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“I, Too, Am America”1: Resolution, independence and redefining racial identity in the
Harlem Renaissance.

by Andrew Kelly

Centuries of colonial oppression, Euro-centric attitudes, and the physical and

psychological enslavement of the non-white “Other,” came to a breaking point in World

War I. Previously unchallenged ideas of race and colonial identity were collapsing. With

Modernism questioning accepted reality, African-American author W.E.B. Du Bois

anticipates the impact on an American society that had to that point defined itself on the

differences in racial identities. Prophesying in The Souls of Black Folk that, “the problem

of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line,” Du Bois set the stage for the

struggle to re-imagine and re-write conceptions of blackness. Black intellectuals gathered

in Harlem, New York at the beginning of the century to enjoy a newfound freedom of

expression in their literature. They would adopt a Neo-Romantic approach to self-

determination, embracing the force that Romantic icon Percy Bysshe Shelley dubbed

“intellectual beauty” (Shelley 1032): the mind’s power to create one’s own identity – and

even one’s own reality. This is a core Romantic ideal; it is also quintessentially

American. The Revolution and ensuing Declaration of Independence arguably fostered

the philosophical community at the end of the 18th century from which Romanticism

would take its root. While conveyed poignantly through literature, this black self-

determinism is nevertheless complicated by doubt. Indeed, the same Modernist anxiety

that consumed the Imperial power structure also consumes early 20th century African-

Americans, preventing them from capturing any semblance of real identity. As

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Hughes, “I, Too” line 18
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Modernism is partly defined as the relentless pursuit of the grasping the real, authors such

as Virginia Woolf suggest that truth and revelation can only be found in passing

“moments of being.” The turmoil of the Harlem Renaissance is the attempt to define the

black individual anew through such elusive, momentary declarations of truth. Langston

Hughes and Alain Locke wrestle between this hope of performative self-definition and

the Modern angst that no such definition is achievable. The poets of Harlem seek to de-

Other their battered black identity and imagine it as whole in a Neo-Romantic vein, all

the while battling with a Modernist anxiety that would overturn such a proclamation as

futile.

Up to the 20th century the African-American experience was defined by European

paternalism. Locke discusses the existing black individual as “a stock figure…(a)

historical fiction partly in innocent sentiment, partly in deliberate reactionism” (Locke 3).

As in Hughes’ “Mulatto,” the coloured man defines himself in terms of being the “son”

of the white man (Hughes line 5) – a product of ruling white culture. Throughout

American history the black slave played the role of the child, condescended to as if in

need of protection and enlightenment from the perverted parent in his master. Freudian

psychoanalysis views this relation as fundamentally formative to the black community’s

collective identity. The scarring, or the figurative inscription, of identity in childhood is

also highlighted in the first two books of William Wordsworth’s “The Prelude (Or

Growth Of A Poet’s Mind)” – a poetic discourse on the early construction of the self. As

the unnatural parent-child relationship between white and black began to be severed in

the post-War period, Harlem essentially hosted a “spiritual Coming-of-Age” (Locke 16)

of black culture.
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As Modernism emerged at the turn of the century and solidified its hold on

Western culture, the colonial mindset fell apart. Perceptions of racial identity based on

the centre-versus-periphery dichotomy were dismantled under the realization that “the

centre cannot hold” (Yeats line 3). Consequently, the authoritative colonial centre was

replaced by a multiplicity of diverse cultural “centres” that arose to fill the new vacuum.

Reality consequently became more subjective, allowing the way to be paved “from social

disillusionment to race pride” (Locke 11) for those who were heretofore the Other.

Nathan Huggins suggests that, “World War I had been a kind of puberty rite for people

the world over. Self-determinism, an aim of the Allies in the war, became a slogan in the

1920s” (qtd. in Mishkin 36). However, in order for the black individual to shake off the

“psychology of imitation and implied inferiority” (Locke 4) that emerged from his

traumatic father-son racial relationship, some form of cultural patricide had to be

executed. In order to do so, the Harlem writers seek to write over the standing ideas of

race in their poetry, placing their “ebony hands on each ivory key” (Hughes, “The Weary

Blues” line 9). The literature of the time thus actively kills the Euro-centric conceptions

of identity and gives a true renaissance to the African-American.

The African-American writers proceed with their mission of re-molding the black

identity in a curiously Romantic fashion. Though a revival of century-old ideas – rooted

in the notion that “by our own spirits are we deified” (Wordsworth, “Resolution and

Independence” line 47) – it champions the primacy of individualism and Emersonian

“self-reliance” that live at the heart of the American Project. Nella Larson’s Passing

focuses on this power of self-proclamation and the deification of the “I”. The mulatto

character Irene is simply called ’Rene by light-skinned Clare, a woman who embraces the
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white power structure by choosing to pass as white, stripping her of the “I” in her name.

Clare represents to Irene the suffocating culture of whiteness that inherently devalues

blackness, thus preventing the latter woman from attaining control or pride over her own

black identity. Only after Clare’s death in the finale is Irene free to utter a proclamation

“I--” before fainting (Larson 114). The meaning of this solitary “I” is ambiguous, but I

support the reading that it stands as Irene’s triumphant reclamation of an identity that is

self-originating and self-sufficient – comparable to that of Yahweh’s “I Am” in the Old

Testament (McIntire 2 April 2008). A few lines later, the narrator states that “then

everything was dark” (Larson 114), suggesting that Irene’s black identity was perhaps

made whole by the death, again a potentially figurative patricide, of the whiteness that

Clare represents. Consequently, in her momentary enunciation of the self, Irene manages

to overcome the colonial power structure and seize a more “real” identity of blackness

than that found in the superficiality of Clare’s passing. Here, permeating the conflict

inside the African-American mind, Romantic ideology is employed for its hope of self-

definition.

The precepts of the abovementioned “intellectual beauty” are laid forth by Shelley

as “Love, Hope and Self-Esteem” (Shelley, “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” line 37) – all

of which find voice in Langston Hughes’ “I, Too” as the poem champions the idea of the

mind’s sole authorship of identity. Declaratory in its linguistic essence, the poem posits a

hope in what is to come, specifically a hope in “[t]omorrow” (Hughes line 8). As the

speaker declares with pride, “I am the darker brother” (Hughes 2), the language follows

Locke’s call to reject the culture of imitation and to embrace difference. The very

difference that once made the speaker of the poem an “Other” is now accepted and
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encouraged in his claims that “[t]hey’ll see how beautiful I am / And be ashamed –”

(Hughes 16-17). As the mind changes one’s perception of reality, it proves its power to

subjectively create the real. At work here is “the buoyancy from within compensating for

whatever pressure there may be from without” (Locke 4). “[A] self-created ontology of

blackness” (De Jongh 216) is established as Shelley’s “intellectual beauty” aids the

Modern African-American writer with a Neo-Romantic faith in the individual’s self-

governance.

Subjective reality extends beyond the sphere of individual definition and into the

construction of a subjectively wrought world. In his poem “The Weary Blues,” Langston

Hughes describes the scene as lit “by the pale dull pallor of an old gas light” (Hughes line

5), evoking the Neo-Romantic tradition of an ethereal, dreamlike nocturne. In this scene,

one’s inner turmoil is rendered external, displaced into nature or – more specifically here

– into the aching melodies of the blues. Indeed the somber manner in which the speaker

filters and transcribes the night’s music into his poetry reveals the inner angst of the

speaker as much as it reveals the angst of the musician’s tone. As the speaker cries to the

music in the night air, “O Blues!” (Hughes 16), he parallels the Romantic speaker’s

celebrated relation to the Nightingale. Often a catalyst for the wandering poet’s

imagination in Romantic literature, the bird’s song is not inherently melancholy but is

rather made so by the ears and mind of “some night-wandering man whose heart was

pierced / with the remembrance of a grievous wrong” (Coleridge, “The Nightingale” line

16-17). The blues echo such a communal experience here, as both singer and listener feel

the pain of the universal “black man’s soul” (Hughes 15). When the singer ceases to play

his mind ceases to operate – described as “a rock or a man that’s dead” (Hughes 35). That
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the death of his mind coincides directly with the death of his expression implies a vital

link between life and performance. Both the speaker of the piece and the singer are

voiceless without the expression of their dreams and when such expression is muted, so

too is the figurative life of the performer. Coleridge posits a similar belief that “we

receive but what we give, / and in our life alone does Nature live” (Coleridge,

“Dejection” lines 56-57); claiming that life exists solely through the mind’s eye of the

subject. Romanticism and Modernism converge in their respective use of subjectivity and

the subject’s crucial role in both creating and expressing reality.

Though chronologically separated by the Victorian backlash of empirical

absolutes, these two eras reveal a shared sense of the ambiguity of reality. What is real

itself becomes dependent upon subjective perception, lacking absolute value outside the

working of the human mind. With both standing on the same guiding principles, the

Modern is the organic progression of the Romantic. With foundational colonial ideals

cast aside, the Modernist is epistemologically distressed. While the Romantic sees hope

in his subjective reality, the Modernist’s relentless pursuit for such hope is met by an

equally relentless anxiety – a doubt in the attainability of truth caused by the devastating

collapse of the cultural “centre”. The Harlem Renaissance therefore emerges as a period

in which the hope of an aforementioned Neo-Romanticism clashes with said Modern

anxiety, resulting in a guarded optimism about the future of African-American society.

This Modernist complication to the Harlem Project is seen most overtly in

Hughes’ “Mother to Son”. Concerning generational perseverance, the poem focuses on

the tension that exists between encouragement and an experiential pessimism – or, by

extension, between fantasy and reality. There is a call in the piece to continue a
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progression up the flight of stairs, but that call lacks a destination – even “sometimes

goin’ in the dark” (Hughes line 12). Whether pushing towards an achievement in socio-

economic standing, self-respect, or an independently wrought identity itself, one’s

progress is mitigated by the Modern doubt of reaching a “real”. One Modernist author’s

attempted response to this angst is Virginia Woolf’s “moments of being,” in which

fleeting moments of experience, performance, and thought, are the only measure of truth

found in a constantly changing world. Arguably there is an echo of Woolf’s idea in the

Mother’s encouragement for her Son to climb the stairs. Perhaps – despite her veiled

pessimism that she is “still climbin’” (Hughes 19), still unsure of her destination – it is

the performative act of climbing that sets her free. The momentary choice itself is a self-

proclamation of identity. However, in spite of the potential salvation offered in such

moments, the pervading Modern anxiety still plagues the desired “new”ness and hope of

the Harlem Renaissance.

With the statement, “I celebrate myself, and sing myself,” consummate American

writer-philosopher Walt Whitman extols the Neo-Romantic ideology that courses through

the American Project. Black writers in turn-of-the-century Harlem revive such Romantic

ideals of self-determination and individuality to the forefront of a traumatized Modern

culture. Their “quixotic radicalism” (Locke 11) seeks to elevate, not by paternalism or by

any man’s burden, the existential condition of the African-American. The literature of the

Renaissance aspires to be the means through which blackness is transformed. As the

writer imagines a new identity and then inscribes it into existence, the reader carries the

hope of reading that identity and choosing to see himself in such a light – using the power

of his mind, or his “intellectual beauty,” to redefine himself. The problematization of this
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endeavor, caused by the a pessimistic Modernism that sees these new subjective realities

as impossible to attain or grasp, is an issue for not just the African-American seeking to

rewrite his or her life but for the idea of America itself. Locke ominously theorizes that

“we [African-Americans] cannot be undone without America’s undoing” (Locke 12). He

highlights the inexorable link between the (re)constitution of a black social identity and

the principle of self-determinism upon which the American Experiment is built. I use the

term experiment because the American nation is the first viable political state to be

forged out of an idea – it is an experiment in self-governance, manifested politically in

democracy but rooted personally in the idea of governing, defining and creating one’s

own self.

The black intellectual community is able to, in the words of Ezra Pound, “make it

new,” and independently (re)write themselves in the literature of their Renaissance. Yet,

it finds itself frustrated by the very same Modernist anxiety that broke the chains of the

colonial paradigm and gave it such freedom of expression in the first place. The same

angst that consumes the black art form of the Blues, consumes the poetry of the Harlem

Renaissance. It highlights the “discrepancy between the American social creed and the

American social practice” (Locke 13). The black poet seeks the power of the Romantic

but discovers the unease of the Modern. Claiming to bare witness to the emergence of a

successfully “New Negro,” Alain Locke tries to inscribe into reality what he imagines –

embracing a Neo-Romanticism in which “poets are the unacknowledged legislatures of

the world” (Shelley 1146). Yet Modernism vetoes such legislation, confounding one’s

sense of the possible with ceaseless doubts. It is in this mire between Romantic dream

and Modern reality that the black Renaissance writer is tragically stuck; never fully
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emerging as new or whole, yet never complacent in fragmentation. Perhaps the only

reprieve from such blues is in the moments of performance, where nothing but the

declaratory voice carries authority. Perhaps the weary boy on the stairs possesses such

moments of truth as every step he takes is a choice – a moment in which he can define

himself in the act, a moment in which to perform that self, to triumphantly say “I—”. By

extension, the authors of the Harlem Renaissance themselves achieve a similar truth in

their writing. Even if the literature does not bring about the social change or the self-

perception desired, the act itself of inscribing such declarations is the “moment of being”

that brings salvation. The choice to write one’s identity is a self-fulfilling definition;

inscribing one’s self with consciousness, intelligence, authority, liberty, and – in defiance

to the pre-existing order of colonial paternalism – independence.

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Works Cited

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. “Dejection.” English Romantic Writers – 2nd Edition. Ed.

David Perkins. United States of America: Wadsworth, 1995. 548-549.

---. “The Nightingale.” English Romantic Writers – 2nd Edition. Ed. David Perkins.

United States of America: Wadsworth, 1995. 544-545.

De Jongh, James. Vicious Modernism: Black Harlem and the Literary Imagination. New

York: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Hughes, Langston. “I, Too.” The Collected Works of Langston Hughes – Volume 1. Ed.

Rampersad, Arnold. Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 2001. 61.

---. “Mother to Son.” The Collected Works of Langston Hughes – Volume 1. Ed.

Rampersad, Arnold. Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 2001. 60.

---. “Mulatto.” The Collected Works of Langston Hughes – Volume 1. Ed. Rampersad,

Arnold. Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 2001. 104.

---. “The Weary Blues.” The Collected Works of Langston Hughes – Volume 1. Ed.

Rampersad, Arnold. Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 2001. 23-

24.

Larson, Nella. Passing. New York: Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2003.

Locke, Alain. “The New Negro.” Simon & Shuster, 1925.

McIntire, Gabrielle. Lecture. ENGL366: Literary Modernism. Queen’s University,

Kingston, ON. 2 April 2008.

Mishkin, Tracy. The Harlem and Irish Renaissances: Language, Identity, and

Representation. Tallahassee: University of Florida Press, 1998.

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Shelley, Percy Bysshe. “A Defence of Poetry.” English Romantic Writers – 2nd Edition.

Ed. David Perkins. United States of America: Wadsworth, 1995. 1131-1146.

Shelley, Percy Bysshe. “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty.” English Romantic Writers – 2nd

Edition. Ed. David Perkins. United States of America: Wadsworth, 1995. 1032-

1033.

Wordsworth, William. “Resolution and Independence.” English Romantic Writers – 2nd

Edition. Ed. David Perkins. United States of America: Wadsworth, 1995. 335-

337.

Yeats, William Butler. "The Second Coming." The Norton

Anthology of English Literature – 8th Edition, Volume F. Ed. Jahan Ramazani &

Jon Stallworthy. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006. 2036-2037.