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What Was The Harlem Club Movement In The Mid-1920's

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When you think of Harlem you think of a musically, passionate, skillful and a predominately black community. In the mid-1920’s during the heart of the Jazz and dance movement things started to change. The nightclubs in Harlem were changing, not the music, but the people occupying them. Wealthy White Americans started to take the Harlem club scene by force and in an Essay written by Rudolph Fisher discusses how wealthy people were changing the outlook on Harlem clubs and taking over the dance scene. This new audience movement affects the Negro artists by constant playing/working for the wealthy white audiences, which may help them financially but socially separate them from the Negro club crowd that originally dominated Harlem. The effects of …show more content…

In the essay, it talks about how negro artists shared their work with the whites which transformed into whites going to the where the Negros lived. It stated, “Oh yes, Negros took their stuff to the whites and won attention and praise the whites are seeking this stuff out on its native soil” (Fisher, Rudolph, pg. 396). This shows that the wealthier people enjoyed the negro music so much, they want to experience for themselves and go back to the Negro’s roots. The weather whites that went to the Harlem clubs, which meant more money would be put in and recognition for Negro Artists in the New York area. How would that affect the artist mentally, will they change with the fame, or stay humble and remember their roots? Throughout history, there are many Negro artists who were known in New York club and dance scene, but there are two in …show more content…

The wealthy whites and wealthy brown people started to take over and act like the dancehalls are territories for the wealthy, not the poor. Negro artists and dancers felt out of place in clubs that used to be theirs, in the essay Rudolph stated, “I frequently feel uncomfortable and out of place, and when I go out to the dance floor I am lost in a sea of white people” (Fisher, Rudolph, pg. 395). This shows it affected lower class black people in a negative way, they didn’t know act with all this new culture around them, and their place to have fun/enjoy themselves has been popularized by wealthy whites and anyone else who was well off. Many clubs were being taken over and it was affecting the New Negro Movement, clubs like Haynes, The Oriental’s, and The Garden of Joy all gave negros a place to move. Rudolph in the essay describes clubs before the white storm as, “each distortive, standing for a type, some living up to their names, others living down to them, but all predominantly black” (Fisher, Rudolph, pg. 395). This shows how before the white storm hit all blacks had a place to go dance, some clubs better than others, but it was still a club to go to without them feeling like they did not belong. This Caucasian dance movement slowed down a lot of the New Negro Movement. The uplift and acceptance of the Negro race in the U.S. were brought back down a little with the

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