Harlem Nocturne (10 page)

Like Zora Neale Hurston and Katherine Dunham before her, Primus sought to imbue her artistic works with insights that she believed could be garnered from her academic study. In her book recounting the history of modern dance,
Modern Bodies
, Julia L. Foulkes noted that for black women such as Dunham, Primus, and dancer/choreographer Syvilla Fort, higher education helped to legitimate artistic pursuits. Anthropology was a field that attracted a number of women and minorities because it called for serious scientific investigation of all forms of culture and society, including those not yet deemed worthy of study by disciplines such as history or literature. Primus noted, in an interview, “With anthropology I could gain the facts about which I danced—the facts and not just the feelings.”
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Primus's intellectual pursuits were driven by an activist motivation, not just an artistic one. Along with Hurston and Dunham, she adhered to a school of thought furthered by Franz Boas and Melville Herskovits, who countered claims that African Americans had lost any sense of connection to Africa. For them, Africa could be found in every element of diasporic cultures, from religious practices and foodways to music and dance. So, although Primus did not work with Boas or Herskovits, her work contributed to their broader project of situating Africa as central to the development of New World cultures.

At the beginning of her academic career at Columbia, Primus took classes such as “Primitive Languages,” “Cultural Dynamics,” “Peoples and Cultures of Africa,” “Native Cultures of South America,” “Primitive Art and Its Contribution to Modern Art,” and “Art of the Congo.” One is struck by the liberal use of the word “primitive” even in this most progressive department. In 1946, she took a course entitled “Religions of Primitive Peoples” with Ruth Benedict. The course was “a survey of the religious beliefs and religious techniques with special emphasis on religion in relation to the social order.” Benedict, a pioneering anthropologist, a student of Franz Boas, and a peer of Margaret Mead, championed the importance of acknowledging the value of cultures based on their own contexts. Benedict was the author of two major studies,
The Chrysanthemum and the Sword
, on Japan, and
Patterns of Culture
, an introduction to cultural studies. She also coauthored, with colleague Gene Weltfish, an instructor with whom Primus also studied, a World War II–era pamphlet entitled “Races of Mankind.” Meant for servicemen, the pamphlet provided scientific arguments against racism. In short, Primus was taught by antiracist intellectuals whose scholarship demonstrated how scholarly work might inform a project of social change.

Primus did not finish her doctorate at Columbia. She would do so many years later at another of the city's prominent educational institutions, New York University. However, Columbia was an important site of her intellectual development, and the Columbia Department of Anthropology provided her with some of the tools she needed to pursue her interest in the
significance and centrality of dance. While attending classes, Primus continued to perform, and she further honed her teaching skills and her educational presentations about dance.

In 1945, under the auspices of the New Dance Group, Primus conducted a series of lectures and demonstrations on the influence of African dance on dance in Haiti and the American South. She was clearly establishing herself as both a performer and an intellectual. Articulate, intelligent, well educated, and well read, she was not only capable of executing sophisticated movement, but also had the chops to analyze and talk about what she performed. She had always aspired to be an educator, and her time at Columbia gave her the set of concepts she needed to convey the meaning and significance of her dancing. Dance, which provided access to a people's culture and their struggle, was a perfect mechanism for teaching her audiences about their roots. The dancer could walk in their footsteps and express their longings. Given her commitment to education, it is not surprising that Primus embarked on a college tour.

During her company's tour of black colleges, Primus performed at Fisk University in 1948. Dr. Edward Embree, president of the Julius Rosenwald Fund, was in the audience. Convinced of the authenticity of her company's performance, Dr. Embree asked Primus when she had last visited Africa. “I've never been,” Primus replied. Embree arranged for Primus to receive a $4,000 grant, the foundation's last and largest research grant. The Rosenwald Fund had provided support for both Zora Neale Hurston and Katherine Dunham to conduct their own anthropological studies.

The Caribbean, especially Trinidad, and the American South had been Primus's gateway to the traditions of Africa, but now she would have an opportunity to experience Africa firsthand. Armed with a gun, DDT, inoculations, and her studies in anthropological method, Primus left for her trip in December 1948. Obviously, she thought she would encounter bugs, disease, and violence. Instead, she acquired so much more. While there she traveled to the Gold Coast, Nigeria, Angola, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Liberia, French Equatorial Africa, and the Belgian Congo. She performed, learned from traditional dancers, and participated in spontaneous community dances. According to Primus, village elders throughout Africa believed the ancestors had taught her. In Nigeria, she was given the name Omowale, which meant “Child returned home.” Upon her return to the United States, she would become one of African dance's major ambassadors, introducing generations of dancers and audiences to the dynamism, beauty, and history of African dance.

When Primus came back to the United States in 1950, she found a political climate that was vastly different from the one she had left when embarking on her African sojourn. Many of her colleagues and peers were under investigation, and the institutions that had nurtured her were challenged. She would continue to be the object of investigation and surveillance—an experience she shared with a number of her colleagues and collaborators. The FBI opened a file on Josephson in 1943 and placed him on the Security Index in 1944. From then on, he was under constant surveillance. By 1950 his passport was
confiscated. J. Edgar Hoover and the powerful columnist Walter Winchell were architects of Café Society's demise. Fittingly, the two often met at the tony Stork Club, the venue Café Society parodied. Eventually a number of people associated with the club would be blacklisted or required to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Zero Mostel, Paul Robeson, Canada Lee, Lewis Allan, Lillian Helman, Hazel Scott, Josh White, and Lena Horne were all called before the committee. In their appearances, Scott and White blamed their involvement with the Communist Left on Josephson.

Josephson later fell out with Primus because he emphatically believed she named names during the McCarthy era. Himself the victim of Senator Joseph McCarthy's witch-hunt, he could never forgive her for having done so. He claimed that she told the press, “I don't know why they're doing this to me. I was an informer for the FBI all those years I was dancing at Café Society.” In his memoir, Josephson insisted that Primus was an informer even before this time, while she was working for the Maritime Union. There is no evidence for Josephson's claims, even in Primus's FBI file. Primus almost certainly never named names—though she did admit to her own attraction to and involvement with the Communist Party as well as her support of and sympathy for Communist causes during this period. Josephson went from being reluctant to hire her because of her appearance, to becoming an employer who supported her career, to becoming a former political ally who held her in contempt. He grew to resent her, believing that she had
used him to establish her career and then left his club when other opportunities arose.
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Though he was probably wrong about her naming names, Josephson may have been correct in noting Primus's ambition. Primus always recognized opportunities for advancement and seized them; where they did not exist, she created them. Many progressive people believed that appearing before the FBI or the House Un-American Activities Committee in and of itself legitimated their activities. Josephson would not have been alone in feeling betrayed by Primus, Josh White, and Hazel Scott, all of whom voluntarily met with government agencies during the anti-Communist hysteria.

By that time, Primus had traveled extensively through Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. The FBI took her passport upon her return, thereby limiting her research, performance opportunities, and income. In this way her experience was like that of W. E. B. Du Bois and Paul Robeson. Through her lawyer, Herbert Mont Levy of the American Civil Liberties Union, Primus set up an interview with the FBI offices in New York on October 2, 1952, for the sole purpose of obtaining her passport, with a follow-up meeting on October 16. There she provided letters and documents from numerous organizations said to have been Communist fronts. In a memo dated November 3, 1952, an FBI agent wrote: “In as much as the signed statement furnished by Miss Primus reflects that she is not presently connected with the Communist Party, no attempt will be made by the NYO to develop her as an informant. It is not believed that further investigation in this matter is warranted.” Another
memo, dated November 21 (see Appendix A), is important because in spite of Josephson's assertion to the contrary, it strongly suggests that she did not name names.
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In addition to finding a Left decimated by the federal government, Primus would also find a black movement that would compromise the goal of economic justice in order to make gains in domestic civil rights. The movement seemed to eschew the international dimensions of its calls for anti-colonial, racial equality.

In spite of this new political landscape, Primus continued to work to bring African culture to the international concert stage, and in so doing, she gained many admirers. She inspired poems, essays, and paintings. She continued to share her knowledge in the dance studio, in the lecture hall, and on the college campus. Along the way, she documented, analyzed, and theorized about the role of dance in human development. She inspired new generations of dancers and choreographers, from Alvin Ailey to Bill T. Jones to Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, all of whom paid tribute to her in their own choreography. By the time of her death in 1994, Pearl Primus was widely recognized as one of the foremothers of black concert dance.

In New York during the 1940s, Pearl Primus created a dance narrative that highlighted the struggle against segregation and racial violence. As such she made the plight of black Americans, particularly black southerners, a central concern in the fight for American democracy.

Seventeen years after Pearl Primus's death, the novelist Sapphire created a fictional character, Toosie Johnston, who saw Primus dance in the 1940s. Through Toosie, Sapphire
gives voice to those migrants who sat in Primus's audience when she danced “Jim Crow Car,” “Hard Time Blues,” and “Strange Fruit”:

One night Pearl Primus herse'f, yes indeedy. Dat woman jumped five feet in de air if she jumped a inch! Den she did a dance to some country blues near 'bout tear my heart out watchin' it. Made me think of de plantation, all what I escaped from, runned away from. Even all I been through, I still think it good I left. Josh White record playing while she dancin'. Everybody sittin' dere knowed what she was talkin' 'bout or was holdin' on to somebody dat knew.”
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Sapphire's fictional migrant captures the excitement of those who witnessed Pearl Primus's choreographed flights. Her journeys through time and space spoke to their yearning and motivated their drive to change the nation and the world.

CHAPTER TWO

ANN PETRY: WALKING HARLEM

W
hile Pearl Primus was bringing the plight of black southerners to the New York stage, Ann Petry was addressing the concerns of black urbanites, especially the inhabitants of Harlem, in her writing. Primus danced in venues throughout New York; Petry spent most of her time uptown, where she lived and worked from 1938 until the mid-1940s. Harlem provided Petry with ample material and inspiration, and she created a body of work that earned her an international literary reputation.

Petry used fiction to map Harlem, both as a
space
constructed by forces outside of its control and as a
place
created by its inhabitants. The two were necessarily at odds with each other. While Harlem the place fought against racism, the space existed as a black neighborhood because of forced residential segregation. It grew into a global black cultural and political capital because of the creativity and determination of those who lived there. In Petry's fiction, the space is plagued by substandard housing; the place was filled with individuals trying desperately to create meaningful lives for themselves and their children. Like the characters about whom she wrote, Petry walked the streets of Harlem. She navigated them as an activist, journalist, and writer of fiction. These combined roles informed her work, ensuring that her writing possessed a sense of urgency, realism, and artistry. The Harlem she documented changed constantly; it was made and remade by walkers, who in turn were shaped by the streets they walked.