Growing up, all James Gaston ever heard in the house was jazz music.
“I'm a descendant of the Harlem Renaissance,” said Gaston. “My aunts, my uncles, my dad, my family — everybody's always been into jazz.”
Gaston said listening to live jazz and blues as a kid made him want to own a jazz club and promote diverse music in an intimate setting. Gaston’s jazz club, Jazz UpFront, has been open for almost a decade.
Jazz UpFront will host the opening reception for the touring Stonewall National Museum, Archives & Library exhibit The Harlem Renaissance: As Gay as it was Black.
Gaston’s jazz club is reminiscent of those from the Harlem Renaissance, which is what made it the ideal spot for the opening reception.
“Where else would you have it in Bloomington?” asked Gaston. “All the great blues and jazz singers came out of Harlem, and we do a lot of that type of music here.”
Local LGBTQ+ organization Prairie Pride Coalition was able to bring this exhibit to Bloomington-Normal through a grant from Nicor and donations from the local LGBTQIA+ community.
The exhibit displays panels about Black queer people in the Harlem Renaissance, and will tour around Bloomington-Normal through February. Other showings of the exhibit after the opening reception at Jazz UpFront are still being scheduled.
As gay as it was Black
Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. stated in his 1993 essay The Black Man’s Burden that Harlem was “surely as gay as it was Black.”
The phrase “as gay as it was Black” is used in the title for the traveling Harlem Renaissance exhibit because of how prominent the queer subculture was within the Harlem Renaissance.
Gaston said during that period of time in Harlem there was a freedom to be who you wanted to be.
“There were places that were set up just for expressing who you wanted to be,” said Gaston.
When many Black Americans were leaving the south because of Jim Crow laws, often referred to as The Great Migration, LBGTQ folks were also making their way to Harlem.
Ma Rainey is one of many notable Black queer musicians who came out of the Harlem Renaissance. Her song “Prove It On Me Blues” has explicit lyrics about being a lesbian and going against societal gender norms.
“She was very bold, very brazen at a time when those things were not OK, and she was ultimately extraordinarily successful," said Robert Kesten, executive director of the Stonewall National Museum.
Despite Ma Rainey’s success, Black people and queer people were not accepted in American society.
“I can only imagine,” said Director of Jazz at Illinois Wesleyan University [IWU] Reginald Lewis. “If [being] Black was frowned upon and being homosexual was frowned upon, being both of them together [was] definitely frowned upon. So I can only imagine how people were treated.”
The Harlem Renaissance
The Harlem Renaissance was an era of cultural and intellectual revitalization of Black culture and identity which started in the 1920s.
Lewis said “African Americans wanted to erase and redefine what was thought of the African American through art, dance, literature and everything. And during that time, they focused on the impact that slavery had on us.”
The era was more than just flourishing art and music; it was a movement that showed Black people were more than their skin color. Black people like Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Houston were intellects capable of writing great things that surpassed race.
“White people thought we were beneath them. They thought we were lazy. They prevented us from learning how to read and just treated us like animals,” Lewis said, “and we are not that. We were never animals. We're all human beings.”
Black art and culture started to make its way into white American culture during the Harlem Renaissance.
Kesten said when a marginalized group of people become part of the “mainstream culture” it starts to change the social fabric.
“All of a sudden white people were listening to Billie Holiday, and white people were traveling up to Harlem to hear her sing, and she was invited to perform in places where she couldn't even stay or have dinner because ‘Blacks’ were not allowed to stay at certain hotels or eat in certain restaurants. But there she was, the star,” said Kesten.
When cultural icons and influencers started to accept that these Black musicians were talented, it gave the white population social permission to listen to them.
“When you have those rare talents like Billie Holiday, like The Nicholas Brothers in dance, like Langston Hughes in poetry, you can't ignore it. And people who love great art in the white community start to gravitate towards these just phenomenal, unequaled artists,” said Kesten.
A renaissance doesn’t happen overnight
Although Black culture was starting to become integrated into mainstream culture in the 1920s, there was not a cultural shift overnight.
White artists and musicians continuously copied Black art and brought it to white audiences.
Additionally, Minstrel Shows were a popular form of entertainment through the 1910s, only a decade earlier, and continued on a smaller scale through the 1960s.
Minstrel Shows were theatrical performances where white people, and sometimes Black people, would comically characterize Black stereotypes. The actors would paint their faces black to portray a caricature of Black people — known as blackface.
IWU Jazz Director Lewis said “[White people] would do blackface and portray us, but make us look silly, like monkeys.”
While white artists were copying, portraying and revering Black art, there were still people mocking Black culture.
“Arts are a welcoming hand that invite people in," said Kesten with the Stonewall National Museum. "It doesn't necessarily mean the people who like the music like the artist. That's a divide that takes longer to accomplish."
Kesten said to take Wanda Sykes as a contemporary example.
“You've got Wanda Sykes, who is very out and bold about who she is, a Black lesbian. It wasn't that long ago that a Black lesbian wouldn't have had a special on TV and that it would be successful, but she's really funny, and she's really good at her job. And because she's done that, she has fans that span across every race, every creed, every color, every religion and every gender.”
The intersectionality of Black and queer identities was prevalent during the Harlem Renaissance.
Harlem Renaissance exhibit
Kesten said The Harlem Renaissance: As gay as it was Black exhibit is important to showcase now because “attacks on marginalized communities are increasing.”
Support of the LGBTQ community has statistically gone down in recent years.
“We have certainly seen in recent years in Florida — the 'don't say gay' bills, the anti-trans legislation, the questioning of parents taking care of their children if they respect who their children are rather than what they want their children to be, the banning of books across the United States, even in some of the bluest states and cities in this country, certain books have been taken off shelves, especially in schools and in some cases public libraries. That is reminiscent of earlier times,” Kesten said.
Understanding history by the facts and not through misinformation is a big part of the mission at the Stonewall National Museum.
“You can't move forward if you don't know about the past,” said IWU Jazz Director Lewis. “It's kind of scary when you have kids who don't know who Rosa Parks was, or Martin Luther King or Duke Ellington, or don't even know about the Harlem Renaissance, or heard of it.”
The spirit of the Harlem Renaissance is still alive today at Jazz UpFront in Bloomington.
Gaston said Jazz UpFront is “a nice place for diversity and everybody. It's a safe space for anybody and everybody that wants to come here.”
On Thursday, Jan. 16, the opening reception for the Harlem Renaissance: As gay as it was Black traveling exhibit will be held at Jazz UpFront from 5 to 8 p.m. The event is 21+, but there will be more opportunities to see the exhibit throughout the twin cities at the ISU Bone Student Center, Evelyn Chapel, the Bistro, Bloomington High School and Bloomington Public Library through February.
