Cabell "Cab" Calloway III - Black History

Cabell "Cab" Calloway III was an African American entertainer.  In 1930, Calloway got a gig at Harlem's famed Cotton Club and became a regular performed at the popular nightspot.  Calloway made it big with his 1931 hit "Minnie the Moocher".  The song's famous call-and-response "hi-de-hi-de-ho" became Calloway's signature phrase for the rest of his career. Calloway's song went to sell over 1 million copies. The song would later be inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999.  In 1993, President Bill Clinton presented Calloway with the National Medal of the Arts. 

Below is a video of Cab performing his hit song.

Harlem Renaissance - Black History

artwork from the period of the Harlem Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance was the name given to the time period between the end of World War I and the mid 1930's in Harlem.  This period was a cultural, social and artistic explosion of African American works. Harlem became the go to place for writers, musicians, artists, photographers, poets and scholars during this era.  During the time it was known as the "New Negro Movement" and the "Negro Renaissance".  This era was looked at as a cultural awakening.  Participants sought to re-conceptualize "the Negro" apart from white stereotypes that influenced African American relationships to their heritage and each other.   Among those artists whose works achieved recognition were Langston Hughes and Claude McKay, Countee Cullen and Arna Bontemps, Zora Neale Hurston and Jean Toomer,  Walter White and James Weldon Johnson.


Jazz Musicians of Harlem Renaissance

While the renaissance did not achieve the sociopolitical transformation for which some had hoped, today it is clear that this movement marked a turning point in black cultural history; it helped to establish the authority of black writers and artists over the representation of black culture and experience, and it help those writers and artists carve their niche in western culture.