SECCIÓN 210 - CIRCUITOS RAMALES A. Disposiciones Generales
C. Salidas Requeridas
The recognition of the Harlem-based jazz dance outside Harlem is the main task of this dissertation. This means how the Harlem jazz dance was really recognized outside Harlem in the outside Harlem existing, non-African-American press. This recognition process does not seem to have been examined comprehensively. The existing press outside of Harlem frequently reviewed African-American Broadway plays, movies, and discussed African-American entertainment and entertainers in its articles. Therefore, it is a remarkable source to find out how the recognition really happened and what kind of aspects were recognized.
Because the most important sources of this study are various newspapers and magazines, these are defined with the help of the work terms as follows. The term ’the mainstream press’ describes newspapers and magazines which were not strictly connected to Harlem. That means they were not published in Harlem, and they were not so-called African-American newspapers and magazines. As a counterbalance, the term ’the African-American press’ is used, which means so-called African- American newspapers and magazines which were published in Harlem or outside Harlem, and which concentrated mainly on reporting about Harlem and African- Americans’ matters. The terms are sometimes opened and used, in various forms, such as: the mainstream newspapers or the mainstream magazines, the African- American newspapers or the African-American magazines. If there is a need to be more exact, then that part of the press is particularly noted in the case.
Harlem entertainment seems to have been recognized remarkably for the first time, when Harlem-based African-American jazz dance had its breakthrough on Broadway in 1921. That supports the idea that the year 1921 is a reasonable start year to my research. In some cases, the study discusses earlier years, especially,
84Especially Terry Monaghan discussed the Savoy Ballroom Lindy Hop and problems of
where the background of Harlem, political movements, the terms used in the study, are concerned. In most cases, the study begins at the earliest from 1921. It is thus that 1921 is mentioned to be the year at which the study starts. In 1943, the Savoy Ballroom, probably the most important ballroom and cultural center of Harlem, was closed for six months, and Harlem was changing musically at the time, when the popularity of be bop was increasing. Thus, the year 1943 is a reasonable finish point to my research. In some cases, especially in Bill Robinson’s case, the research continues beyond 1943 because of the later events are important for understanding the significance of the case. Mostly, the research ends in 1943, and thus the year is mentioned to be the year at which the study ends.
The dissertation tries to find out how the Harlem-based African-American jazz dance was recognized in the mainstream press, especially among white people between 1921 and 1943. This also means how the African-American image was changed in the mainstream press by the Harlem-based jazz dance, or even if the image changed at all. It is also possible that the picture of the Harlem-based African- American dance entertainment stayed the same during the research period. Similarly, it is questioned, did this possible image change affect in any way the African- Americans’ racial or cultural position?
However, it is clear that a pivotal moment in American Civil Rights, one that came in the midst of a multi-decade long struggle in 1954, was when the U.S. Supreme court ruled in favor of the NAACP and the African-American Freedom Movement, making racial segregation in public schools illegal. This was the dawn of the new phase of the Civil Rights struggle that made the reduction of legal segregation possible.85 This crucial change happened decades later, after the remarkable breakthrough of the Harlem-based African-American jazz dance on Broadway. The change of the social environment would likely be too difficult to examine properly enough in this dissertation, because of a too long time period, if the end of the research period was in the 1950s.
To find out possible jazz dance-related achievements which paved the way for the change in 1954, it is reasonable to examine how the Harlem-based jazz dance was connected to the political movements, especially to the Civil Rights Movement. Did these political forces use the jazz dance for their purposes in the Harlem context, and if so, what were the results? It is conceivable that Harlem jazz dance had some part in creating the basis for this success, in the decades leading up to the pivotal change. This study also considers these possible changes and how they affected the recognition of the Harlem-based jazz dance.
The key term to the study is ’recognition’. The recognition of different features like poetry and folk roots in African-American culture, and modern dance, in connection to African-American culture, has been researched in various works, particularly concerning the Harlem Renaissance Movement.86 The definition of the
85 Marable 2011, p. 10. See also: Risa Lauren Goluboff, The Lost Promise Of Civil Rights,
Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2007, pp. 4, 12 and 252.
86See for example: Nathan I. Huggins, Arnold Rampersed, Harlem Renaissance (New
recognition term in this study reflects philosopher Charles Taylor’s definitions of the term recognition. His ideas are paraphrased in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which states, ”Recognition has both a normative and a psychological dimension”. To recognize another person normatively means to admit, that the person has a certain feature with embracing “a positive attitude towards” the person “for having this feature”. The psychological dimension of the term is connected in ”the feedback of the other subjects” and ”of the society as a whole”. People depend on the feedback. Basically, recognition constitutes a vital human need.87
The ’recognition’ term is used normatively in the study. In this sense, the term is used in the following ways: 1. There is a hierarchy of the races where African- Americans are basically compared to whites, when different features are examined. This is based on the well-known fact that there were racist practices in the United States in the twentieth century. African-Americans and whites were not considered as equals in the racist practices. 2. There is a feature of dancing which has no ethnical divisions. This idea comes from Savoy Lindy Hopper Frankie Manning’s statement, how there were no race divisions at the Savoy Ballroom, where dancing was concerned. According to Manning, ”They never looked at your face, only at your feet”, they only asked, ”Can you dance?”88 3. African-American culture was considered either lower forms of art or higher forms of art. For example, the Harlem Renaissance Movement divided the African-American culture into these two art forms89.
The recognition of the Harlem-based jazz dance is researched in this study with the help of different factors that are analyzed as follows: Was the Harlem jazz dance recognized as a segregated or integrated dance form? Was the Harlem jazz dance appreciated? Mitchel G. Adler and N. S. Fagley have defined the term ‘appreciation’ as “acknowledging the value and meaning of something – an event, a person, a behavior, an object – and feeling a positive emotional connection to it.”90 If the Harlem jazz dance was appreciated, and there is information of this, it is determined
Lamothe, Inventing the New Negro – Narrative, Culture, and Ethnography (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), pp. 54, 81, 88, 99, 122, 164 and 220; Eric King Watts, Hearing the Hurt – Rhetoric, Aesthetics, and Politics of the New Negro Movement (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2012), pp. 17, 42, 57, 60, 99, 103, 127, 136, 159, 168, 175, 179 and 196. Also African-American culture researchers have used the term in different studies. See for example: Verney 2003, p. vi and Michael L. Hecht, Ronald L. Jackson II, Sidney A. Ribeau, African American Communication: Identity and Cultural
Interpretation (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., 2008), pp. 6-7.
87Mattias Iser, Recognition, 2013,http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/recognition/ . The
site was accessed on April 30, 2015. See also: Charles Taylor, ‘The Politics of Recognition’ in Amy Gutmann (editor), Multiculturalism: examining the politics of recognition (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 25-73.
88Frankie Manning and Cynthia R. Millman, Frankie Manning – Ambassador of Lindy
Hop (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2007), p. 71.
89Monaghan 2005, pp. 39 and 66. The Harlem Renaissance Movement and its disdain
for the lower forms of art are discussed later in the dissertation.
90Mitchel G. Adler and N. S. Fagley, ’Appreciation: Individual Differences in Finding
Value and Meaning as a Unique Predictor of Subjective Well-Being’, Journal of Personality 73:1, February 2005, p. 81.
whether it was appreciated was based on racial stereotypes of African-Americans as naturally gifted dancers, or if it was based on a perception of them as trained dancers? Similarly, it is examined if the Harlem jazz dance was recognized as part of American culture, and if the Harlem jazz dance was appreciated as part of the political movements like the Civil Rights Movement.
1.4 Sources
This study uses newspapers and magazines as sources. The newspapers and magazines are used both as sources that documented the events of the time, and as sources that reflected the opinions of newspapers, magazines and their editors about said events. The analysis is mainly on qualitative in nature, in that it focuses on what kind of opinions the aforementioned had. Quantitative analyses are performed if there have been reasons, for example, for finding out how many times terms like ‘jazz dance’, jazz and swing were used,91 the results of which are used, for instance, to study how certain terms were used overall, and how parties like the Communists and the NAACP used jazz dance in their activities.92
The recognition process of jazz dance in the dissertation is examined from the reviews and the articles of the mainstream newspapers, especially The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, New York Herald Tribune, The Boston Daily Globe, The Hartford Courant and The Chicago Daily Tribune, which were chosen as the main mainstream newspapers for the study, because of their regular reporting about the New York theatrical plays and movies, which also included the Harlem-based jazz dance.93
The circulation of those newspapers was usually quite large during the time period of the study, which also supports using the newspapers. All the values are about the daily circulation. See Table 1.
91 The analysis of the newspapers and magazines is based on newspaper research
methods in political history, which are introduced in Timo Soikkanen’s text book of studies of political history. See: Timo Soikkanen (toimittanut), Poliittisen Historian Tutkimusopas (Suomi: Turun yliopisto – Poliittinen historia – Julkaisuja C:24, 1987), pp. 87 and 94.
92The Communists, the NAACP and the terms ’jazz dance’, jazz and swing are discussed
especially on chapters ’Harlem-Based Jazz Dance and Political Movements’ and ’What Is Jazz Dance’.
93Although there does not seem to exist any exact statistics concerning the case, it
seems that, according to the reporting of the papers, they frequently reported theatrical plays especially on Broadway. See chapters: ’The Harlem Jazz Dance on Broadway Theaters and the Mainstream Press Between 1921 and 1943’ and ’The Harlem Jazz Dance in Movies and the Mainstream Press Between 1929 and 1943’.