and an article from CLAJ, and an article from the Journal of Negro History on the renaissance in their poetry discussion. And the CLAJ article in their drama discussion, now I'm listing this very carefully because I want you to see this doesn't mean that professional journals and white journals are suddenly starting to carry articles on these authors. This means that a Black literary journal is now carrying articles on these authors. Jean Yellin: We are still not finding this listing from PMLA, from American literature from American Quarterly from Texas studies in English and so on and so on and so on, I mean, you name your list and you'll see what I'm talking about. I then turn to a couple of other resources. One is Woodress's Dissertations in American Literature, 1891-1966. This is the revised edition and there is a subject heading Negro, though there is no subject heading Harlem Renaissance, and I looked up individual authors, this is dissertations and I found Hughes and Johnson though neither of the dissertations on Johnson were literary dissertations, they were political and historical. Jean Yellin: Nothing on Toomer, nothing on Locke, nothing on McKay. I looked at McNamee Dissertations in English and American Literature, Theses Accepted by American, British and German Universities, 1865-1964. And there is a chapter there on Negro literature. I am only going to cite the next reference very briefly in a previous bibliographic attempt to amass materials on Black writers. I gave up on the general American literature, resources and for a wild man moment, went to Southern literature in an attempt to find some stuff and of course, there's absolutely nothing. But that situation has changed and in very interesting way. Jean Yellin: Louis Rubin's new book, A Bibliographical Guide to the Study of Southern Literature, which is a 1969, effort includes the Negro in Southern literature and the breakdown is Negro American literature, the Negro in American literature, Negro and the literature of the South and a series of bibliographies. There is material here on Johnson and on Toomer and Darwin Turner who wrote the little section on James Weldon Johnson, points out the need for further work on Johnson. And Saunders Redding, who did the little section on Jean Toomer, points out the need for further work on Toomer. Jean Yellin: But this book presents a major breakthrough in an approach to Southern letters as being Black and white letters. That has not been the traditional approach. I'm not here to talk about the way Southern literature has seen itself. But this is merely a sidelight. Well, the question then that Chapman has raised is not only a question of the literary histories, but of the indices and bibliographies upon which these literary histories are based, and to which they turn us as teachers. We are left then in terms of standard American scholarship on American literature, with really no way of studying the Harlem Renaissance. Indeed, it was seen here to be if it all existed exactly what he suggests a figment of the Negro imagination and hoping that it was at least that substantial in indexing. Jean Yellin: I've entered to various Black bibliographic resources. And this is what I'm here really to talk to you about, because I think this is what you need to perhaps become more familiar with. I have to pick up a completely different piece of paper and turn to a completely different set of books and get out a completely different set of file cards, because the realities of American life are indeed reflected in and perpetuated by American scholarship. Jean Yellin: We then go to Black bibliography from American bibliography to Black bibliography. And here some very strange things happen. I was astonished and I think you will be too, I would first like to talk with you about very recent tools in Black bibliography. The stuff is all just out. I don't know, I hope you're familiar with Darwin Turner's Afro-American writers. I quarrel with Professor Turner about various things in his book. But this is, I think, the most useful thing that we have today. Jean Yellin: It's 1970. It's going through bibliography in language and literature. And I guess if I suggest that you get one thing and have it on your desk, so you can turn to it this is without doubt, the volume. As the title indicates, this is a listing of materials on Afro-American writers. Now, I make a big point of this because there are various ways of handling these materials and one is in terms of race of author, and this is what has been done in this bibliography. There is no Harlem Renaissance listing here. Jean Yellin: The listing is somewhat different. There's a section called aides to research, including lists of bibliographies, guides to collections, encyclopedias and references, periodicals, and so on. There's a list of materials that provide the background. And I think you'll find this useful. There's a section on literary history and criticism. And under the section, under that, called generally history and criticism, you will find listings of articles and books on the Harlem Renaissance. It is by no means complete. This is a selective bibliography. You will find material there though, and I think this is what's terribly important. Jean Yellin: I have to make a point however, as we were talking today, and as I listened to the lectures this morning, and so on, it's very evident that I'm trying to remember how you formulate, those who were I think you said at the heart of the Renaissance had one kind of tone of voice, of mode, of manner, which we understand and study as the voice of the Renaissance. But they were, of course in touch with and in argument with and politicizing against and so on their colleagues and other writers who had a slightly different tone. And so you get a novel like Plum Bun which is completely different from a novel like Home to Harlem. So and it's not just the difference of the author's it expresses, I think, a difference in ideology, and an attitude and an approach to a lot of things. Jean Yellin: Now I raised this because Jean Toomer's Cane is enjoying vogue today and I think rightfully so. But if we look up in this bibliography of Toomer, we get a somewhat strange picture. We get the listing of Toomer's works and then we get a section on biography and criticism which is extremely helpful and does include articles and that we need very badly. But we don't get for example, W.E.B. Du Bois scorching review of that novel. And we need it. I think we need it if we're going to understand the Renaissance. I don't know if we need if if we're going to understand Toomer though, I would argue with Dr. Turner that we do. But we surely need it if we're going to understand what was happening with Toomer. Jean Yellin: And the kind of controversy that appeared in the Black press and in the Black community. And so while this is by far the most single useful or useful single work that I know of, this is not a definitive bibliography. It's a selective bibliography. And Professor Turner quite rightly disagrees with Du Bois. And he didn't include the article, though he knows about it. And most people who don't include it, don't even know about it. Jean Yellin: There are some discrepancies in this bibliography I don't want to deal with. He says he's not going to deal with dissertations and blissfully he sometimes includes them. And so he does include Master's theses on Johnson McKay, Cullen and so on, which are a great help. And it's very hard to get hold of Master's theses titles and stuff. So it's a little more complete than the introduction would indicate here. Jean Yellin: There's another book that came out Chapman, The Negro in American Literature. This is the same Chapman who did With Black Voices. This is 1966. Now he excludes anything shorter than book length, which means that none of the articles and the Renaissance I would want to say, is what we'll talk about that later. I think you find it in the ephemeral pieces. I think that this is one of the reasons it's so fascinating. It's so difficult to study. It's not all cut and dried and in volumes, it's hunks of things. You have to compile them and we have compiled them. The listing of fiction is again limited to Black authors. Jean Yellin: There is a section there though, that will be of help to you and the section on Criticism, Literary and Cultural History and so on, will be of help to you here. There is some confusion you can't decide whether he wants to include all criticism by Black critics or whether he wants to conclude criticism on the Black theme by Black and white critics and that doesn't. It ends up a hodgepodge here but this is very useful and I think, can help you. The next recent publication I'd like to show is Mrs. Porter's, did she bring over bibliographies with her when she came? Did you see them over? Audience: A couple of them. Jean Yellin: The 1970 Okay, this is earlier and the earlier version, the working Bibliography on the Negro in The United States. And she does include in her list of reference tools, and she also does 1970 Master's Theses in Negro Institutions and Doctoral Dissertations. And when you're studying a field that is difficult to find materials on as this, I think that this can be a tremendous aid. This is a working Bibliography on the Negro in the United States and its Dorothy-. Speaker 4: [crosstalk] Jean Yellin: No, 1970 is the Negro in the United States Selected Bibliography. This is Xerox Corporation '69. This was a working volume actually, there's an intermediate volume. I don't know if you're aware of that. Between this and the 1970, there's one published hardcover, which is the combination of this, the 1970 Bibliography is really a separate project. She's very productive. Thank heaven, and I didn't have that one to bring you but she does include under Literature History in Criticism and Anthologies, drama, and so on and so on, poetry fiction and essays again, limiting herself with fiction to Black authors. Jean Yellin: The 1970 Bibliography by Mrs. Porter the Negro in the United States selective Bibliography, you can get for three and a quarter from the superintendent of documents. US printing office in Washington. The literature includes listing of Black authors only. It includes listing, folklore and folk tales, literary history in criticism, anthologies, essays, and addresses fiction, humor, plays in poetry, that's quite complete. But again, it's a selected bibliography and she makes the point in her introduction, that she could not deal with the Black theme in American letters, as she dealt with fiction, that she limited herself to Black authors. Jean Yellin: The next relatively current bibliography I would like to mention is Jahn, J-A-H-N. A truly dramatic undertaking by a German scholar, a Bibliography of Neo-African Literature from Africa, America and the Caribbean to 1965. I think this is a very useful tool. I had been unaware of it until this year and have worked through it a little. He organizes his materials by geographical area, which can cause some problems that is, if you're interested in the Harlem Renaissance, and you want to know about Claude McKay, you really don't want to look under Antilles to find him. But you have to. Jean Yellin: He does another interesting thing. He says that he is interested in a literary style in a tone. He says he will deal with the style of Neo-African literature, which is derived from Negro African Oral Tradition and that therefore, he will include Euro-African and Euro-American writers who use this style. Now he wrote a polemical work, a literary history in which he discusses his approach. And I'll talk about that in a few minutes when I talk about bibliographies and literary history, and defends it. Jean Yellin: And it's, of course, extremely controversial approach. But I don't think he did what he said he was going to do, because I started then looking for the white writers who were connected with the Harlem Renaissance. And they're not there. They're not in the index, Van Vechten is not in the index, and it was Du Bois, Hayward isn't in the index, and so on, and so on and so on. So I don't know if he really did what he said he was going to do. But he does list the Van Vechten Anthology and that of course, is an anthology of Black writing by of white anthologies. So maybe sometimes he did and sometimes he didn't. Jean Yellin: I do think, though, that you'll find useful materials in Jahn's bibliography. And then another very recent tool, these are all within the last five years is Earle West, A Bibliography of Doctoral Research on the Negro, 1933-1966. This is a 1969 date and Xerox got it out. And there is a section, section eight on humanities. And the subsections are literature and folklore, drama and theater, press, music, rhetoric, speech dialect, and then there's an author index. I think that you'll find this very useful. And after I examined it, it's just out, I was at the Schomburg library and yes. Speaker 5: [inaudible]. Jean Yellin: Bibliography of Doctoral Research on the Negro. Speaker 5: Is there any reason why perhaps you couldn't have this later [inaudible]? Jean Yellin: I was going to do it this morning, and I didn't know what you'd want, if you just tell me what you want, I'll have it done. Maybe afterwards, you'd like to- Speaker 5: The reference work. Jean Yellin: Sure. All the reference [crosstalk]? Speaker 5: Yes. Jean Yellin: Oh, okay. Sure. Audience: I have a list and lots of questions [crosstalk]. Jean Yellin: Actually, I didn't want to give it to the girls because they would alphabetize it, then I would have to re shuffle my cards in order to do this. Right. But I'll do it right after I'm done. This, I think, is terribly helpful. And as I said before, but I was doing that work in the Schomburg collection, I live near New York City, and I've done my research at the Schomburg very fortunate in being able to and I went up to Ernest Kaiser who can we say is the acknowledged Bibliographer. Jean Yellin: But letters and Black studies at this point, whose articles and freedom wises bibliographic articles if you're not familiar with you should become familiar with, they're extremely helpful and useful. And I said, "Who's keeping a listing of dissertation in American colleges and universities on the Negro today? Because you've seen various of the journals, journal new education did it for a long time. General Negro History did it for a while and file and picked it up. And then nobody was doing it and then West compiled all this stuff. And I said, "Who's doing it now?" And he said nobody. Jean Yellin: So think for yourself, this ends in 66, the Black studies boom was really not yet quite producing doctoral level work. Somebody has to pick up listing if work to keep current with the research going on around the country. I raised this because this is one of many problems that we face as we try to sell materials in the field. Well, yeah. Speaker 6: Isn't that sort of material contained [crosstalk]? Jean Yellin: If you can find it, dissertation abstract. Speaker 6: I mean- I'm asking is there a subject heading in the [inaudible]. Jean Yellin: I don't think there is, what I last look there wasn't, now maybe since West has... made you check it, maybe since West has done this, they've now got a sub-heading. They didn't. Also [inaudible] is one of the hardest things to work with that I've ever seen. And a little nice thin book that simply lists stuff is magnificent. And this business of yearly indices which the Black journals have carefully, carefully, meticulously done through the years trying to save this staff from complete oblivion can be very helpful. As you know if you know the annual reviews of literature about Negros and so on that have been done. Jean Yellin: American Quarterly, and American Literature used to do similar things and then they sometimes drop it and sometimes pick it up but they never had this kind of interest, which is multidisciplinary. Speaker 7: One source you may not be aware of is a bookstore in Hollywood, California called Universal Bookstore. It specializes in Black history for several years. Jean Yellin: Yes, and they're all, yes. And did Mrs. Porter gave you a list of bookstores? As I understand it, is that right? I got it when I came. Speaker 7: One of the former owners is preparing a bibliography that will include something like 20,000 titles all in Black fiction, [inaudible] it was supposed to have done year or so ago and I have not ordered or requested. He said he had copied his completed- And I'll have copies [crosstalk]. Jean Yellin: What's his name? Speaker 7: I don't have it right now. [crosstalk]. Jean Yellin: That would be very helpful I would think to great many people. This has been another terrific problem. The bookstore listings. The reason Mrs. Porter handed that to you was, that's been one of the most fruitful places which shows you where it's at. I mean, American scholarship has not done the job. I want to turn to a few older tools, a little older, because I think that you might want to hear about them. You might be familiar with them. Welch's introductory book, The Negro in the United States, the research guide, is a useful introductory volume I did not bring Salk's book. Jean Yellin: Would it? No here it is. A Layman's Guide to Negro History and there's a revised edition of that out. Now well she includes a section called the Negro in the Arts. There's interment mention here of the Harlem Renaissance. And the Harlem Renaissance is listed three times in the index, which the way things go is really good. He mentions locks new Negro, and he mentioned something about Burlington, and he mentions locks the legacy of the ancestral arts. Jean Yellin: And you know that that's just a beer beginning of awareness of this movement. So while you'll find some interesting help here, you won't find the help I think you have every right to expect. So the book is entitled A Layman's Guide and it makes no pretension to being a scholarly work, however, I think in the Revised Edition is '67. I think that you'll find it very useful as a kind of Handbook. And if you need to look things up, and also you'll find a section on the cultural contribution, listing literature, poetry, art theater, and then an additional listing in the back adding to that. Jean Yellin: The nice thing about Salk's book is it's compact and it's unpretentious. He doesn't say he's doing a scholarly job. He says it's introductory and it indeed is. I also should mention Dorothy Homer's the Negro in the United States. New York Public Library listing, which includes listing poetry, drama and fiction, and it was revised in '68. I think that's very elementary kind of listing, but it's always bibliographic and I guess I should mention it. Jean Yellin: And then Elizabeth Miller's, the Negro in America, now, I think that's on everybody's shelves in every college library. And if you read the first page, you see that she concentrates on works published between 1954 and 1965. And if you go to the section on literature and folklore, you find no subject indices. You find weird annotations from time to time, you find no distinction between folklore and polemic. And theme and Black authors are not indicated. And genre and period aren't always distinguished. And in all, I found less than six references to the Renaissance. And none of them direct references to the Renaissance. Jean Yellin: What I'm trying to suggest is that that book is Harvard University Press and so magnificently well, and everybody thinks when he's got on the library shelf, it means that he has something that's going to help him. And Ernest Kaiser I think did very well with this in his criticism in freedom ways published in 63. I'm sorry, published in 66. It's called recently published Negro reference and research tools. Now I know of no other article and please if you know, let me know. And let us all know. Jean Yellin: Attempting to evaluate the materials that are coming out. Nobody's doing it and you know, as teachers that you need it to be done, you can't turn to your professional references they're of no use. And then you get this massive material that calls itself new and well done and very slick coming out in Black studies in various aspects and you really don't know what's what. He deals with Salk, which he feels is a good beginning. He deals with Welsh who he finds uninformed and suggests very properly that handbooks should not be a first work, but the combination of a life's work and that there are Black scholars around who spent a lifetime and could have provided more helpful book. Jean Yellin: He deals with Miller whom he finds not only uninformed but biased and he points out that she will include references of articles that Langston Hughes wrote, for example, The Nation but leaves out the ones he wrote for The New Masses. And he says very properly, this is not, you know how we play the game. He talks about the reprinting of works basic bibliography, and we will talk about that later, if you wish, it was an impetus to Black letters in this country and a reaction to the fact that there was a beginning of activity in the '20s. And we'll talk about that and he talks about Spangler. I think that you'll find it a very helpful article. And at this point, I should also mention, I guess, his article on the literature curl, which appeared in freedom ways in '63. And it deals with the '20s. Speaker 8: That reference, I didn't hear it at all. Jean Yellin: Oh, I'm sorry. Speaker 8: [crosstalk]. Jean Yellin: I mentioned Monroe Work's classic work, and I'm going to talk about that later. So I just mentioned it very briefly, what Kaiser does in his recently published reference tools, what he does is compare the shallowness, the recent materials with the life work of a man like Monroe Work, who publish a basic resource, yes. Speaker 8: Is that article that you just mentioned the Ernest Kaiser one called the Literature Harlem, is that reprinted in that paperback called Harlem, a Community in Transition? Jean Yellin: It's another version. Yeah. Speaker 8: The different version. Jean Yellin: Well I haven't done a, line by line, but it's essentially a draft of the same material. So what he does is discuss current writers of the '60s and discuss the writing of the '20s and relate one to the other. It is not an article on the Harlem Renaissance, but it deals in very informed way with the Renaissance and in many exciting ways I think, tries to make the parallels that we all feel are there and some of the distinctions that we feel are also there. Jean Yellin: There are a lot of things, some of the ideas I'm going to give you later, are Ernest Kaiser's ideas. We talked about this talk last week and, I think that I feel very inadequate bringing you these materials because I bring them to you having talked to a man who has spent 40 years of his life, seven days a week, 14 hours a day dealing with materials. And he really knows them and where you find yourself disagreeing, you find yourself disagreeing in interpretation. But there is simply no question that along with Dorothy Porter, he is the authority in the field. So I'm just carrying the message. Jean Yellin: If I go back to the '50s, and to the materials that came out after the war, I may be dealing with things that you do have in your library, and I'm sure that you're aware of the New Negro Thirty Years Afterwards and the bibliography of Alain Locke's writings contained at the back of this, and when Sterling Brown's essay in that volume, so I just call it to your attention. I'm sure that you have talked about it and we'll talk more about it. And also Maxwell Whiteman's The Century of Fiction by American Negros, which was published in '55. And, with all its inaccuracy is an indispensable book. The bibliography is organized author by author, but he includes chronology and once you include chronology, we can center in [inaudible] period and start to pick up what we want. Jean Yellin: I also see Xeroxed and have here, some kind of bibliographies that you might want from the bulletin of bibliographies, one by [Kessler] called American Negro Literature, a Bibliographic Guide. It is annotated. It's organized by author and the journal is indicated there. Jean Yellin: The Urban League has gotten out a series of things called Selected Bibliography on the Negro and they're not terribly helpful in literature, but they might have something that you don't find somewhere else. And they keep revising the latest revision there, I think is '58. It's not a completely professional job. It was simply an organizational attempt to keep up with some of the information. That's not true, however, of a book that nobody seems to know very much and that is extremely helpful. Jean Yellin: Thompson and Thompson Race and Region, a Descriptive Bibliography. It's Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press 1949. Now that's going back. But I think that if we are trying to figure out ways to organize the materials so that we can use them. We have to look at various attempts and I'm going to deal with that later. But you know, that for example, if you just go author by author, you lose the Renaissance, it somehow slips away between the people. And if you just go in terms of literature, you lose the Renaissance, because as you've pointed out, it had to do with graphic art and it had to do with sculpture. Jean Yellin: And if you just deal with literature and painting, you lose it because it was actually on the stage. And if you just deal with that, you lose it because it was a music, and it has to be handled in an interdisciplinary fashion, or we don't see it. Similarly, it was an international movement, right? People from various places participate. So if you just do national bibliographies, that doesn't work. Similarly, it involved and engaged both Black and white artists and Black and white audience. And so if you just handle it from one side, as foolishly, this reference does or just from the other is still losing it. And we, in our little categories can't seem to encompass this phenomenon. Yes. Speaker 9: [inaudible] information, did the Europeans do a better job at this earlier. In other words, [inaudible] '47 and '49 on up. Have they done a more thorough job with bibliographical listings and whatnot? Jean Yellin: I think Jahn's bibliography is an earnest attempt and a new way of looking at this but he doesn't do what he says he's going to do. Speaker 9: But this is just very recent? Jean Yellin: I know of no systematic bibliographies compiled by European scholars on American letters or on Black letters that go back. They're doubtless awesome, let me just say my guess is yes. And this is what it's based on. I did some work at one point on a short story by Melville. And what finally struck me was the blindness of American literary critics who I thought would not see, chose not to see the references to Black slave interactions that were contemporaneous with the material. And I couldn't understand how they would choose, for example, in dealing with Benito Cereno, to take the naming of the ships San Dominick and the dating, which was I don't know, 1799 and not come up with Santo Domingo. Jean Yellin: I mean, how can you do that? And they didn't, they came up with the said, Dominican monks. And the whole thing and they said, well, the date is a mistake. There's no reason for the change in date, but he's really evoking ecclesiastical imagery here, and on and on and on, which is really fascinating but seems very circuitous way of dealing with the story about a slave revolt, written in the decade before Civil War. And I found in German criticism. They said, Well, obviously he's referring to Santa Domingo. And there was no problem and so my guess is that European critics can see this and deal with it, but I don't know anything about the bibliography says they've compiled, do you know anything about it? Jean Yellin: I would just like to mention two articles both by the same man, John Lash. And the interesting thing about these is that he published them both in '46-'47, and one was published in the Journal Negro Education. And one was published in the Bulletin Bibliography. And you find references to the one that was published in the Bulletin Bibliography, but nobody mentions the one that was published in the Journal of Negro Education. And I raised this to suggest that a great deal of work was done and was published in Black journals and was neglected and ignored by the literary professional. Jean Yellin: And that one of the things we can do is go back and discover the work that has been done and save ourselves some time and give some honor where honor is due to unsung scholars who did it all. Not for promotions, because nobody was promoting. And not for jobs because nobody was giving jobs, but who did it because they thought they should do it. Lash's bibliography is, I think very helpful. Both versions of it. The one in both in the bibliography is simply broken down author by author, which is a very conventional way. But the one in Jounal of Negro Education he really tried to figure out useful ways of handling the material, and he includes a section on, let's see, critical comments about Negro authors. Critical commentaries, including Negro authors, literary histories of the Negro Author, racial aspects of literature. He has many categories attempting to deal with the special nature of this material and I have those Xerox with me if anybody wants to see them. Yes. Speaker 10: Excuse me are those about 1948 or '49 though? Jean Yellin: Yeah. Speaker 10: Aren't they picked up in the Darwin Turner thing? Jean Yellin: Some are. Speaker 10: [inaudible]. Jean Yellin: There is no comprehensive bibliography. Turner says this is a selective bibliography. If you ask him what it is, he will tell you I teach this stuff. These are the materials I use. I have missed a lot. I have listed what I use because other people keep asking me what do you do? And this is a teacher's informed bibliography that he has developed through many years of teaching and it's invaluable but it is not a comprehensive bibliography. Jean Yellin: I started to list and then didn't, the special bibliographies on origin and music and I just got way in over my head. So I have a couple of listings. If anybody wants to see those, we can talk about them. And then I have of course, the very early listing see in this, it's hard to know how to handle it. Do you handle the materials, the critical materials produced by the people who were making the Harlem Renaissance during the Harlem Renaissance are as secondary or as primary material? Right? And so I'm giving you Alain Locke's things separately so that you can handle them in a very special way because I think they're very special. And I'm sure that you're aware of these, again, a Decade of Negro Self-Expression published in 1928, which includes an annotated list of books written by Negros, really from about 1914 till about 1928, and a very helpful directory magazines for 1928. Jean Yellin: And then the Negro in America, published by the American Library Association in 1933, where the Renaissance is seen as a movement. Now I stress that because in none of the materials I've presented to you, this is true. It is indeed invisible. And what Chapman has said, holds true, shockingly enough, not only in white establishment, literary tools and bibliography, but indeed in Black studies bibliography. And now I come to Monroe Work and this has been reprinted, now I asked Mr. Kaiser whether I should include discussion of [Guzman's] handbook and Murray's handbook and he said he wouldn't have it available and there's no point talking about them. So the only really old one I'm going to mention is Monroe Work's Bibliography of the Negro in Africa and America, was published in 1928. And it was reprinted in '65 by Octagon Books. Jean Yellin: And there is a section of the Negro in modern music program. The Negro on the stage, the Negro in modern art, the Negro in literature. And the book will drive you crazy if you try to use it. But it is the only listing of some of these materials. And so you'll just have to go crazy and use it. There's no other way that I know of, all of our computers and so on have not been directed toward an informed organization of this material. And so we're really not doing much better than he was doing 1928. Speaker 11: [crosstalk]. Jean Yellin: Octagon. It's interesting that if you do go to the literary histories, the Renaissance fares better than it does in the bibliographies. You do find, for example bibliographies in the back of these literary histories, and I guess I did these alphabetically because I thought that was as useful as any other way you know about Bone. And you know about Bone's discussions of the Renaissance, the Harlem School and the Rear Guard where he divides this into opposing groups. He includes a listing of novels by Negro authors and he includes periodical literature, and I think you'll find that very helpful. Jean Yellin: You're most fortunate in having had a chance to hear Professor Bontemps speak. And I think there's no question that he is the historian of the Harlem Renaissance. In Anger and Beyond, his essay, on the Negro Renaissance, Jean Toomer and the Harlem writers of the '20s is very helpful as literary history and will list a number of things that you will find, I think, most useful. But in addition, and again, I just pulled cards as I found I had made notes. He wrote an article in The Crisis in 1966, called Harlem in the 20s. Jean Yellin: And he wrote one in Negro Digest in '61, called the New Black Renaissance, where he refers to parallels between the '20s and the '60s. And he wrote something called the Harlem Renaissance [inaudible] in 1947. I can give you this stuff later.n And he wrote something called Two Harlems in American Scholar, reprinted in the Michigan Chronicle in 1945. Harlem, the Beautiful Years in Negro Digest in 1965. There are a great many short reminiscent articles that Bontemps has produced, nobody seems to have index them and compiled them. I think that this would be very useful as he publishes this ephemeral kind of stuff, when you bring it together it has substance, there's a little three page article Negro Digest, you just pick it up and throw it away after you've read it you say okay. Jean Yellin: But this is consistent enough so that I think we can say that then it will be worth your while tracking this stuff down. The classic anthology Negro Caravan, of course, includes bibliography that will be of help to you and now I'm just going to list stuff I know you know about, okay? Bontemps' American Negro Poetry, Calverton's Anthology, useful in the Renaissance. More recent Chapman's Black Voices, includes a bibliography by authors, no secondary material, no articles. He was working with the anthology as he worked out the bibliography and the restrictions stay with both Gross and Emanuel's Dark Symphony. The section on the liberal awakening includes bibliography background works, and works by individual authors and a discussion of what they call major authors, including Langston Hughes. It's pretty sad state of scholarship when you have to go, you understand. To an anthology, you don't want to write in order to find materials to work with, but that's where we are, Gross and Hardy's Images of the Negro American literature have a very good bibliography. Jean Yellin: On the other hand, if you know about the University of Chicago '66, and it's very useful. The introductory essay, however, discusses a whole series of articles by Locke, by Brown, by Bontemps, by various of the theoreticians of the Harlem Renaissance, then they don't bother to bibliograph them in the back. So as you deal with a bibliography in the back, be sure and go back to the introductory article and add the things and fill in. Jean Yellin: Then Langston Hughes and Arna Bontemps helps Poetry of the Negro, Kerlin's Negro Poets and Their Poems, which was a Harlem Renaissance publication 1923, 1935 includes discussions on the Renaissance, Alain Locke's The New Negro, which I assume I don't have to say anything about. You should however see Hayden's preface to the Athenaeum edition, I think. I didn't know whether to include Bucklin Moon's Primer for White Folks as useful here or not. But some of the selections here do reflect the Renaissance, Hughes Slave On the Block, for example, and it's an early book, 1945 to take Black writers seriously at all. And for that reason, I thought I should include it. And Watkin's Anthology of American Negro Literature which deals mainly with the writers from 1929 to 1944. Jean Yellin: So that that does fall into the period that we're interested in here. I went a little out of order, I ended up doing anthologies. I'd wanted to do literary histories because you also find the Renaissance here. Bronz's Roots of Negro Racial Consciousness, the 1923 Harlem Renaissance, these deals with Johnson, Cullen and McKay. Now this is a Master's thesis. It's a good one. But this is not, and the fact that I have to give this as a basic reference shows you the work that has not been done on Johnson, Cullen and McKay. Jean Yellin: I wish my last theses were that good, but that's what it is. It's not a full length serious study. Abraham Chapman's article that I've already referred to, then as we go to standard works in Black literature Nick Aaron Ford's, The Contemporary Negro Novel, A Study in Race Relations, where the categories are sociological rather than literary. But where the works examined include the works of Harlem Renaissance authors. And there is so little critical work done on this work that I think it behooves us to make note of what we have. Gloster's Negro Voices in American Fiction, which has a very helpful bibliography and that was republished in '65. Speaker 12: Is it a revised edition or just a-? Jean Yellin: It's just republication. And then- oh, yeah, I found these for you. [Augusta Jackson's] the Renaissance Negro Literature 1922-1929. Now this was a Master's thesis in English at Atlanta University in 1936, done under Braithwaite with the advice of Locke. It's a very interesting early handling of the material and attempt obviously by the scholarly participants and encourages of the Renaissance to show in scholarship that indeed, there was a Harlem Renaissance. There's a typescript copy of this at the Schomburg. I don't know where you can get it. But that's where I read it. Speaker 12: What's the name? Jean Yellin: It's Augusta Jackson, the Renaissance of Negro Literature. Atlanta University in made thesis in English in 1936. And then Jahn's book, which I talked about his bibliography before his book is called Neo-African Literature in History of Black Writing. And he, it's a very interesting book, and he does deal with the Harlem Renaissance. And it's a very controversial approach to everything, but I think informed and worth talking about. He must be hard at getting publisher growth press publish that. Speaker 12: [inaudible]. Jean Yellin: Neo African literature, history of Black writing, and he sees Neo-African literature you see as a style, which is an interesting notion. Alain Locke's short article, The Negro in American Literature in New World Writing, which I think is exactly the same as the thing of the Negro in American Culture [Margaret Burch's] version of Locke's work. Margolies' Native Sons, which is out '68, and reprinted '69, very brief treatment in chapter two of the Harlem Renaissance writers and a serious discussion in Saunders reading to make a public block in 1939. I think as I give you the dates, you can see what's actually happened. A lot of basic work was done early, then nothing was done. And now something's being done again. It's a great gap. Jean Yellin: Well, you ought to be able to go to find anything really important is in a specialized library in the specialized materials of that specialized library, and I was at the Schomburg. And so I was really happy because I've got the vertical files, and the files have been kept in clips since establishment of the library. And I thought, here we have it. We are in the Schomburg library named for Artie Schomburg, who falls to the Renaissance and was himself a participant in the Renaissance. Jean Yellin: Based on his own personal collection of books, and housed in Mrs. Walker's house, which is where 135th Street library is. And if you're ever going to be on historic ground to deal with the Harlem Renaissance and think that you can handle the Harlem Renaissance, that's it. And what shocked me was that it doesn't exist there either. Jean Yellin: There is no listing in the Schomburg cataloger of Harlem Renaissance. It's not a topic, it isn't real. It's not a thing. There is no listing in the vertical files at the Schomburg, you can't find it. Now, this persists in more serious indexing, which I'm going to talk about in a minute. You can find a very fruitful folder on Countee Cullen, you can find a thing called Harlem dash poetry, which is fugitive poems by various people who put Harlem as part of their title, you can find a Harlem dash theater thing, you find a excellent folder on Alain Locke, anybody who's working on Lock. Jean Yellin: You find articles on the Negro Renaissance, from the period, from newspapers, Black newspapers in New York in the period in a folder called Negro literature. You find more in a section called poets biography in a name by name, you find a lot of stuff on Ven Vechten, on Toomer on various people, but what I couldn't believe is as Chapman says this is not only a figment of the Negro imagination. It's not even a figment of imagination either, in terms of indexing and bibliography. And at that point, I started going to Black journals because I have found that anything I have been able to use, secondary references, criticism and so on, I've pretty much found in my journals. And I went to Mrs. Porter's index of journal native to Negro education the first 30 years. And there is no Harlem Renaissance and there is no new Negro and there is no Negro Renaissance, there is literature. Jean Yellin: And you can find it, but you have to go that way. It is not seen as a movement. Author by author, you can find some stuff. Those of you who are aware of Ella Yate's Index to Journal of Negro History, and by the way, a new Index to Journal Negro of History is coming out right now, and I haven't seen it, Schomburg has it on order. But I haven't seen it. Does not include Harlem Renaissance, it's a subject heading, does not include [inaudible] Negro, and so on and so on and so on. Jean Yellin: There's a section called Poets American and it's refunded. I haven't seen the new Index to Journal of Negro History. Caspar [LeRoy] Jordan's Content Analysis and Cumulative Index of Phylon Quarterly is a Master's thesis at Atlanta. That also does not index in this way. The key to it all, of course, is the index to periodicals by about Negros, which is the absolutely standard Work, which is compiled partly at the Schomburg, and partly the Hallie Q. Brown Library. And it does, it is the only listing of articles in Black journals. Jean Yellin: And since white journals and scholarly journals weren't handling any of the materials, if you're going to find anything, you've got to find it in Black journals. And then the point scholarly apparatus was not indexing and bibliographic that so you've got to go back to the indices of the Black journals in order to find anything, okay? But in the index to select the periodicals Harlem Renaissance is not a topic. And Ernest Kaiser does the index or half of it, and we had a talk and I would like to share with you some of the things he says because he's taking a very traditional approach. And if you're going to deal with the materials, you're going to have to look them up author by author, because there's no other way. You want to say something? Speaker 13: Bus is leaving now. Jean Yellin: Oh, I'm sorry. Speaker 13: Many of you arescheduled to be on. Jean Yellin: I'm almost done, you won't miss much. He really has not seen this as a movement, I think. And he's not alone. He sees it as marvelous work by individual authors. And he has very carefully preserved the materials on that. But I think if you think as you study, the Harlem Renaissance, that it indeed exists, that you have to produce materials that make it clear to the people who do the indices to the people who do the literary histories, to the people who do the bibliographies to indeed our colleagues who teach so that it becomes visible because it is not now visible. Jean Yellin: Many articles on the Renaissance and on Black writing in general, have for example appeared in Negro Digest. There isn't even an index to the stuff in Negro Digest. I started working at an index to The Crisis. And much of the material of the Harlem Renaissance first appeared in the pages of The Crisis and Opportunity. That's where Langston Hughes first published. That's where Countee Cullen first published with the [inaudible] prizes, the short stories were first published. Jean Yellin: This was a fostering of Black literary talent and Black artistic talent and so on. very deliberately done by Du Bois during The Crisis years and the reprint houses have brought out, two reprints, Arno has done one, Negro University Press has done the other, neither has an index. And so what you buy volume by volume is something you cannot work with. Jean Yellin: There is not even an annual index for the first 15 years of that journal. And you can't find anything, unless you go through page by page by page. And if you do go through page by page, you find everything. You find, I think probably every book of interest in any area internationally of Black Studies reviewed in The Crisis, in that first 25 years under Du Bois editorship, we do not even have a bibliography of Black materials for that 25 year period. But we could get what if somebody would go through the book reviews in The Crisis. Jean Yellin: If you go through the poetry, you can identify the materials and find the materials. Again and again, great, long discussions about the Black writer and his relationship with the Black community, and his relationship to white publishers, and his relationship to the African roots, and his relationship to the other Black writer and on and on, is thrashed out in polemical articles and in letters in that journal in Opportunity. We don't even have an index. Jean Yellin: We just can't see the materials here. It's very rich, but we haven't been able to use them. I think that one of the first things and there will be an index to The Crisis and it is coming out eventually, being done at George Washington University, I know of no plans to do an index for Opportunity, freedom ways, which has handled major biographical articles, by Ernest Kaiser and others in the last ten years in the field of Black studies, has no index, they're planning on an index. I think that until some of these materials start developing, we aren't going to be able to do very good work. But I would suggest to you that if you do spend the time going through Opportunity in The Crisis, you'll be convinced that there is indeed a Harlem Renaissance. Jean Yellin: It's not a figment of anybody's imagination. It may slip through your fingers as you see the abbreviated careers of people like Jean Toomer, of people like Countee Cullen, you say, oh, so early and such promise, and it's gone and it may not seem to exist, but if you look at it in its entirety, as I think you can find it in the periodicals. It's a very impressive outpouring of material. One last thing I'd like to say, I talked to Jean Blackwell Hudson, who is director of the Schomburg Library. And again, I'm merely bringing the word from somebody who knows it much better than I do. Jean Yellin: She said, it's really too bad. Everybody thinks that the Harlem Renaissance was a brief flowering, and then it was over. And everybody's kind of sad about it. And of course, she was a young, pretty girl part of that whole thing in the period. And if you can get her to reminisce and if you can get Dorothy Porter to reminisce, you'll be enchanted and delighted with the kind of things they will tell you about the various people of the period. And she says, but when I am in Africa, that's not the way the African writers talk and I transmit this to you knowing nothing about modern African literature, but she suggests that Césaire and [Damas] and the major figures in Black African writing today, openly and willingly say why we stem from the Harlem Renaissance, we know what our roots are. They are in New York. Jean Yellin: I think that once we start to assemble the materials, we'll find this growing in many directions. But it's, at this point, hard to even give the movement enough visibility to several materials to study that I'd be happy to talk with you about. Sorry I ran over. Audience: That was Jean Yellin, Assistant Professor of English at Pace College in New York, with a lecture on Bibliography Problems with the Harlem Renaissance. This presentation was delivered at the 1970 Institute of Afro-American Culture, held on the campus of the University of Iowa, August 9 through the 21st. And was recorded by the Broadcasting Service of the University of Iowa.