New USPS Stamps Feature Prominent Voices of the Harlem Renaissance
The USPS recently released a set of four stamps honoring prominent literary figures of the Harlem Renaissance. They are available for purchase on the USPS site.
The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s was one of the great artistic and literary movements in American history. As African-American writers and artists pushed the boundaries of their identities and their art, they created a diverse body of work that explored their shared history and experience, embodied the spirit of the times, and let recent and distinctive voices be heard.
Larsen followed “Quicksand” the next year with “Passing,” which tells the story of Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry, two mixed-race women who grew up together and reunite at a Chicago hotel after years of separation. Clare, Irene discovers, has been living as a white woman married to a racist who is none the wiser about his wife’s background. The relationship between the two women flirts with the sensual as each becomes obsessed with the other’s chosen path.
Upon reading that, I immediately thought “that would make an amazing movie” — and indeed, Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga are starring in an upcoming adaptation. You can read more about Larsen in Thadious M. Davis’ biography.
Originally from Puerto Rico, Arturo Alfonso Schomburg was a historian, writer, activist, and curator of Black art and literature. He co-founded the Negro Society for Historical Research and his collection eventually became part of the NYPL system as the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Schomburg’s 1925 essay The Negro Digs Up His Past was included in Alain Locke’s The New Negro.
Anne Spencer was a poet, activist, and librarian. The Anne Spencer House and Garden Museum has an extensive biography of Spencer.
In addition to her writing, Spencer helped to found the Lynchburg Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). She was also the librarian at the all-black Dunbar High School, a position she held for 20 years. Here she supplemented the original three books by bringing others from her own collection at home, as well as those provided by her employer, the all-white Jones Memorial Library. She spent much of her time writing and serving on local committees to improve the legal, social, and economic aspects of African Americans’ lives.
Most things are colorful things—the sky, earth, and sea.
Black men are most men; but the white are free! White things are scarce things; so scarce, so scarce
They stole from out a silvered world—somewhere.
Notable Black American Women called the poem “the quintessential ‘protest’ poem”. (via colossal)
