I Too Sing America: The Harlem Renaissance at 100

(Hardback)

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The project is the culmination of decades of reflection, research, and scholarship by Wil Haygood, acclaimed biographer and preeminent historian on Harlem and its cultural roots. In thematic chapters, the author captures the range and breadth of the Harlem Reniassance, a sweeping movement which saw an astonishing array of black writers and artists and musicians gather over a period of a few intense years, expanding far beyond its roots in Harlem to unleashing a myriad of talents upon the nation. The book is published in conjunction with a major exhibition at the Columbus Museum of Art.

Reviews

"One measure of an exhibition catalogues quality is the degree to which it makes you want to go see the exhibition. In the case of this volume, let us just say that, since picking it up, I have been wracked with pain that I have not been able to visit the Columbus Museum of Art to catch the show it accompanies, which runs through January 20. It is a sumptuously illustrated tome, with reproductions of pieces, variously iconic and little-known, by Palmer Hayden, Los Mailou Jones, Jacob Lawrence, Augusta Savage, Horace Pippin, and many, many more. Haygood is a biographer and journalist (famed for writing the story that became the film The Butler), and hes accomplished the rare feat of weaving together rich scholarship with luminous prose. Including contributions from a variety of experts, it takes an expansive view of its subject, looking not only at visual art but vernacular photography, writing, and periodicals of the movement. 'The Harlem Renaissance lives,' Haygood writes. 'It sings. It continues to do its part to explain America to itself, and also to the world.' This book is a superb vehicle for that remarkable story. Andrew Russeth

"Celebrating the centennial of the creative and intellectual flowering, I Too Sing America is a unique exploration of the subject that brings a journalist together with his hometown museum and the community where he grew up in Columbus, Ohio... Titled after Langston Hughess iconic poem, I Too Sing America considers the Harlem Renaissance as a movement not confined to either upper Manhattan or the interwar period, but as a historical moment of national and international significance that continues to have reverberations far beyond its typically noted end date in the mid-1930s. The catalog is a wonderful volume lavishly illustrated with the art and photography that defined the Renaissance. Haygoods essays on how Harlem emerged as the mecca of Black America, the feverish publishing the period sparked, the dance, theater, and music the era engendered, the two Reverend Powells, and W.E.B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, and Zora Neale Hurston, appear throughout the volume. His contributions are punctuated by writings about individual visual artists, including Malvin Gray Johnson, Winold Reiss, Aaron Douglas, Palmer Hayden, Augusta Savage, and James VanDerZee, authored by the museums curators." Culture Type

Author Bio

Wil Haygood, guest curator for the Columbus Museum of Art's I Too Sing America: Harlem Renaissance at 100, is a Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow. Haygood has written 4 biographies of major Harlem figures who were all touched by the Harlem Renaissance. His King of the Cats: The Life and Times of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. In Black and White: The Life of Sammy Davis, Jr., won the Richard Wright-Zora Neale Hurston Literary Award, the Deems Taylor Biography Award, and the Non-Fiction Book of the Year Award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. His Sweet Thunder: The Life and Times of Sugar Ray Robinson, was a PEN/ESPN Book Award Finalist. Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination that Changed America, published in 2015, received the Scribes Book Award, the Ohioana Book Award, and the Honor Book Award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association, and was also a finalist for the Dayton International Literary Peace Prize. Haygood, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, wrote the story about White House butler Eugene Allen that was adapted into the award-winning motion picture, The Butler, starring, among others, Forest Whitaker, Oprah Winfrey, Jane Fonda, Vanessa Redgrave, and Cuba Gooding Jr.