Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance

(Note: Sample material is taken from uncorrected proofs. Changes may be made prior to publication.)

House-Rent Parties

Although house-rent parties once flourished in the black neighborhoods of Chicago, Detroit, Washington D.C., and other cities, they have become most closely associated with Harlem. During the 1920s and 1930s (and even into the 1940s), such parties formed the backbone of Harlem nightlife, and became for many working people not only an enjoyable and affordable way to dance and socialize but also an economic necessity. For the reasonable admission price of between ten cents and a dollar, plus the cost of liquor and food, guests could dance, drink, flirt, and gamble, while the hosts collected enough money to pay the landlord for another month.

The house-rent party evolved out of traditions that were several generations old by the beginning of the Harlem Renaissance. Since the late nineteenth century, African-American families in the rural south had enjoyed Saturday night barbecues and fish fries, complete with music and dancing, at events called "frolics" or "breakdowns." By the turn of the twentieth century, African-Americans in southern cities were throwing dance parties expressly to raise money. Dozens of couples would cram into tiny apartments, and the sometimes painful results of dancing in such confined spaces led to the term "shin-digs" to describe these events, though they were also referred to as "stomps," "boogies," "breakdowns," "skiffles," "scuffles," "struggles," "shake-me-downs," "chitterling rags," and "struts."

African-Americans who came north during the great migration brought with them their fondness for a good shin-dig. This social custom served them well, for instead of finding plentiful and profitable work in northern cities, many migrants instead found relentless economic exploitation by employers, landlords, and merchants. Wages for black workers were disproportionately low in New York, and rents in Harlem were exorbitantly high. Limited economic options forced residents of Harlem to find creative ways to supplement their income, and so many families transformed the southern shin-dig into the modern house-rent party.

To prepare for a rent party, hosts would clear all furniture (except for the piano) from the front rooms of the apartment, take up the rugs, replace regular lightbulbs with more sensuous colored ones, and sometimes rent folding chairs from a local undertaker. Some hosts would even hire "home defense officers" (HDOs), to bounce unwelcome guests and squelch incipient brawls. The highlight of any rent party was the music, often provided by a single piano player, a series of pianists, or even a three-or four-piece musical ensemble. Well-known pianists such as "Fats" Waller, James P. Johnson, and Willie "the Lion" Smith regularly made the rounds at rent parties, where musicians competed in "cutting contests" to determine who was the most talented. Bootleg liquor, usually homemade corn whiskey (called "King Kong") or bathtub gin, was sold by the pint or in quarter-pint portions called "shorties." For an additional price, guests could purchase southern-style meals that usually included some combination of hoppin' John, fried chicken, fried fish, chitterlings, mulatto rice (rice and tomatoes), gumbo, chili, collard greens, potato salad, and sweet potato pone. The party would often last until dawn, or until someone summoned the Black Maria (the police patrol wagon) to break it up.

In order to attract a large number of paying guests, hosts advertised their parties using "rent party tickets." Often, they enlisted the help of the "Wayside Printer," a middle-aged white man who walked the streets of Harlem with his portable press. For a modest fee, he stamped the party information onto tickets about the size of a business card. Interestingly, these tickets always identified rent parties using such terms as "Social Party," "Social Whist Party," "Parlor Social," or "Matinee Party." Other, less elevated terms included "Too Terrible Party," "Boogie," and "Tea Cup Party." Tickets often incorporated popular slang phrases, lyrics from current songs, or bits of poetry. One ticket from 1927 implored: "Save your tears for a rainy day, / We are giving a party where you can play / With red-hot mammas and too bad She-bas / Who wear their dresses above their knees / And mess around with whom they please." Another reasoned: "You Don't Get Nothing for Being an Angel Child, So You Might As Well Get Real Busy and Real Wild."

Hosts would distribute these tickets to friends, neighbors, and even strangers on the street corner. Sometimes, hosts targeted a specific population, such as Pullman porters, interstate truck drivers, or black tourists. Other hosts simply tucked the tickets into elevator grilles or apartment windows. Drumming up a good crowd was important, for competition was fierce; as many as twelve parties in a single block and five in an apartment building, simultaneously, were not uncommon in Harlem during the 1920s. Although rent parties raged every night of the week, the most popular evening was Saturday, since most day laborers were paid on Saturday and few had to work on Sunday. The next favorite party night was Thursday, when most sleep-in domestic workers were off-duty. The only population generally not invited to rent parties was white people. During Prohibition (1920-1933), any white man in Harlem could potentially be a revenuer or a cop who would certainly appreciate the opportunity to raid a rent party for violating liquor laws, or to extort money from the hosts in order to keep them out of jail. But even without that threat, black hosts seldom welcomed the presence of unfamiliar, inquisitive white people in their homes.

During the Harlem Renaissance, house-rent parties essentially amounted to a kind of grassroots social welfare. However, their general atmosphere was far more sordid than the average neighborhood block party. Frequently, back rooms were reserved for gambling or drug use, and sometimes hosts would offer the private use of the back bedrooms to couples for a price. Before long, gangsters and small-time racketeers had also entered the rent-party business, staging nightly parties that served as a front for their more illegitimate business ventures. Not surprisingly, a number of Harlem residents were ashamed of or appalled by rent parties, especially those who firmly believed in the immorality of jazz, liquor, and gambling. Certain black intellectuals and writers also scorned these gatherings, believing that such rowdy displays of passion and intemperance reflected poorly on the black race. No accounts of rent parties appear in the works of Jessie Fauset, Nella Larsen, or W. E. B. Du Bois, for instance; and in his sociological description of Harlem, Black Manhattan (1930), James Weldon Johnson simply ignores them. We do, however, get enthusiastic depictions of rent parties in the works of Langston Hughes, Wallace Thurman, and Claude McKay.

Kathleen Drowne

See also: Hughes, Langston; Johnson, James P.; McKay, Claude; Smith, Willie "the Lion"; Thurman, Wallace; Waller, Thomas "Fats"

Further Reading

Anderson, Jervis. This Was Harlem: A Cultural Portrait, 1900-1950. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1981.

Byrd, Frank. "Rent Parties." In A Renaissance in Harlem, ed. Lionel C. Bascom. New York: Avon, 1999.

Hughes, Langston. The Big Sea. New York: Hill and Wang-Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997. (Originally published 1940.)

Oliver, Paul. Blues Fell This Morning: Meaning in the Blues. Cambridge and London: Cambridge University Press, 1990. (Originally published 1960.)

Osofsky, Gilbert. Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto- Negro New York, 1890-1930, 2nd ed. New York: Harper and Row, 1971.

Ottley, Roi. New World A-Coming. New York: Arno and New York Times, 1968.

Reid, Ira DeA. "Mrs. Bailey Pays the Rent." In Ebony and Topaz: A Collectanea, ed. Charles S. Johnson, in The Politics and Aesthetics of "New Negro" Literature, ed. and intro. Cary D. Wintz. New York and London: Garland, 1996.

Schoener, Allon, ed. Harlem on My Mind: Cultural Capital of Black America, 1900-1968. New York: Random House, 1968.

Watson, Steven. The Harlem Renaissance: Hub of African-American Culture, 1920-1930. New York: Pantheon, 1995.

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