Post-Bellum, Pre-Harlem: African American Literature and Culture, 1877-1919

The years between the collapse of Reconstruction and the end of World War I mark a pivotal moment in African American cultural production. Christened the "Post-Bellum-Pre-Harlem" era by the novelist Charles Chesnutt, these years look back to the antislavery movement and forward to the artistic flowering and racial self-consciousness of the Harlem Renaissance. Post-Bellum, Pre-Harlem offers fresh perspectives on the literary and cultural achievements of African American men and women during this critically neglected, though vitally important, period of our nation's past. Using a wide range of disciplinary approaches, the sixteen scholars gathered here offer both a reappraisal and celebration of African American cultural production during these influential decades. Alongside discussions of political and artistic icons such as Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, Henry Ossawa Tanner, and James Weldon Johnson are essays revaluing figures such as the writers Paul and Alice Dunbar-Nelson, the New England painter Edward Mitchell Bannister, and Georgia-based activists Lucy Craft Laney and Emmanuel King Love. Contributors explore an array of forms from fine art to anti-lynching drama, from sermons to ragtime and blues, and from dialect pieces and early black musical theater to serious fiction. Contributors include: Frances Smith Foster, Carla L. Peterson, Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, Audrey Thomas McCluskey, Barbara Ryan, Robert M. Dowling, Barbara A. Baker, Paula Bernat Bennett, Philip J. Kowalski, Nikki L. Brown, Koritha A. Mitchell, Margaret Crumpton Winter, Rhonda Reymond, and Andrew J. Scheiber.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments Introduction Caroline Gebhard and Barbara McCaskillPart I : Reimagining the Past1 Creative Collaboration2 Commemorative Ceremonies and Invented TraditionsPart II : Meeting Freedom: Self-Invention, Artistic Innovation, and Race Progress (1870s-1880s)3 Landscapes of Labor4 "Manly Husbands and Womanly Wives"vii5 Old and New Issue Servants6 Savannah's Colored Tribune, the Reverend E. K. Love, and the Sacred Rebellion of Uplift Part III : Encountering Jim Crow: African American Literature and the Mainstream (1890s)7 A Marginal Man in Black Bohemia8 Jamming with Julius9 Rewriting Dunbar10 Inventing a "Negro Literature"Part IV : Turning the Century: New Political, Cultural,and Personal Aesthetics (1900-1917)11 No Excuses for Our Dirt12 War Work, Social Work, Community Work:13 Antilynching Plays14 Henry Ossawa Tanner and W. E. B. Du Bois15 The Folk, the School, and the MarketplaceTopical List of Selected Works About the Contributors Index

About the Author :
Barbara McCaskill is General Sandy Beaver teaching professor and associate professor of English at The University of Georgia. Caroline Gebhard is associate professor of English at Tuskegee University.

Review :
"Post-Bellum, Pre-Harlem is a valuable book. These fifteen essays offer a broad overview of a rich and complicated period and complement the growing body of scholarship that takes as its focus this important and previously under-appreciated era." The Journal of the Society for the Study of the MultiEthnic Literature of the United States " Post-Bellum, Pre-Harlem presents a compelling case for viewing the years between 1877 and 1919 as a time of outstanding literary and cultural achievement for African American men and women... McCaskill and Gebhard are to be commended for the thought-provoking volume that identifies convincingly and documents meticulously the origins of "modern" African American literature. Based on solid scholarship and extensive interdisciplinary research, Post-Bellum, Pre-Harlem is a significant resource for scholars in the fields of African American history and literature." The Journal of African American History "This is a rich portrait of a complex period that has been long neglected." Booklist "This is a vital reappraisal. These essays compellingly return to the often-neglected period known in African American history as 'The Nadir' to ensure that it will never again be seen as a cultural disappointment." Carla Kaplan, author of Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters