SOURCE: Woolley, Lisa. “From Chicago Renaissance to Chicago Renaissance: The Poetry of Fenton Johnson.” Langston Hughes Review 14, no. 1-2 (1996): 36-48.

In the following essay, Woolley uses the writing of Fenton Johnson as an example of the way in which authors and writing concerns illustrated an interdependency across cities and races, particularly in relation to the Harlem Renaissance and the Chicago School of writing.

The use of the word “renaissance” in the literary history of early twentieth-century America nearly reverses the connotation of that term as it pertains to Europe. The New York Little Renaissance, Southern Renaissance, Chicago Renaissance, and Harlem Renaissance, for example, all refer to relatively short, regionally based movements that did not always encompass all of the arts or constitute a “rebirth” at all. Robert Bone further complicates the use of “renaissance” by arguing that, if we preserve the label “Harlem Renaissance” to refer to the...