WALLACE THURMAN
Name: Wallace Henry Thurman
Born: 16 August 1902 Salt Lake City, Utah, United States
Died: 22 December 1934 New York City, United States
Wallace Henry Thurman (1902-1934) was an American novelist during the Harlem
Renaissance. He is best known for his novel The Blacker the Berry: A Novel of
Negro Life, which describes discrimination based on skin color among black
people.
Thurman was born in Salt Lake City to Beulah and Oscar Thurman. Between his
mother's many marriages, Wallace and his mother lived with Emma Jackson, his
maternal grandmother. His grandmother's home doubled as a saloon where alcohol
was served without a license. When Thurman was less than a month old, his father
abandoned and lived apart from his wife and son. The two did not meet until the
younger Thurman was 30 years old.
Thurman's early life was marked by loneliness, family instability and poor
health. He began grade school at age six in Boise, Idaho, but poor health
eventually led to a two-year absence from school during which he returned to
Salt Lake City. Thurman lived in Chicago from 1910 to 1914 but finished grammar
school in Omaha, Nebraska. During this time, he suffered from persistent
heart attacks, and came down with influenza in the winter of 1918 while living
in the lower altitude of Pasadena, California. He returned to Salt Lake City and
finished high school. Throughout it all, Thurman was a voracious reader, writing
his first novel at the age of 10. He enjoyed the works of Plato, Aristotle,
Shakespeare, Havelock Ellis, Flaubert, Charles Baudelaire and many others. He
attended the University of Utah from 1919 to 1920 as a pre-medical student.
Later, in 1922, he transferred to the University of Southern California in Los
Angeles but left without receiving a degree. While in Los Angeles, he met and
befriended Arna Bontemps and became a reporter for an African-American owned
newspaper where he wrote his first (ultimately short-lived) column. Thurman also
started his first magazine while in Los Angeles called Outlet which was supposed
to be the equivalent of The Crisis.
In 1925 he moved to Harlem. In less than 10 years, he obtained various
employments as a publisher, an editor for magazines and a major publisher, a
writer of novels, plays, and articles, and at various times he served as a
ghostwriter to various people. The following year he became the editor of The
Messenger, a socialist journal aimed at black audiences. While at The Messenger,
Thurman became the first to publish the adult-themed stories of Langston Hughes.
Thurman left the Messenger in October 1926 to become the editor of a white-owned
magazine called World Tomorrow. The following month, he collaborated in
publishing the literary magazine Fire!! Devoted to the Younger Negro Artists
whose contibutors were Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Bruce Nugent, Aaron
Douglas, Gwendolyn B. Bennett and others. Only one issue of Fire!! was ever
published. Fire!! challenged the ideas of W.E.B. Du Bois who believed that black
art should serve as propaganda, and many within the African American bourgeoisie
who sought social equality and racial integration. Thurman attempted to show the
real lives of African Americans, both the good and the bad. He stated that black
artists should be more objective in their writings and not so self-conscious
that they did not acknowledge and celebrate the arduous conditions of African
American lives. This was in contrast to African American leaders and middles
class who saw the goal of the New Negro movement as showing white Americans that
blacks were not inferior.
During this time, Thurman's rooming house apartment at 267 West 136th Street in
Harlem became the main place where the African American literary avant-garde and
visual artists of the Harlem Renaissance met and socialized. Thurman and
Hurston mockingly called the room Niggerati Manor, in reference to all of the
black literati who showed up there. The walls of "Niggerati Manor" were painted
red and black, colors to be emulated on the cover of Fire!! Thurman, Hughes,
Nugent and others were described as unconventional by Jessie Redmon Fauset.
Nugent painted murals on the walls, some of which contained homoerotic content.
In 1928, Thurman published another magazine called Harlem: a Forum of Negro Life
whose contibutors included Alain Locke, George Schuyler, and Alice Dunbar-Nelson.
The publication lasted for only two issues. Afterwards, Thurman became a reader
for a major publishing company. He was the first African American in such a
position in a New York publishing house.
Name: Wallace Henry Thurman
Born: 16 August 1902 Salt Lake City, Utah, United States
Died: 22 December 1934 New York City, United States
Wallace Henry Thurman (1902-1934) was an American novelist during the Harlem
Renaissance. He is best known for his novel The Blacker the Berry: A Novel of
Negro Life, which describes discrimination based on skin color among black
people.
Thurman was born in Salt Lake City to Beulah and Oscar Thurman. Between his
mother's many marriages, Wallace and his mother lived with Emma Jackson, his
maternal grandmother. His grandmother's home doubled as a saloon where alcohol
was served without a license. When Thurman was less than a month old, his father
abandoned and lived apart from his wife and son. The two did not meet until the
younger Thurman was 30 years old.
Thurman's early life was marked by loneliness, family instability and poor
health. He began grade school at age six in Boise, Idaho, but poor health
eventually led to a two-year absence from school during which he returned to
Salt Lake City. Thurman lived in Chicago from 1910 to 1914 but finished grammar
school in Omaha, Nebraska. During this time, he suffered from persistent
heart attacks, and came down with influenza in the winter of 1918 while living
in the lower altitude of Pasadena, California. He returned to Salt Lake City and
finished high school. Throughout it all, Thurman was a voracious reader, writing
his first novel at the age of 10. He enjoyed the works of Plato, Aristotle,
Shakespeare, Havelock Ellis, Flaubert, Charles Baudelaire and many others. He
attended the University of Utah from 1919 to 1920 as a pre-medical student.
Later, in 1922, he transferred to the University of Southern California in Los
Angeles but left without receiving a degree. While in Los Angeles, he met and
befriended Arna Bontemps and became a reporter for an African-American owned
newspaper where he wrote his first (ultimately short-lived) column. Thurman also
started his first magazine while in Los Angeles called Outlet which was supposed
to be the equivalent of The Crisis.
In 1925 he moved to Harlem. In less than 10 years, he obtained various
employments as a publisher, an editor for magazines and a major publisher, a
writer of novels, plays, and articles, and at various times he served as a
ghostwriter to various people. The following year he became the editor of The
Messenger, a socialist journal aimed at black audiences. While at The Messenger,
Thurman became the first to publish the adult-themed stories of Langston Hughes.
Thurman left the Messenger in October 1926 to become the editor of a white-owned
magazine called World Tomorrow. The following month, he collaborated in
publishing the literary magazine Fire!! Devoted to the Younger Negro Artists
whose contibutors were Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Bruce Nugent, Aaron
Douglas, Gwendolyn B. Bennett and others. Only one issue of Fire!! was ever
published. Fire!! challenged the ideas of W.E.B. Du Bois who believed that black
art should serve as propaganda, and many within the African American bourgeoisie
who sought social equality and racial integration. Thurman attempted to show the
real lives of African Americans, both the good and the bad. He stated that black
artists should be more objective in their writings and not so self-conscious
that they did not acknowledge and celebrate the arduous conditions of African
American lives. This was in contrast to African American leaders and middles
class who saw the goal of the New Negro movement as showing white Americans that
blacks were not inferior.
During this time, Thurman's rooming house apartment at 267 West 136th Street in
Harlem became the main place where the African American literary avant-garde and
visual artists of the Harlem Renaissance met and socialized. Thurman and
Hurston mockingly called the room Niggerati Manor, in reference to all of the
black literati who showed up there. The walls of "Niggerati Manor" were painted
red and black, colors to be emulated on the cover of Fire!! Thurman, Hughes,
Nugent and others were described as unconventional by Jessie Redmon Fauset.
Nugent painted murals on the walls, some of which contained homoerotic content.
In 1928, Thurman published another magazine called Harlem: a Forum of Negro Life
whose contibutors included Alain Locke, George Schuyler, and Alice Dunbar-Nelson.
The publication lasted for only two issues. Afterwards, Thurman became a reader
for a major publishing company. He was the first African American in such a
position in a New York publishing house.