Session Abstract

What is authentic Blackness?  What is African in Blackness?  What is African?   Such questions swirled throughout the diaspora in the 1920s and 1930s. This panel explores the convergence of black modernity and ideas of black-African authenticity during the 1920s and 1930s.  Reflecting on the theme “lives, places, stories,” these works map the interplay between stories of black authenticity relative to Africa, and the places where they took root during the period.  Harlem, London and Sapelo Island, Georgia each become unique stages upon which black-African authenticity shaped notions of black modernity.  Modernist thought shaped, and was shaped by, the vibrancy of these “places.”  Harlem was the site of the burgeoning black public sphere.  London was where black intellectuals from across the diaspora grappled with identity. And Sapelo Island gained notoriety as a relic of blacks' African-folk past.  Each presenter works through complex intellectual and cultural histories in which black-African authenticity was integral to a host of black modernist agendas.  From the Harlem performer who claimed African origins in the pursuit of fame, to the impact of London's African intellectuals on C.L. R James’ scholarly formulations; to the exhaustive social scientific research conducted on Sapelo Island to prove that these blacks were uniquely connected to their African progenitors—these papers introduce new readings of the role that stories about “Africa” played in the formation of the black identity in the diaspora.  From this vantage point, “black modernity” is conceptualized in direct correlation to the imagined “African past” and “African self.”