Fire!!

By: Asli Tekinay

Source:

 Encyclopedia of African American History, 1896 to the Present: From the Age of Segregation to the Twenty-first Century

Fire!!

A single-issue, avant-garde literary magazine, Fire!! A Quarterly Devoted to the Younger Negro Artists, was a masterpiece of the Harlem Renaissance. The chief editor was Wallace Thurman and the associate editors were Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Bennett, Richard Bruce Nugent, Zora Neale Hurston, Aaron Douglas, and John Davis. A group of adventurous and unconventional young African American intellectuals, they were called the “niggerati” by Hurston. The magazine was born one evening in 1926 when Hurston, Hughes, Thurman, and Nugent met in Aaron Douglas's house in Harlem. They set out to create art that conveyed the richness of the African American heritage. This determination constituted the basis of the literary magazine Fire!!, named after a free-verse poem by Langston Hughes and Wallace Thurman.

Fire!! intended to shock the conservative critics of the Harlem Renaissance, like W. E. B. Du Bois and Alain Locke, who approved and supported proper black art that manifested a certain middle-class respectability but scorned and rejected authentic black art, which, in their opinion, reinforced white people's stereotypical views of blacks as primitive and unrestrained beings. Thurman, however, defiantly acknowledged the decadent and primitive influence of Carl Van Vechten's 1926 novel Nigger Heaven, the primary target of hostile middle-class critics. The niggerati did not care much for the negative responses of the conservative critics who treated the magazine with patronizing disdain. The magazine's frank treatment of radical topics horrified the establishment. Wallace Thurman's story in the issue, “Cordelia the Crude,” dealt with the issue of child prostitution. Richard Bruce Nugent's “Smoke, Lilies, and Jade” depicted opium-induced fantasies and homosexuality. In Zora Neale Hurston's play “Color Struck,” a black woman's skin color–consciousness and inferiority complex created a moving tragedy. Gwendolyn Bennett's story “Wedding Day” was about a difficult love that conquered an expatriate black boxer's hatred toward whites. Poems by Langston Hughes, Countée Cullen, Helene Johnson, and Arna Bontemps were bold and candid in their exploration of racial themes. Aaron Douglas, the most important visual artist of the Harlem Renaissance, contributed several line drawings that accentuated the typical features of the black race. His impressive cover emphasized the niggerati's strong pride in black heritage.

In short, the magazine exhibited a unique freedom unequalled in the history of African American art until then. Sponsored by its creators, their friends, and a Harlem printer—Service Bell—that was not paid, Fire!! was entirely liberated from the obligation to cater to the demands of white patrons or publishers. Unlike the other periodicals of the Harlem Renaissance, The Crisis and Opportunity, Fire!! was not an organ of a social or political organization; hence it was independent and free in its agenda. Its creators acknowledged one single restriction and that was artistic excellence.

Fire!! died after only one issue. The printer had given several hundred copies to the editor, Wallace Thurman, to sell door-to-door, but they caught fire in a basement. Fire!! literally burned itself up. In any event, Fire!! represented arguably the most exciting and climactic chapter of the Harlem Renaissance, one that paved the way for the culmination of African American art in the twentieth century.

[See also Crisis, The: A Record of the Darker Races; Harlem Renaissance; Opportunity; and biographical entries on figures mentioned in this article.]

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