Reading twentieth century urban black cultural movements through popular periodicals: a case study of the Harlem Renaissance and South Africa's Sophiatown

• Published in: Safundi (Nashville, Tenn.) Vol. 17; no. 1; pp. 63 - 86
• Main Authors: Bailey, Julius, Rosenberg, Scott
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Routledge 02.01.2016
• Subjects: African American studies; African studies; Case studies; Cultural relations; Drum; Harlem; Harlem-New York City NY; identity; NAACP; Periodicals; Popular culture; Social identity; Sophiatown; Sophiatown-Johannesburg South Africa; The Crisis; Whites; Writers
• ISSN: 1753-3171; 1543-1304
• DOI: 10.1080/17533171.2015.1112938

There exists a long history of debate among scholars in the humanities and social sciences regarding the potential of literature and popular culture to be socially transformative and to generate collective identities that empower a community. This transformative power of literature and popular culture, particularly in terms of the value granted to oppressed peoples seeking expression or catharsis, represents perhaps the truest value of cultural production. Its long-term contributions to the resilience of racially oppressed communities both in the USA and worldwide cannot be overstated. In Sophiatown and during the Harlem Renaissance, two periodicals, Drum and The Crisis, allowed black writers and readers alike to share in the formation of new modes of identity that spoke back in a firm voice to the long-standard stereotypes of blackness that permeated white-dominated popular culture. In both South Africa and Harlem, these publications gave voice to a distinctly black and urban culture, resisting notions of the "tribal" or "plantation" black subject. These movements were historically significant both within the study of black culture and literature and within the trajectory of socially transformative political movements.