ABOUT THIS BOOK

The Muse in Bronzeville, a dynamic reappraisal of a neglected period in African American cultural history, is the first comprehensive critical study of the creative awakening that occurred on Chicago's South Side from the early 1930s to the cold war. Coming of age during the hard Depression years and in the wake of the Great Migration, this generation of Black creative artists produced works of literature, music, and visual art fully comparable in distinction and scope to the achievements of the Harlem Renaissance.

This highly informative and accessible work, enhanced with reproductions of paintings of the same period, examines Black Chicago's "Renaissance" through richly anecdotal profiles of such figures as Richard Wright, Gwendolyn Brooks, Margaret Walker, Charles White, Gordon Parks, Horace Cayton, Muddy Waters, Mahalia Jackson, and Katherine Dunham. Robert Bone and Richard A. Courage make a powerful case for moving Chicago's Bronzeville, long overshadowed by New York's Harlem, from a peripheral to a central position within African American and American studies.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Robert Bone (1924-2007) was a professor of languages and literature at Columbia University Teachers College and a pioneering scholar of African American literature. He was best known for The Negro Novel in America, Richard Wright, and Down Home: Origins of the Afro-American Short Story. His seminal essay "Richard Wright and the Chicago Renaissance" continues to be cited extensively in studies of early twentieth-century African American writing.

Richard A. Courage is a professor of English at Westchester Community College/SUNY.

REVIEWS

"The Muse in Bronzeville weaves together archival research, textual and visual analysis, cultural history, and biographical sketches, to survey the tangled histories of black migration, popular culture, visual arts, literature, performance, and social science. A valuable resource that is clearly written, engagingly detailed, and richly illustrated."

— Journal of Illinois History

"Bone and Courage unveil the important differences between the black respectability and critique of black responsibility that shapes the Harlem Renaissance and the lack of any real investment in this issue in the less-elite Chicago Renaissance."

— American Literature

"Bone and Courage offer not only an impressively astute and comprehensive explication of the historical, cultural, ideological, and foundational contours of the Chicago Renaissance, but also a discussion of the prominent figures and institutions that contributed to this black artistic flourishing in Chicago's South Side during the period from the 'great migration' through the post-WW II moment. Foregrounding the renaissance in Chicago, which has been largely neglected and overshadowed by the Harlem Renaissance, this study delineates continuities and discontinuities and significantly expands understanding of black artistic renaissances (generally as well as area specific) and of cultural and expressive traditions collectively in 20th-century America. Highly recommended."

— Choice

"A compelling book which will be a standard in its field for many years to come."

— Monthly Review

"Richard Courage’s monumental The Muse in Bronzeville completes Robert Bone’s ambitious Chicago project and provides a shift of focus in African American literary scholarship. Chicago finally emerges as the vibrant counterpart of the Harlem Renaissance."

— David Levering Lewis, wrote When Harlem Was in Vogue and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Biography

"A sprawling and encyclopedia book. The Muse in Bronzeville argues with solid evidence for a complementary Chicago African American artistic and literary renaissance in the 1930s and 1940s."

— Journal of American History

The Muse in Bronzeville—the culmination of a life's work, an encyclopedic study of renaissance activity, and a book that will forever alter the way scholars comprehens and historicize black cultural production.

— African American Review

"Finally setting the record straight, the book brings to the forefront the cultural awakening of black consciousness exploding in the Midwest during the first half of the 20th-century. Bone and Courage masterfully blend the history of Chicago's South Side as the incubator of cultural expression and the black aesthetic in page-turning prose. The Muse in Bronzeville is a much-needed contribution."

— International Review of African American Art

"The Muse in Bronzeville presents a rich cultural feast of writers, poets, bluesmen, jazz musicians, painters, and sculptors. Supported by newspapermen, sociologists, and philanthropists, these Chicago 'New Negros' rivaled their Harlem counterparts."

— Patricia Hills, author of Painting Harlem Modern: The Art of Jacob Lawrence

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

Foreword by Amritjit Singh

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part I. An Account of Origins

1. The Tuskegee Connection

2. Charles S. Johnson and the Parkian Tradition

3. The New Negro in Chicago

Part II. Bronzeville's Social Muse

4. Year of Transition

5. Birthing the Blues and Other Black Musical Forms

6. Bronzeville and the Documentary Spirit

7. The Documentary Eye

8. Bronzeville's "Writing Clan"

9. Bronzeville and the Novel

10. Bronzeville and the Poets

11. The Wheel Turns

Appendix A: Artists of Bronzeville

Appendix B: African Americans Employed by Illinois Writers' Project

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Index