The Harlem Renaissance Background After years of slavery

The Harlem Renaissance

• Background • After years of slavery, discrimination, segregation, and Jim Crow laws • Great Migration • NAACP • Jobs from WWI

• Marcus Garvey • “Back to Africa” movement

HARLEM RENAISSANCE • A Cultural Rebirth – Explosion of African American culture, art and literature: 1920 s • Occurs after huge Migration from South and Carribbean to Northern cities. • Concentration of artists, writers, and political activists

• • • Time and Place: 1920 s - Harlem, New York City Largest black urban community in the US Harlem Renaissance Literary and artistic movement celebrating African American culture

LANGSTON HUGHES ZORA NEALE HURSTON WRITERS AND POETS CLAUDE MCKAY

Claude Mc. Kay: If We Must Die (1919) If we must die, let it not be like hogs Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot, While around us bark the mad and hungry dogs, Making their mock at our accursed lot. If we must die, O let us nobly die, So that our precious blood may not be shed In vain; then even the monsters we defy Shall be constrained to honor us though dead! O kinsmen we must meet the common foe! Though far outnumbered let us show us brave, And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow! What though before us lies the open grave? Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack, Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

An Incident (Countee Cullen) • • Once riding in old Baltimore, Heart-filled, head-filled with glee, I saw a Baltimorean Keep looking straight at me. • • Now I was eight and very small, And he was no whit bigger, And so I smiled, but he poked out His tongue, and called me, "Nigger. " • • I saw the whole of Baltimore From May until December; Of all the things that happened there That's all that I remember.

A Raisin in the Sun by: Langston Hughes What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore-- And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over-- like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode?

Music & Jazz of the 1920 s

• Jazz • Combines ragtime and blues • Ragtime - “ragged music” - call and response • Blues - slave laments, “negro” spirituals • Jazz is improvisational and fast • Breaks music rules; feed off others (musicians/audience); think opposite of classical music • Starts in New Orleans -- Spreads North to Chicago, Kansas City, St. Louis, and eventually Harlem

• • Famous Jazz artists Louis Armstrong Duke Ellington Bessie Smith

• Jazz spread through jazz clubs and musical theater • EX: Bill “Bojangles” Robinson

ART

Artists of the Harlem Renaissance • Aaron Douglas

• “The Janitor Who Paints” What is this painting trying to say?

WHAT WERE THE MAJOR THEMES? 1. Cultural Pride and Beauty 2. Emphasis on African Roots and History 3. Southern Black Folk Traditions 4. Political Response to Racism and Violence Towards African Americans in 1920 s

Turn to your 1920 s Packet and go to Page 11 Turn • In your groups, read Let America be America Again by Langston Hughes and respond to questions 28 & 29

Now go to the webstie and download Changes by Tupac Shakur

• What similar societal challenges are both men addressing? • Analyzing both, what is different? • How did the Harlem Renaissance and poets like Langston Hughes set the foundation for other black artists, like Tupac?