shabazz palaces django jane prove it on me blues mississippi goddam we real cool all the things you could be i have a dream march highlights

Harlem Renaissance and the Civil Rights Movement

W.E.B. Dubois, The Souls of Black Folk It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder…

The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife – this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He does not wish to Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He wouldn't bleach his Negro blood in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of opportunity closed roughly in his face.

Langston Hughes, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” I’ve known rivers: I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.

I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset. I’ve known rivers: Ancient, dusky rivers. My soul has grown deep like the rivers. (1920)

“Afro-American Fragment” So long So far away Is Africa Not even these memories alive Save those that history books create, Save those that songs Beat back into the blood – Beat out of the blood with words sad-sung In strange un-Negro tongue – So long, / So far away / Is Africa

Subdued and time-lost Are the drums – and yet Through some vast mist of race There comes this song I do not understand, This song of atavistic land, Of bitter yearnings lost Without a place – So long, So far away Is Africa’s Dark face.

Claude McKay, “If We Must Die” If we must die, let it not be like hogs Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot, While round 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 O kinsmen! We must meet the common foe! Though far outnumbered let us show us brave, And for their thousand blows deal one death blow! 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! (1919)

Nella Larson

Zora Neale Hurston

Aaron Douglas, Aspects of Negro Life (1934)

Emmett Till

Rosa Parks

Woolworth’s Lunch Counter Sit-in