Harlem Nocturne

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HARLEM NOCTURNE:

“A definitive and arresting account of three women artists. Farah Griffin gathers an array of Harlem stories and incorporates them into a wonderfully written and well-grounded narrative describing the artistic experiences and everyday lives of these three unique women.
Harlem Nocturne
is both intimate and comprehensive in its exploration of black women's creativity during World War II. A rich history that investigates the imagination and originality of black women's expressive culture in mid-20th century America, this book is timely and important.”

—Deborah Willis, author of
Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present

“Farah Jasmine Griffin has written, beautifully and powerfully, about the complex intersection of gender, race, and place in the lives of three extraordinary black women. In her delicate hands, Pearl Primus, Ann Petry, and Mary Lou Williams stand as ‘representative women,' exemplars of imagination at work and of the daunting task of the art of living in trying political times. As we get to know them, their lives narrate a distinctive story that offers us advice about how to live with courage, power, and beauty.”

—Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., Princeton University, author of
In A Shade of Blue: Pragmatism and the Politics of Black America

“Readers who accept Farah Jasmine Griffin's invitation to imagine Harlem in the 1940s through the eyes of three remarkable women—Pearl Primus, Ann Petry, and Mary Lou Williams—will be richly rewarded. Wearing her erudition lightly, Griffin brilliantly illuminates a place and time of enormous hope and achievement.
Harlem Nocturne
is an inspiring and inspired study of the artistic imagination in conversation with an American democracy tainted by injustice. It is, quite simply, a joy to read.”

—Gayle Wald, author of
Shout, Sister, Shout!: The Untold Story of Rock-and-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe

“As elegant and dynamic as the figures that it chronicles,
Harlem Nocturne
is a groundbreaking cultural history of three black women artists at work in 1940s New York City. Farah Jasmine Griffin is a dazzling storyteller whose lyrical prose evokes the musical cadences of a Toni Morrison novel. Her study beckons us to soar with dancer-choreographer Pearl Primus, to walk with novelist Ann Petry as she chronicles the streets of Harlem, and to roll with pioneering jazz musician and composer Mary Lou Williams as each woman made art that laid down the blueprint for the modern Civil Rights Movement. By placing their lives in conversation with one another,
Harlem Nocturne
illuminates the myriad ways that Primus, Petry and Williams helped to shape the social, political, and cultural landscape of their city. As much a love letter to New York as it is to the heroism of these artists, Griffin's study is a work of incandescent beauty.”

—Daphne A. Brooks, Princeton University, author of
Bodies in Dissent: Spectacular Performances of Race and Freedom, 1850–1910

“An engaging biography of three remarkable women who taught art to reflect life.”

—Kirkus Reviews

HARLEM

Nocturne

HARLEM

Nocturne

WOMEN ARTISTS &

PROGRESSIVE

POLITICS DURING

WORLD WAR II

Farah Jasmine Griffin

BASIC
CIVITAS

A MEMBER OF THE PERSEUS BOOKS GROUP

New York

Copyright © 2013 by Farah Jasmine Griffin

Published by Basic
Civitas
Books,

A Member of the Perseus Books Group

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address Basic Books, 250 West 57th Street, 15th floor, New York, NY 10107.

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[email protected]
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Typeset in 11.5-point Arno Pro by the Perseus Books Group

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Griffin, Farah Jasmine.

Harlem nocturne : women artists and progressive politics during World War II / Farah Jasmine Griffin.—First [edition].

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-465-06997-2 (e-book) 1. African American women artists—New York (State)—New York—History—20th century. 2. African American women artist—Political activity—New York (State)—New York—History—20th century. 3. Petry, Ann, 1908–1997. 4. Primus, Pearl. 5. Williams, Mary Lou, 1910–1981. 6. New York (N.Y.)—Intellectual life—20th century. 7. Harlem (New York, N.Y.)—Intellectual life—20th century. I. Title.

NX512.3.A35G75 2013

704'.04208996073—dc23

2013010855

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1

For My Mother,
Wilhelmena Griffin,
With Love and Gratitude

In America's bosom we have the roots of Democracy, but the roots do not mean there are leaves. The tree could easily grow bare. We will never relax our war effort abroad but we must fight at home with equal fierceness. This is an all out war; we will not stop fighting until everyone is free from inequality.

P
EARL
P
RIMUS

There is a deep public reverence for—a love of—democracy in America and a deep democratic tradition. This love of democracy has been most powerfully expressed and pushed forward by our great public intellectuals and artists.

C
ORNEL
W
EST

Nations rely on artists and intellectuals to create images of, and to tell stories about, the national past. Competition for political leadership is in part a competition between differing stories about a nation's self-identity, and between differing symbols of its greatness.

R
ICHARD
R
ORTY

CONTENTS

Prologue

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE

PEARL PRIMUS: DANCING FREEDOM

CHAPTER TWO

ANN PETRY: WALKING HARLEM

CHAPTER THREE

ROLLIN' WITH MARY LOU WILLIAMS

EPILOGUE

Acknowledgments

Appendix A

Appendix B

Appendix C

Sources and Suggested Reading

Notes

Index

PROLOGUE

N
ew York beckoned, and they came. One came as a child, brought by immigrant parents. The other two came as adult women seeking the freedom to create themselves and their art.

They were shaped by this city: their sense of the possible, the movement of their bodies, their style. They walked. They looked. They listened. They gave to the city. They danced for it, wrote it, set it to music. New York beckoned; they came.

New York told them anything was possible, told them there were no boundaries. There were. Though the city welcomed them as visitors, students, teachers, and entertainers, as residents they were not always received with enthusiasm. So at some point, they all lived in Harlem: the Black Mecca, born of the migration of black peoples from the Caribbean and the American South, the antiblack violence that erupted in other parts of the city, and the entrepreneurial energies of African American real-estate developer Philip A. Payton Jr. Harlem, race capital. Eventually, the immigrant's daughter moved to another historic black neighborhood—Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn.

Harlem: Who wanted to live anywhere else? If given the choice, they probably would have chosen Harlem, but they
would have liked having the choice. So each, in her own way, protested the limitations placed on her life and her people, meanwhile helping to build a city within a city: a place full of black and brown faces speaking a multitude of languages, living high and living low, making love, making music, making word-worlds, making new peoples. It was a city of swinging rhythms and bebop changes; a city of weary brown-faced children and adults—some enraged, others resigned; a city that danced the Lindy Hop, modern choreography, and African isolations.

Certainly, these women were not Harlem's only architects; nor were they its best known. But they, like others, tried to leave their mark on New York. They built a city where people mattered. They were concerned about poor and working people, about women and children, about the disenfranchised and the dispossessed. They brought a radical vision from the 1930s into a new decade, helping to create a political culture that would inspire people worldwide. Thanks to their efforts and the efforts of others like them, Harlem, in the 1940s, sent the first black New Yorker to Congress; helped to elect an Italian Harlemite to that august body, too; and sent a member of the Communist Party to New York's City Council.

This energetic optimism was often tempered by the ongoing reality of American racial prejudice, even in New York. Following the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, their city feared for itself. It experienced a patriotism so broad that even the mob offered its services. Their city saw its boys (and girls) enlist, and saw its patriotic black sons consigned to a segregated
military and sent to the Jim Crow South for boot camp. Their neighborhood joined in the urban uprisings of 1943 that spread from Los Angeles and Texas to Detroit. After the riots, Harlem watched its middle class move to Queens and the Bronx and its white habitués abandon its nightlife. Both would have a devastating impact upon the neighborhood's economy.

Still, New York beckoned. It recognized their differences as a source of originality.
You should come
, the city told them;
you should be here, you belong, you are invited, you are welcome, stay a while. You are smart enough, beautiful enough, hip enough, tough enough, enterprising enough. You are mine.