Question

The question below refers to the selection “When the Negro was in Vogue”.

What impressions of Harlem in the 1920s did you get from this essay?

Answer 1

This is more of a subjective question but I'd say that personally, my impression from Harlem in the 1920's is that if was a very close minded and regressive place. Even after the clubs opened, Harlem remained a place were African Americans were treated as second class citizens. It was a place filled with closes minded people who, in their way, would push for segregation. For example, African Americans would be invited to jazz bars and clubs but only to entertain whites instead of being invited to enjoy the club itself. It was also a regressive place in which white people would go to enjoy mostly African American performers and share their love for jazz, yet even with jazz music as a common ground between blacks and whites, whites still could not think of African Americans as people of the same value

Answer 2

Harlem is described as a place where both black and white people seem to enjoy and share a party, because white people really enjoyed Harlem clubs and cabarets in spite of the fact of not being nice with black people or Cordial to Negro patronage. Moreover, Negros did not like the great mass of white people who went there. It was also a period in which black people have a great prominence, for instance Charleston preachers opened up shouting churches as sideshows for white tourists, there was at least one hit play on Broadway acted by a Negro, or books which author was a black person were published,