1. The Harlem Renaissance

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

3. Marcus Garvey -
“Back to Africa” movement

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

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

6. ZORA NEALE HURSTON
LANGSTON HUGHES
WRITERS AND POETS
CLAUDE MCKAY

7. Claude McKay: 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!

8. 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.

9. 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?

10. Music & Jazz of the 1920s

11. 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

12. Famous Jazz artists -
Louis Armstrong
Duke Ellington
Bessie Smith

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

14. ART

15. Artists of the Harlem Renaissance
Aaron Douglas

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

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

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

20. Now go to the webstie and download Changes by Tupac Shakur

21. 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?
What societal issues have changed in the 70+ years since Hughes wrote this poem? 3.
What societal issues have changed in the 20+ years since Tupac wrote this song?