Harlem Nocturne (4 page)

Herein, these three women's stories are told in terms of “movement” in its multiple meanings. Literally, it means a change in position or place, as in the movement of those black and Latino people who were migrating to New York in record numbers. “Movement” is also an important concept in the arts, one that applies to diverse art forms. In dance it may simply mean a change of position or posture, a step or a figure. In music it signifies the transition from note to note or passage to passage, or it may refer to a division of a longer work. In literature, “movement” signals the progression or development of a plot or a story line. Finally, there is the “political movement,” defined as a series of actions on the part of a group of people working toward a common goal. Black people were on the
move in the 1940s, migrating, marching, protesting, walking, dancing. These artists sought to imbue their work with this sense of mobility as well.

Harlem Nocturne
moves through time by opening each chapter with an event from the year 1943 and following each woman through decade's end. The year 1943 was pivotal for many reasons in the lives of the women and in the life of the nation. Each woman experienced a major event that year: Primus appeared before thousands of spectators at the Negro Freedom Rally, Petry lived through the Harlem Riots, and Williams moved to New York. It was also the year that saw race riots in Los Angeles; Beaumont, Texas; and Detroit and coincided with the height of World War II. Each chapter focuses on one representative work of the period and closes with the artist's departure from New York, as late as 1952 when Williams set sail for Europe. Throughout, we walk, ride the subway, and dance with them.

And yet, oddly enough, as much as the times and the women themselves experienced multiple meanings of movement, there was also a sense of confinement that was evident in their lives and their work. Primus and Petry both confronted and challenged the debilitating limits of Jim Crow. The social movements of which they were a part faded away. In the case of Primus, she was constantly under surveillance, and her passport was revoked, thus severely limiting her own freedom of movement. This was a central paradox of the times: confinement within mobility—a frustrating tension that characterizes the narrative of black life in the United States.

Nonetheless, the benefit of hindsight shows us that though slow and incremental, the change for which Primus, Petry, and Williams fought and yearned continued to unfold. Hindsight also teaches us of the continued need for the kind of commitment, dedication, and discipline demonstrated by the women of
Harlem Nocturne
.

CHAPTER ONE

PEARL PRIMUS: DANCING FREEDOM

O
n June 7, 1943, as World War II raged overseas, over 20,000 people gathered at Madison Square Garden for the second annual Negro Freedom Rally. Most of them came to be entertained, but they also had a sense of the event's importance: a communal call to fight Hitler abroad and Jim Crow at home. The rallies, the brainchild of A. Philip Randolph, embodied the Double V Campaign, which had mobilized urban communities nationwide. They celebrated black participation in the war effort and called for racial and economic equality in the United States. With the outbreak of World War II, black Americans saw a particular irony in the continued existence of racial discrimination and segregation within the nation's borders, even as black soldiers risked their lives in a war against fascism abroad.

During World War I, black leaders had called upon black Americans to support the war effort and had suspended vociferous protests against racial inequality. They hoped that by
demonstrating their patriotism, they would convince whites to grant them full citizenship rights. Nowhere was this tactic more enthusiastically endorsed than in W. E. B. Du Bois's famous editorial in a 1918 issue of
The Crisis
, “Close Ranks,” in which he encouraged black Americans to forget “their special grievances and close our ranks . . . with our fellow white citizens” in the fight for democracy. But the tactic failed. Upon their return, black soldiers met with racist violence, sometimes while still in their uniforms. Jim Crow continued to thrive, and racial injustice had not lessened.
¹

In light of the unsuccessful approach taken during World War I, a new militancy animated black American politics at the dawn of World War II. Led by the black press, especially the
Pittsburgh Courier
, black Americans embraced the call for Double V: victory against fascism abroad and racial inequality at home. But not all black Americans threw their support behind the campaign. Some black Communists, following the Communist Party's lead, rejected Double V as a distraction from the defeat of European fascism. At the other extreme, a small number of black Americans would reject any display of patriotism, believing the country to be incapable of fully accepting its black citizens. Nonetheless, the majority embraced the sentiments, if not the slogan, of Double V.

Double V would become a successful campaign both politically and economically, and its achievements, including those attained by the Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC), would translate into greater opportunities for black men and women. At each Freedom Rally, leaders showcased
their successes. They crowned a “Miss Negro Victory Worker,” awarding her with a war bond and large bouquet of flowers—with this one gesture highlighting black patriotism and celebrating their victories. The FEPC now required all businesses with government contracts to have a nondiscrimination clause, for example—and many black women took advantage of these new opportunities. Large numbers of them left domestic service and farm labor for factory work. The majority of them held only the most menial janitorial positions, but a few worked as riveters and welders, and a number of them worked as sewing-machine operators.
²

At the 1943 rally, the audience heard Adam Clayton Powell Jr. deliver a rousing speech. Powell, a beloved son of Harlem, was a dynamic city councilman and a candidate for the US House of Representatives. He had announced his bid for Congress at the 1942 rally, telling his audience, “And it is because of the new Negro that I must, regardless of the time and energy or previous commitments, run for the Congress of the United States, so that we may have a national voice speaking from the national capital. . . . It doesn't matter what ticket or what party—my people demand a forthright, militant, anti–Uncle Tom congressman!”
³
“The New Negro” was a phrase used by each postslavery generation of black Americans to distinguish themselves from their forebears. The best-known use of the term emerged from the Harlem Renaissance. Powell's New Negroes were urban, politically empowered, and insistent upon their rights as citizens. They were no longer trying to prove their value or their worth to the white majority; instead, they
were the avant-garde of American political culture, leading the way for their fellow citizens. Powell embodied the militancy and confidence that characterized a new generation of black Americans. He became the first black American to serve in Congress since the failure of Reconstruction. As pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church—one of black America's most highly regarded pulpits—Harlem community leader, and New York City councilman, he directly confronted racist hiring and housing policies. He had proven himself to be both fearless and ambitious.

The multitalented Paul Robeson was also on the bill. His dignified performance of “Water Boy,” “Joe Hill,” and “Ol' Man River” was a high point of the evening. Robeson had performed “Ol' Man River,” by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II, in various productions of the musical
Show Boat
. He recorded it in 1928 and sang it so often that it became one of his signature tunes. The song expresses the resilience of black people in the face of their ongoing struggles. “Joe Hill” is a tribute to the labor activist of the same name who was executed in 1915. “Water Boy,” composed by Jacques Wolfe, is based on a traditional African-American prison work-song. All three songs were part of Robeson's repertoire.

By 1943 Robeson was internationally known as an artist and activist. An accomplished athlete, singer, and actor, the intellectually gifted Robeson was also a fiercely articulate leftist critic of racism and fascism. Throughout the war he lent his talents to the Allied forces. Less than a decade following his appearance at the Freedom Rally, the US government successfully
targeted him as a Communist, dismantled his reputation, and purposefully contributed to his mental and physical demise. But in 1943, Robeson was still a hero to generations of young Americans. Following Robeson, a young woman, dark brown in color—small, but muscular—appeared onstage. Turning slowly, dramatically, she wrapped her arms around her body. Twisting left, then right, she lunged forward gracefully. But it was the leap, a jump of almost five feet that sent her soaring high above the rafters, which elicited gasps of astonishment from the audience. Treading air, the dancer seemed to linger there, in flight. It was this leap for which she would be remembered.

The audience would have been familiar with modern dancer Katherine Dunham or tap dancer Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, two of the most popular black dancers of the 1940s, but Pearl Primus, at twenty-four, was still relatively unknown. Readers of the
New York Times
or the
Amsterdam News
may have read about this young woman, this incredible emerging artist. By the time she performed at future Freedom Rallies in 1944 and 1945, she was a star. But on this afternoon in 1943, she sat at the precipice of an extraordinary career.

Primus danced to two recordings by Josh White, “Hard Time Blues” and “Jim Crow Train.” “Hard Times Blues” is a song about black sharecroppers and their dispossession. In “Jim Crow Train,” by Waring Cuney, White's guitar emulates the sound of a train in motion to lyrics expressing longing for the end of Jim Crow. Both were dances of social protest. With “Jim Crow Train,” Primus carried her audience's frustrations
and aspirations within her body. She danced the confining, stifling nature of segregation and then she leapt high above the bleachers, right out of the imagined train. It was a leap of frustration, anger, and protest. When finally she flew, she took her audience with her. Through physical movement, she sought to inspire social and political movement. Years later, in 1978, writing in her PhD dissertation about community responses to great dancers in traditional West African societies, she may well have been describing herself: “When these people truly dance, there can be no observers. . . . [The observers] are snatched, plucked up by an invisible force and hurled into the ring of the dance, their own heartbeat matching the crescendo of pulsing sound, their bodies becoming one with the sweating dancers.”
⁴

In his
Chicago Defender
column, the revered poet Langston Hughes wrote: “Every time she leaped, folks felt like shouting. Some did. Some hollered out loud.”
⁵

On this night Primus began to live out her calling: to use the language of dance to represent the dignity and strength of black people and to express their longing for freedom. Primus saw dance as a means of contributing to the ongoing struggle for social justice. The politically conscious young dancer had learned that the dancer's movement has the power to transform the observer's consciousness. This was a central component of the aesthetic that informed her practice—a component she inherited from a tradition of vernacular dance born of Africa, and one that was also central to modern dance itself. In fact, the great modern dance critic and Primus champion John Martin insisted that “movement . . . in and of itself is a medium for the
transference of an aesthetic and emotional concept from the consciousness of one individual to that of another.”
⁶

Modern dance had been ensconced in radical politics since its formation; traditional African dance sought to give expression to the community's history and aspirations. In creating a dialogue between these two forms, Primus helped to introduce a new context for the marriage of black aesthetics and politics. For Primus, traditional African dance and contemporary black vernacular dance were more than mere inspirations for modernist choreography; they were equal participants in helping to create a modern dance vocabulary.

Dance provided a new medium for the expression of protest against segregation, and it was a particularly effective challenge, in that dance is not bound by one or two dimensions. The dancer can move across planes of space; she can lie flat on the ground, writhing. She can stand flatfooted, twisting her body, arms wrapped around her torso and then flung outward toward her audience, before reaching up. And she can defy gravity, leave the ground, shoot into the air, into space. Primus's leaps were not those of a ballet dancer. Her body in the air looked like an abstract sculpture, exhibiting both strength and beauty. Her joints bent to create ninety-degree angles: the right knee might bend, the calf forming a line underneath her torso, while her left leg stretched out, ending in a pointed toe, arms parallel to her legs. Her leaps were not only meant to demonstrate grace but also to celebrate strength. However, they were not mere demonstrations of athleticism; they were fundamental to her choreography. They marked rhythm, moved her across the stage, and shot her up above it.