Renaissance men: The Harlem intelligentsia, the African-American press, and the culture of sport, 1918--1940

American sports reached unforeseen levels of popularity and influence in the 1920s, not only in the mainstream media capital of New York City but also in the African-American cultural renaissance associated with Harlem. This dissertation examines the absence of sports in most of the literature of the Harlem Renaissance and in critical studies that attempt to capture the popular culture of the era. This neglect, I argue, tells us much about the attitudes the leading figures of the Renaissance held regarding popular culture---and about their conception of "culture" itself.; My research explores the relationships between communities of writers---intellectual and popular, African-American and Caribbean---that conceived of a renaissance in Harlem with distinctly different cultural ideals. Looking specifically at W. E. B. Du Bois, Claude McKay, and James Weldon Johnson, I show how each used sports in a distinctive way to communicate their vision of an ideal culture. I juxtapose these intellectuals with the writers in the Harlem press, who not only promoted sports and other popular art forms but also argued unrelentingly for their importance in the fight for equality. The disproportionate number of Caribbean migrants in Harlem added to the complexity of this dynamic. Caribbean-born writers largely embraced athletics, celebrating them as community institutions and using them to debate issues such as Garveyism.; Applying theories drawn from both literary and cultural criticism, as well as sociology, I examine the complex, often radical opinions expressed by putatively middle-of-the-road sportswriters and explore the intellectuals' gradually changing---though equally complex---views on athletics and their role in an idealized culture. I combine close readings of major Harlem Renaissance writers with extensive archival research in the sportswriting of the African-American press, arguing that the intelligentsia largely dismissed the growing importance of sports to the younger generation while the press used athletics as a means to participate in the debates of the day. In the end, sports played a significant role in the popular culture of the Renaissance, helping create a model for racial discourse that shaped intellectual movements in the decades that followed.