irony in langton hughes when the negro was in vogue
...ous error of barring their own race, after the manner of the famous Cotton Club. But most quickly lost business and folded up, because they failed to realize that a large part of the attraction of Harlem night spots lay in simply watching the black clientele. The Black people were rising to success especially in the field of entertainment in Harlem. It began with Shuffle Along, Running Wild, The Emperor Jones, Charles Gilpin and the tom-toms at the Provincetown. But it was Shuffle Along that gave a scintillating send-off to the Negro vogue in Manhattan. Shuffle Along was a great show, swift, bright, funny, rollicking, and gay. The now famous choir director Hall Johnson and composer William Grant Still were part of the orchestra. Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle wrote the music and played and acted in the show. There were many other famous people in Harlem like Bojangles. Harlem was now enjoying black of a higher class, so much so that the sophisticated, stylish, urban Harlemites felt betrayed by black writers who scoured the South to record and preserve black folk traditions, writing in the dialect of the "old Negro". And when Carl Van Vechten dared to write a novel entitled "Nigger Heaven", black people held meetings across America to denounce the book, their objection based on the title alone The vogue of Harlem was gone. The colored people did not like the influx of the whites to Harlem. “We can’t go downtown and sit and stare at you in your clubs. You won’t even let us in your clubs.” It was ironic that not all of Harlem was aware of the Renaissance. The educated one’s felt that it signaled the end of racism, whilst the ordinary Negroes did not seen any impact such as increase wages, it were unaware.. However, Hughes lamented that the Harlemites were not industrious enough to use their growing fame and the money made from th...