LibGuides: Harlem Renaissance: Primary Sources

Primary Sources

Primary sources were either created during the time period being studied or were created at a later date by a participant in the event being studied (as in the case of memoirs). They reflect the individual viewpoint of a participant or observer.

Types of primary sources include:

Magazine and newspaper articles from the period
Diaries
Memoirs and autobiographies
Interviews
Letters
Speeches
Documents produced by organizations

For more information, check out this video

Writing About Primary Sources

How to Analyze a Primary Source
In order to analyze a primary source you need information about two things: the document itself, and the era from which it comes. From the Carleton College Department of History
How to Read a Primary Source
Reading primary sources requires that you use your historical imagination. This process is all about your willingness and ability to ask questions of the material, imagine possible answers, and explain your reasoning. From Bowdoin College's Reading, Writing and Researching for History.
How to Analyze an Advertisement: Finding Ads' Hidden Messages
There's more to advertising's message than meets the casual eye. An effective ad, like other forms of communication, works best when it strikes a chord in the needs and desires of the receiving consumer -- a connection that can be both intuitive and highly calculated. From The Center for Media Literacy

The Crisis

The official publication of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). It features African American commentary on current affairs. In the past, it has also featured African American literature prominently, and was one of the major magazines of the Harlem Renaissance. The Crisis was founded in 1910 by W.E.B. Du Bois, who edited the early volumes. It was originally subtitled "A Record of the Darker Races." More about The Crisis at The Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance.

The Crisis

The Crisis (at the Modernist Journals Project)
1910-1922. Easier to navigate than Google Books, and allows downloads, but does not include all years.
The Crisis (at Google Books)
1911-2011, with sporadic or no coverage for some years.
The Crisis (at HathiTrust)
1910-1925. Look for "full view" links. Note that all issues for one or more volumes are included in a single PDF. Find the year you need, then view thumbnails to go find where each issue begins.
The Crisis at the Online Books Page

Newspapers

New York Amsterdam News
1922-1993. One of the U.S.'s leading Black newspapers and one of New York's most influential Black-owned institutions, the New York Amsterdam News captured the vibrancy and cultural richness of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s.
New York Times Historical
1851-2017

Historical African-American Newspapers

Literary Magazines

Get to Know the Little Magazines of the Harlem Renaissance
Kelly Jensen has a helpful article at BookRiot about literary journals of the Harlem Renaissance.

The Brownies' Book
Publication Date: 1920-1921

With most of the children’s literature of the day produced by white authors for white children, W.E.B. Du Bois wanted to offer an alternative: a magazine written by black authors for black children. The Brownies' Book included short stories, poetry, biographical sketches of prominent African Americans, puzzles, beautiful illustrations, and a monthly column from Du Bois, “As the Crow Flies.” The magazine was well received by the young readership, but unfortunately was not able to gain enough subscriptions to secure its fate. (DuBoisopedia, http://scua.library.umass.edu/duboisopedia/doku.php?id=about:brownies_book). The Library of Congress' Rare Book and Special Collections Division provides online access to all but the last issue.
Fire!!
Publication Date: 1926

Fire!! was conceived to express the African-American experience in a modern and realistic fashion, using literature as a vehicle. The magazine's founders included Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Gwendolyn Bennett, and Wallace Thurman. They wanted to express the changing attitudes of younger African Americans and explore contemporary issues such as homosexuality, interracial relationships, promiscuity, prostitution, and color prejudice. Hughes wrote that the name was intended to symbolize their goal "to burn up a lot of the old, dead conventional Negro-white ideas of the past ... into a realization of the existence of the younger Negro writers and artists, and provide us with an outlet for publication not available in the limited pages of the small Negro magazines then existing."
The Messenger
Publication Date: 1917-1924

Wikipedia describes The Messenger as a political and literary magazine important to the flowering of the Harlem Renaissance. The Messenger initially promoted a socialist political view but after 1920 featured more articles about black culture and began to publish rising black writers. HathiTrust has volumes 1-4, 1917-1922, in reprint volumes.
Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life
Publication Date: 1923-1949

Founded by the National Urban League, Opportunity served as a forum for study of the social issues faced by African Americans of the time as well as highlighting the literary culture of the Harlem Renaissance. In particular, from 1924 to 1927 Editor-in-chief Charles S. Johnson sponsored literary contests that helped promote the literary careers of writers such as Claude McKay, Nora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes & Countee Cullen. HathiTrust has v.1 (1923), v.4 (1926), v.8-15 (1930-1937), v.20-27 (1942-1949)
Saturday Evening Quill
Publication Date: 1928-1930

A literary magazine of the Harlem Renaissance, founded by the journalist Eugene Gordon. Only three issues were published, for the years 1928 to 1930. The April 1929 issue, from the collection of the Boston Public Library, is accessible at the Internet Archive.
Survey Graphic
Publication Date: March 1925

Survey Graphic was a U.S. magazine that focused on sociological and political research and analysis of national and international issues. In March 1925 the magazine produced an issue on "Harlem: Mecca of the New Negro," edited by Alain Lock and devoted to the African-American literary and artistic movement now known as the Harlem Renaissance. Much of the material also appeared in Locke's 1925 anthology The New Negro.

Letters

Letters from Langston: from the Harlem Renaissance to the Red Scare and beyond
Langston Hughes, one of America's greatest writers, was an innovator of jazz poetry and a leader of the Harlem Renaissance whose poems and plays resonate widely today. Letters from Langston begins in 1930 and ends shortly before his death in 1967, providing a window into a unique, self-created world where Hughes lived at ease. This distinctive volume collects the stories of Hughes and his friends in an era of uncertainty and reveals their visions of an idealized world--one without hunger, war, racism, and class oppression.

Collections of Primary Sources

Black Thought and Culture
Full text and secondary sources related to the non-fiction works of Black Americans.

Contains 1,303 sources with 1,210 authors. Particular care has been taken to index this material so that it can be searched more thoroughly than ever before. Where possible the complete published non-fiction works are included, as well as interviews, journal articles, speeches, essays, pamphlets, letters and other fugitive material.

Part of the ProQuest Primary Sources Collection.