Cavalcade of the American Negro is a grouping of related artworks collaboratively created by employees of the WPA-funded Illinois Writers' Project and the Federal Art Project for the 1940 American Negro Exposition, a world's fair-style event celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Emancipation of enslaved people in the United States.
There were several African-American ethnographies produced and published by the state-level and city-level projects during the duration of the New Deal’s Federal One creative arts programs. [1] A retrospective review of the literary output of the Federal Writers' Project said the 96-page [2] Cavalcade of the American Negro: The Story of the Negro's Progress Over Seventy-Five Years was "probably, despite a number of factual errors, the best of the [Project's] early ethnic studies." [3] Others believe that The Negro in Virginia (1940), [4] supervised by Roscoe E. Lewis, is a more substantial work. [5]
The Cavalcade book, which drew, in part, upon some of the Slave Narratives material that was later published under the title Lay My Burden Down, had a print run of [6] (and may have sold [3] ) 50,000 copies. Two editions were printed, a paperback priced at $0.25 and a "deluxe" clothbound hardback priced at $1. Cavalcade was the only title in the 1941 Illinois FWP catalog with more than one edition. [2]
Although unsigned, the work is generally agreed to have been written by Illinois Writers' Project employee Arna Bontemps, [7] who is credited in the foreword as "editor of this work," and his assistants, Henry Bacon, Alvin Cannon, Herman Clayton, Fenton Johnson, Edward Joseph, and George D. Lewis. [8] Johnson most likely wrote the chapters on African-American theater and poetry. [6] The booklet is described as having been "hastily concocted" [5] between March and the Exposition opening in July. [6]
The National Urban League magazine Opportunity described the content as "A history recounting the heroic exploits of the Negro as soldier and sailor in defense of this country…[that] gives a picture of the Negro's participation in the economic, civil and cultural growth of the nation." [9] Later critics described this as the "contributions approach" to retelling African-American history, which was opposed to the "social problems approach." [10]
The Negro in Illinois: The WPA Papers (2013), quoting from an internal memo, reported that poet and professor Sterling Brown, who served as the Director of Negro Affairs for the Federal Writers Project [11] was "disappointed" [6] with the book. While commending the "fluency" he credited to Bontemps, he overall found the work "cautious" with "nothing to disturb the white or Negro reading publics." [6] The contributions approach to African-American history, mentioned above, "sought to win higher regard for African Americans by stressing individual accomplishment in a manner that separated individuals from the group, ignored black cultural life, and implied that the standards of the dominant group were the only measurements of achievement." [10]
Bontemps and Jack Conroy repurposed some of the material they had gathered for Cavalcade of the American Negro in their 1945 book They Seek a City, about the ongoing Great Migration. [10]
Bontemps and Langston Hughes collaborated on a stage play that was to be presented at the Exposition, called Jubilee! Cavalcade of the Negro Theater. It was a revue of the history of the African-American stage, from The Octoroon (1859) to the "birth of the Blues." [12] According to the catalog of the New Deal archive at the University of Kentucky, "Hughes noted that it was written for the American Negro Exposition, Chicago, but never produced." [13]
A typescript copy marked "Arna" sold at auction for $12,500 in March 2022. [12] According to Swann Galleries, which listed the item, the script "was later reworked by its two original authors for a 1941 showcase production by CBS Radio. It was then recorded in 1943 by the War Department for broadcast overseas to the troops." [12] Hughes produced several African-American revue projects during his career, of which Cavalcade was but one. [14]
The souvenir book Cavalcade of the American Negro is illustrated by two woodcut prints by Federal Artists Project employee Adrian Troy (1901–1977). The cover design appears to be based on a chapter early in the book that reiterates the presence of African-Americans at many essential moments in colonial American history. The title page illustration is a much denser work, depicting African-Americans at work as scientists, clergy, laborers, performers, and athletes (the representative boxer is probably a nod to Negro Exposition sponsor and heavyweight champion Joe Louis). The top and bottom right corners of the image are haunted by what appears to be a slave overseer with a whip and some kind of enforcer with a bat. [8]
Troy was born in England and emigrated to the United States in 1922. [15] He had previously exhibited at a 1938 WPA show in Chicago called "Art for the Public," and later taught woodcut engraving at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the 1950s and 1960s. [15] The Smithsonian Institution holds seven other prints by Troy; his work is also in the collections of the Art Institute, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Illinois State Museum. [16] [15] [17]
The WPA Poster Division created a poster advertising the book to Chicago residents.
WPA poster art historian Christopher DeNoon called the Cavalcade poster "a powerful image whose elements (upraised fist, broken chain) prefigure the 'Black Power' posters of the late 1960s." [18]
Another WPA art collector suggests the multicultural work of some WPA artists was a political act: "WPA posters offered a glimpse into American life that counteracted a systematic absence or misrepresentation of people of color in mainstream advertising—a dominant narrative form in our market-focused country." [19]
Cleo Sara Van Buskirk Thornburg (1912–1997) created the image using silkscreen on board. [20] Thornburg, who was credited as Cleo Sara [20] and signed the work as Cleo, has works in the collections of MoMA and the National Gallery of Art. [21] [22] The poster measures 22 in (56 cm) by 14 in (36 cm). [18]
The Works Progress Administration was an American New Deal agency, that employed millions of jobseekers to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads. It was set up on May 6, 1935, by presidential order, as a key part of the Second New Deal.
The Federal Writers' Project (FWP) was a federal government project in the United States created to provide jobs for out-of-work writers during the Great Depression. It was part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a New Deal program. It was one of a group of New Deal arts programs known collectively as Federal Project Number One or Federal One. The FWP employed thousands of people and produced hundreds of publications, including state guides, city guides, local histories, oral histories, ethnographies, and children's books. In addition to writers, the project provided jobs to unemployed librarians, clerks, researchers, editors, and historians.
The Texas Centennial Exposition was a world's fair presented from June 6 to November 29, 1936, at Fair Park, Dallas, Texas. A celebration of the 100th anniversary of Texas's independence from Mexico in 1836, it also celebrated Texas and Western American culture. More than 50 buildings were constructed for the exposition, and many remain today as notable examples of Art Deco architecture. Attracting more than six million people including US President Franklin Roosevelt, the exposition was credited with buffering Dallas from the Great Depression.
The Federal Theatre Project was a theatre program established during the Great Depression as part of the New Deal to fund live artistic performances and entertainment programs in the United States. It was one of five Federal Project Number One projects sponsored by the Works Progress Administration, created not as a cultural activity but as a relief measure to employ artists, writers, directors, and theater workers. National director Hallie Flanagan shaped the FTP into a federation of regional theaters that created relevant art, encouraged experimentation in new forms and techniques, and made it possible for millions of Americans to see live theatre for the first time. As a drama professor at Vassar college, Hallie Flanagan was chosen to head the Federal Theatre Project. Although The Federal Theatre project consumed only 0.5% of the allocated budget from the WPA and was widely considered a commercial and critical success, the project became a source of heated political contention. Congress responded to accusations of racial integration and Communism infiltration and cancelled its funding as of June 30, 1939.
The Federal Art Project (1935–1943) was a New Deal program to fund the visual arts in the United States. Under national director Holger Cahill, it was one of five Federal Project Number One projects sponsored by the Works Progress Administration (WPA), and the largest of the New Deal art projects. It was created not as a cultural activity, but as a relief measure to employ artists and artisans to create murals, easel paintings, sculpture, graphic art, posters, photography, theatre scenic design, and arts and crafts. The WPA Federal Art Project established more than 100 community art centers throughout the country, researched and documented American design, commissioned a significant body of public art without restriction to content or subject matter, and sustained some 10,000 artists and craft workers during the Great Depression. According to American Heritage, “Something like 400,000 easel paintings, murals, prints, posters, and renderings were produced by WPA artists during the eight years of the project’s existence, virtually free of government pressure to control subject matter, interpretation, or style.”
Arna Wendell Bontemps was an American poet, novelist and librarian, and a noted member of the Harlem Renaissance.
The Black Cabinet, or Federal Council of Negro Affairs or Black Brain Trust, was the informal term for a group of African Americans who served as public policy advisors to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt in his terms in office from 1933 to 1945. Despite its name, it was not an official organization. The term was coined in 1936 by Mary McLeod Bethune and was occasionally used in the press. By mid-1935, there were 45 African Americans working in federal executive departments and New Deal agencies.
Marcus Bruce Christian, was a New Negro regional poet, writer, historian and folklorist. The author of the collection, I Am New Orleans and Other Poems, Christian also compiled and wrote the still-unpublished manuscript, The History of The Negro in Louisiana during his stint at the Negro Federal Writers Project at Dillard University. After his death, his family bequeathed 256 cubic feet (7.2 m3) of his diaries, criticism, manuscripts, and scholarly papers to the University of New Orleans, where they currently reside.
James Theodore Ward was a leftist political playwright and theatre educator during the first half of the 20th century and one of the earliest contributors to the Black Chicago Renaissance. Often referred to as the "dean of black dramatists," Ward was well known for tackling controversial topics related to African-American urban life during the Great Depression. His staged works were lauded for their innovative depiction of the black experience, most notably for doing away with the spiritual ballads and feverish dancing that dominated "Negro theatricals" of his time in favor of a more nuanced, naturalistic approach to plot and character.
The South Side Community Art Center is a community art center in Chicago that opened in 1940 with support from the Works Progress Administration's Federal Art Project in Illinois. Opened in Bronzeville in an 1893 mansion, it became the first black art museum in the United States and has been an important center for the development Chicago's African American artists. Of more than 100 community art centers established by the WPA, this is the only one that remains open.
Fenton Johnson was an American poet, essayist, author of short stories, editor, and educator. Johnson came from a middle-class African-American family in Chicago, where he spent most of his career. His work is often included in anthologies of 20th-century poetry, and he is noted for early prose poetry. Author James Weldon Johnson called Fenton, "one of the first Negro revolutionary poets”. He is also considered a forerunner of the Harlem Renaissance.
Story of the Negro by Arna Bontemps is a children's history book published by Knopf in 1948. It was the first African-American authored book to receive a Newbery Honor.
Elba Lightfoot was an African-American artist known for her work on the Works Progress Administration (WPA) murals at Harlem Hospital.
Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States is a collection of histories by formerly enslaved people undertaken by the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration from 1936 to 1938. It was the simultaneous effort of state-level branches of FWP in seventeen states, working largely separately from each other. FWP administrators sought to develop a new appreciation for the elements of American life from different backgrounds, including that from the last generation of formerly enslaved individuals. The collections of life histories and materials on African American life that resulted gave impetus to the collection.
The Chicago Black Renaissance was a creative movement that blossomed out of the Chicago Black Belt on the city's South Side and spanned the 1930s and 1940s before a transformation in art and culture took place in the mid-1950s through the turn of the century. The movement included such famous African-American writers as Richard Wright, Margaret Walker, Gwendolyn Brooks, Arna Bontemps, and Lorraine Hansberry, as well as musicians Thomas A. Dorsey, Louis Armstrong, Earl Hines and Mahalia Jackson and artists William Edouard Scott, Elizabeth Catlett, Katherine Dunham, Charles Wilbert White, Margaret Burroughs, Charles C. Dawson, Archibald John Motley, Jr., Walter Sanford, and Eldzier Cortor. During the Great Migration, which brought tens of thousands of African-Americans to Chicago's South Side, African-American writers, artists, and community leaders began promoting racial pride and a new black consciousness, similar to that of the Harlem Renaissance. Unlike the Harlem Renaissance, the Chicago Black Renaissance did not receive the same amount of publicity on a national scale. Among the reasons for this are that the Chicago group participants presented no singularly prominent "face", wealthy patrons were less involved, and New York City—home of Harlem—was the higher profile national publishing center.
Charles C. Dawson was an American painter, printmaker, illustrator, and graphic designer.
William McBride Jr. was an African-American artist, designer and collector. McBride began his career in the 1930s in the circles of black art collectives and artistic opportunities afforded by the Works Progress Administration. He would ultimately leave his mark in Chicago as a driving force behind the South Side Community Art Center. McBride distinguished himself as a teacher, as a cultural and political activist, and as a collector of African art and artwork by black artists of his generation.
The American Negro Exposition, also known as the Black World's Fair and the Diamond Jubilee Exposition, was a world's fair held in Chicago from July until September in 1940, to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the end of slavery in the United States at the conclusion of the Civil War in 1865.
Samuel Joseph Brown Jr. (1907–1994) was a watercolorist, printmaker, and educator. He was the first African American artist hired to produce work for the Public Works of Art Project, a precursor to the Work Progress Administration's Federal Art Project. Brown often depicted the lives of African Americans in his paintings. He worked primarily in watercolor and oils, and he produced portraits, landscapes and prints.
New Deal artwork is an umbrella term used to describe the creative output organized and funded by the Roosevelt administration’s New Deal response to the Great Depression. This work produced between 1933 and 1942 ranges in content and form from Dorothea Lange’s photographs for the Farm Security Administration to the Coit Tower murals to the library-etiquette posters from the Federal Art Project to the architecture of the Solomon Courthouse in Nashville, Tennessee. The New Deal sought to “democratize the arts” and is credited with creating a “great body of distinguished work and fostering a national aesthetic.”
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