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The Chicago Defender began the year 1920 by presenting a startling headline to its readers: “Nine Ex-Soldiers Lynched.” The paper protested the wave of anti-Black violence that took place the preceding year and highlighted the soldiers who, after fighting for the United States during World War I, were “assassinated on [their] return to [the] land of democracy.” The editors noted that, despite the increase in violence, a sense of possibility was invading Black communities across the nation. They briefly considered a word then being readily attached to African Americans before determining that the term was inaccurate: “‘new’ is a misnomer; the better word is ‘awakened.’ 1919 has given us much for which we are thankful; we are expecting more of 1920.”
African American Literature in Transition, 1920-1930 presents original essays that map ideological, historical, and cultural shifts in the 1920s. Complicating the familiar reading of the 1920s as a decade that began with a spectacular boom and ended with disillusionment and bust, the collection explores the range and diversity of Black cultural production. Emphasizing a generative contrast between the ephemeral qualities of periodicals, clothes, and décor and the relative fixity of canonical texts, this volume captures in its dynamics a cultural movement that was fluid and expansive. Chapters by leading scholars are grouped into four sections: 'Habitus, Sound, Fashion'; 'Spaces: Chronicles of Harlem and Beyond'; 'Uplift Renewed: Religion, Protest, and Education,' and 'Serial Reading: Magazines and Periodical Culture.'