Harlem Renaissance

1920-1930

The Flowering of African American Creativity

Why? How?

• The Great Migration

• Jim Crow Laws

• WEB Dubois and the NAACP

• Marcus Garvey and the ‘Back to Africa”

• movement

Literature

• Langston Hughes

• Zora Neale Hurston

• Nella Larson

• James Weldon Johnson

Art

• Aaron Douglas

• Jacob Lawrence

• Archibald Motley

Music

• The Blues-Jazz

• Louis Armstrong

• Duke Ellington

• Josephine Baker

• Bessie Smith

• Ethel Waters

Palmer Hayden, Jeunesse,

Archibald J. Motley, Nightlife,

Aaron Douglas, Study for Aspects of Negro Life: The Negro in an African Setting,

Aaron Douglas, Into Bondage

  Henry Ossawa Tanner (American, 1859-1937), The Banjo Lesson

Henry Ossawa Tanner, The Seine

The Migration by Jacob Lawrence

Les Fetiches by Lois Mailou Jones

Baptizing Day by Palmer Hayden

End of the Day by Ellis Wilson

Ellis Wilson Art

Funeral Procession

Field Workers

Flower Vendor

Two Mothers

Archibald J. Motley Jr. Art

Blues

Blues

Tongues (Holy Rollers)

Saturday Night Scene

Hot Rhythm

Jacob Lawrence

Poetry- Langston Hughes

Bad Morning

Here I sit

With my shoes mismated.

Lawdy-mercy!

I’s frustrated

Hope

Sometimes when I’m lonely,

Don’t know why,

Keep thinkin’ I won’t be lonely

By and by.

Luck

Sometimes a crumb fallsFrom the tables of joy,Sometimes a boneIs flung.

To some peopleLove is given,To othersOnly heaven.

American Heartbreak

I am the American heartbreak

Rock on which Freedom

Stumps its toe-

The great mistake

That Jamestown

Made long ago.

Still Here

I’ve been scarred and battered.My hopes the wind done scattered.Snow has friz me, sun has baked me.

Looks like between ‘emThey done tried to make me

Stop laughin’, stop lovin’, stop livin’-But I don’t care!I’m still here!

Final curve

When you turn the corner

And you run into yourself

Then you know that you have turned

All the corners that are left

Wake

Tell all my mourners

To mourn in red-

Cause there ain’t no sense

In my bein’dead

Dream Deferred

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 just explode?

Dream Dust

Gather out of star-dustEarth-dustCloud-dust,Storm-dust,

And splinters of hail,One handful of dream-dust

Not for sale