An Analysis Of Langston Hughes's When The Negro Was In Vogue

When the Negro Was in Vogue Analytical Essay
The main point, Langston Hughes is trying to make is that this is not what he believes what the Harlem Renaissance was supposed to be. To put this into more context, the Harlem Renaissance, during the era of the “Roaring 20s”, should have seen the advancement of African Americans in both rights and culture. However, it was instead an artistic movement from the Whites who enjoyed the rise of African American culture originating in Harlem, New York. On the same token, Hughes believed this is not what the “New Negro” persona should have became. One notable example, Hughes uses is the Cotton Club on Lenox Avenue. He claims that the place had turned into “... a Jim Crow club for gangsters and monied whites”,

Hughes affirms that the “Negro was in vogue” meaning in style/fashion at that time. Books written such as Scarlet Sister Mary!, were gaining traction in the mainstream media, as this kind of stuff was commercially selling well. Which led to an influx of more African American works, and the introduction of Blackface. Blackface, is such an obscene and offensive type of entertainment, where whites would use makeup to look like an African American, with racial stereotypes such as the SAMBO persona. Many whites such as Ethel Barrymore and Al Jolson from the film The Jazz Singer, portrayed being blackfaced. Hughes was inferior with messages like this being brought into the mainstream and wondered “for how could a large and enthusiastic number of people be crazy about Negroes forever?” While hypothetically asking “..well, maybe a colored man could find some place to have a drink that tourists haven’t yet discovered?” Which could also being alluded to Marcus Garvey, and how his perception that African Americans should go back to Africa and start their own society, so they wouldn’t be discriminated and given bigger and better opportunities than