Monologue from ‘For the Love of Harlem’

by Jermaine Nakia Lee

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October 27, 2011

For the Love of Harlem, book, lyrics and original songs by Jermaine Nakia Lee, is a musical sensation profiling the lives of some of the brightest artistic visionaries of the Harlem Renaissance.  Legendary figures like Wallace Thurman, Alberta Hunter, Richard Bruce Nugent, Bessie Smith, Countee Cullen, A’lelia Walker, Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes are given real human faces. Their struggles between public recognition and devotion to being true to one’s self tell a story many people have never heard.

In 2007, For the Love of Harlem was nominated as Theater Event of the Year by Creative Loafing magazine.

For the Love of Harlem takes place during the zenith of the flowering of African American cultural and intellectual life.  

This period is referred to as the 1920’s – 30’s Harlem Renaissance (also known as the Black Literary Renaissance and the New Negro Movement). Nestled in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City, this movement impacted the entire cultural spectrum; literature, drama, music, visual art, and dance. The Movement afforded unique ways to explore the historic struggles of Black America and the contemporary relevance of Black life in the urban North.  

These iconoclasts challenged White paternalism and rejected imitating the European and White American way of being; instead they celebrated Black dignity and creativity. Asserting their freedom to express themselves on their own terms, they explored their respective identities as non-conformist, feminist, same-sex attracted and straight-affirming Black Americans; all the while paying homage to a culture that had emerged out of slavery and was rooted in Africa.

For the Love of Harlem celebrates the courage, achievement, frailty and hardship of these creative ones; whose artistic contributions have had profound impact not only on African-American culture but redefined how America, and the world, views the African-American.  For the Love of Harlem takes us on a musical journey that shadows these brave artists who refused to be inauthentic, no matter what the Black public or White public thought.

In this closing scene, with the devastation of the Great Depression as his backdrop, scribe Langston Hughes contemplates what matters most....Love.

Langston Hughes:

(as if eulogizing Wallace) On a bright and sunny afternoon, in the year 1934, at age 32, our beloved friend and comrade Wallace Henry Thurman succumb to tuberculosis.

Like that day, he was a ray of light….beaming and pulsating to no end.  Many found Wallace to be peculiar, indulgent...but we found him to be strangely brilliant.

It seemed as if he had read everything and his critical mind could find something wrong with every piece of literature that met his eyes.  

He was profound, avant-garde and pioneering.  

As editor of the publication, The Messenger, Wallace was the first to publish my work.  He then moved on to become the first Negro editor of the white owned and operated magazine called World Tomorrow.  I didn’t always approve of his destructive way of being but I admired him like no other.  What I would give for just a portion of his tenacity.  We miss you Wally.  

Things are not as they were.  The country is experiencing an economic meltdown.  

They’re calling it the ‘Great Depression.’  There is no work.  There is no opportunity - only hopelessness.  And, of course, the Negro seems to be feeling its impact the most.  It pains me to see my friends and neighbors desperate for food...suffering from malnutrition...searching garbage dumps for something to feed their families.  (overwhelmed)  

It's devastating.  

(beat) Wally's resourcefulness would serve us well in these troublesome times.

It is said that this Great Depression began with a catastrophic collapse of stock-market prices on the New York Stock Exchange.  

During that time, stock prices in the United States plummeted and eventually dropped to only about 20 percent of their value.  

I'm striving to maintain hope but I just can't see how the country is going to recover from this.

A few years back, the patroness of the arts, A’lelia Walker suddenly passed away from a brain hemorrhage while attending a friends’ birthday party in New Jersey.  Her death undoubtedly marked the end of gay times in Harlem.  

Our Mahogany Princess…she was an impeccable hostess and a polarizing personality.  Her lavish soirees draw foreign royalty and local hoodlums alike.  Folks either adored her or despised her…we loved her.  Because we knew she loved us.

There’s not much to cling to in this moment except memories of better times; days and nights of passion...decadence…and exploration not soon forgotten.   All that remains now is Love.  Love Divine.  Love that binds.  Love that transcends.  

An unusual Love.  All that remains is Love.

For the Love of Harlem will be performed Saturday, Oct. 29 as part of Wells Fargo Community Celebration.