...Harlem Renassainse poets The Harlem Renaissance Poets: Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen Strayer University HUM112 May 29, 2013 Langston Hughes often referred to as the leader of the leader of the Harlem Renaissance or the father of Harlem Renaissance poetry. Pulling from major iconic influences such as Paul Laurence Dunbar, Walk Whitman, and Carl Sandburg; who Langston Hughes referred to as, his “guiding star”, and was ultimately responsible Hughes’ use of free verse. With the completion of his first two books, The Weary Blues (1926) and Fine Clothes to the Jew (1927), Langston Hughes earned his place as a major driving force of the Harlem Renaissance (Rampersad, 2013). One of the major contributions to the Harlem Renaissance was the article called,”The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” in the June 23, 1926 edition of The Nation. In the article is describes as a manifesto in which Langston Hughes “skillfully argues the need for both race pride and artistic independence.” (Rampersad, 2013) Countee Cullen is somewhat viewed as a mystery. Facts about his location of birth, and early childhood life cannot be exactly pinpointed. Originally it was claimed by Cullen on a New York transcript that he was born in Louisville, Kentucky but later claimed New York City as his official place of birth. The way that Countee Cullen contributed to the Harlem Renaissance was through the many talents he displayed as a poet, children’s writer, novelist, translator, playwright, and...
Words: 1015 - Pages: 5
...Harlem Renaissance Poets Vanica McCormick-Williams Robert Henry World Cultures II May 22, 2015 Beginning in the 1920s until the mid-1930s, the Harlem Renaissance was a well read, creative, and intelligent development that ignited a unique black cultural existence. Its significance was summed up by expert reviewer and Professor Alain Locke in 1926 where he stated that through art, “Negro life is capturing its first opportunities for group expression and self assurance.” Harlem became the center of a “spiritual coming of age” in which Locke’s “New Negro” transformed “social disillusionment to racial pride.” Ralph Ellison was born on March 1, 1914 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. He died of pancreatic cancer on April 16, 1994 in New York City. (Ralph Ellison, 2015) Richard Wright was born on September 4, 1908, in Roxie, Mississippi. Richard died from experiencing a heart attack on November 28, 1960, in Paris, France. (Richard Wright, 2015) Both of the authors made a major impact on society during their lifespan. According to Biography.com, Ralph Ellison was a 20th Century African American writer and scholar best known for his renowned, award winning novel “Invisible Man”. Ellison’s role in the Harlem Renaissance is his reputation as a deeply ingrained writer and a philanthropist that exceeded even the most esteemed circles of the American History. In addition, according to Biography.com, pioneering African American writer...
Words: 1567 - Pages: 7
...Assignment 2: Harlem Renaissance Poets Demetria Davenport HUM 112 Dr. Jeff Kersh Countee Cullen (1903-1996) “Heritage” (1925) What is Africa to me: Copper sun or scarlet sea, Jungle star or jungle track, Strong bronzed men, or regal black Women from whose loins I sprang When the birds of Eden sang? One three centuries removed From the scenes his fathers loved, Spicy grove, cinnamon tree, What is Africa to me? So I lie, who all day long Want no sound except the song Sung by wild barbaric birds Goading massive jungle herds, Juggernauts of flesh that pass Trampling tall defiant grass Where young forest lovers lie, Plighting troth beneath the sky, So I lie, who always hear, Though I cram against my ear Both my thumbs, and keep them there, Great drums throbbing through the air, So I lie, whose fount of pride, Dear distress and joy allied, Is my somber flesh and skin, With the dark blood dammed within Like great pulsing tides of wine That, I fear, must burst the fine Channels of the chafing net Where they surge and form and fret. Africa? A book one thumbs Listlessly, till slumber comes, Unremembered are the bats Circling through the night, her cats Crouching in the river reeds, Stalking gentle flesh that feeds, By the river brink; no more Does the bugle throated roar Cry that monarch claws have leapt From the scabbards where they slept, Silver snakes that once a year Doff the lovely coats you wear, Seek no covert in your fear Lest...
Words: 1846 - Pages: 8
...Harlem Renaissance The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural, social, and artistic movement where African Americans were represented. The Harlem Renaissance had black culture, mostly from the United States and the Caribbean, and it spread across beyond Harlem. There are a couple of names for this period of time such as “ the Blues” ,“ The Jazz Age ”, “ The New Negro Movement” among others. Many African American musicians, writers, performers, poets, and any person that worked in the arts were influenced by this American cultural setting. The Harlem Renaissance took place around 1920 and ended at sometime in the 1930’s. Some scholars think that the time is from 1918 to 1937. (U.S. History, Harlem Renaissance paragraph 1-2)...
Words: 741 - Pages: 3
...The Harlem Renaissance, a cultural movement that began in the 1920s, brought an excitement and a new found freedom and voice to African-Americans who had been silent and oppressed for a long time. In Harlem between the 1920s to 1930s the African American culture flourished especially in arts and music. The Harlem Renaissance helped lay the foundation for the post-World War II protest movement of the Civil Rights Movement. During this period, Harlem was a cultural center, drawing black writers, artists, musicians, photographers, poets, and scholars. Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, and Bessie Smith were a few of the new, up and coming, artists during the Renaissance period. Louis Armstrong, nicknamed "Pops" emerged in the 1920s and became an...
Words: 452 - Pages: 2
...During the 1920’s there was a great rise in popularity of African American Culture. As African Americans participated in the Great Migration, they set goals for themselves as they entered a new country and culture. Harlem was the town that the African Americans all migrated to, there they felt safe because it was the world's largest black urban community. Soon Harlem became overcrowded and began suffering from poverty. This was the cause of the Harlem Renaissance, which was a literary and artistic movement celebrating African-American Culture. There were multiple associations such as the NAACP and the UNIA created during the Harlem Renaissance to help protect and prevent violence from breaking out. The NAACP or the National Association...
Words: 375 - Pages: 2
...In event that was rather a stir up in the 1920’s was the Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance was a time when African Americans all around showcased their artistic talents, showing the whites that they did indeed have talent. Obviously after the name “The Harlem Renaissance” was based in Harlem, New York. The Harlem Renaissance was a movement of writers, artist, actors, musicians, and poets of color expressing themselves through their talents. They used these talents not only to express themselves but also to tell stories of their past and the troubles the black people faced as a whole. This movement brought together so many African Americans. Not only that but it showed the white people of America they weren’t the only people who had talents. The arts were shared, whites bought black paintings and they were entertained by black shows that went on in venues. Often there were poems that were exclusively written for black people of America. During the renaissance Things were happening and the people of the Harlem Renaissance were reacting. Langston Hughes was a writer who created quite the impact during the Harlem Renaissance. He wrote poems, stories and even plays. He kept black communities entertained and gave opportunity with his plays. His poems kept African Americans motivated and pushing for what was right, equality. Jacob Lawrence was an artist creating abstract pictures of events happening beginning in 1917. He was the artist of “ The Great Migration Series” which...
Words: 355 - Pages: 2
...It wasn’t until 1920 that a group of literary writers began their own cry for emancipation and through their compassion for their fellow African Americans, began putting those feelings and thoughts on paper in the form of writings and poetry. This cry of lamentation, expressed through heart rending writings and heart felt poetry, was known as the Harlem Renaissance, and otherwise referred to as the “New Negro Movement.” There were many changes that were to be seen during this rebirth that lasted twenty four years. The writings were not only the lament of men and women voicing their rage and empathy for their fellow African Americans plight of slavery, but were writings that would sooth the wounds of former slavery and take the former slaves trough the far reaching effects of a stock market crash and the further woes of the ensuing Great Depression. The renaissance period brought forth the movement that changed the entire social, physiological, and personal views of Negro Americans of themselves as it related to their past and catapulted them into creating a social standing never before seen until that time. What began in Harlem would forever change the face of the Negro American in the eyes of all other races. The new writings and poetry that resulted from this period, encouraged the African American to...
Words: 1551 - Pages: 7
...Harlem Renaissance was a time of explosive culture and growth in the black community. During this time in the 1920s and 30s, it was not only the birth place of jazz but also we heard voices of the African American Authors who were taken serious by their white connects for the first time in history. It focused on portraying black culture and life in the ghetto. And it gave the African American Culture uniqueness within literature and art. Harlem Renaissance was an evident racial pride that symbolized the melodic theme of the New Negro. New Negro challenged the penetrating racial discrimination to encourage socialistic help of art and literature. As to be significant in the Harlem Renaissance the writers used poetry to present the African American experiences. Grabbing the attention between both black and white readers around the world. One Poet that set that bar really was Langston Hughes he was one of the most popular black poets of the Harlem Renaissance. Hughes was great at his job with more diversity in his choice of writings. He had written Plays, Novels, Poems, and Short Stories, Most of his writings were the real situations that really happened in black cultures. Movies were highly looked up upon in the Harlem Renaissance. D.W. Griffith directed “The Birth of a Nation” the film was over African Americans directors who countered negative stereotypes promoted in majority of the mainstream movies. Then released films in The Harlem Renaissance showcased the struggle of the...
Words: 2245 - Pages: 9
...well and usually very inspiring. Some of her poems are even considered autobiographical kind of poems. The style of Maya Angelou can range from complex symbolical ideas to easy, straightforward concepts. Her style is like a story. The vocabulary is usually easy to understand, and not too complicated. Her works are not always conventional either. (Study World 1) Maya Angelou was born April 4, 1928 as Marguerite Johnson in St. Louis. She was raised in segregated rural Arkansas. She came from a broken home. Angelou was raped at eight, and was an unwed Reyes Page. 2 mother at 16 years old (Williams 1). Angelou is a poet, an author, a historian, an actress, a playwright, civil-rights activist, a producer, and a director. Ms. Angelou began her career in drama and dance. She married a South African freedom fighter and lived in Cairo. Later she also taught in Ghana. In the 1960's she said that being black, female, non-Muslim, non- Arab, six foot tall, and American made for some...
Words: 1272 - Pages: 6
...The Harlem Renaissance Affect on the Civil Rights Movement Beginning in 1916, a mass of African Americans fled the inequality and segregation of the south and relocated to the north in an event that came to be known as the Great Migration. “They settled in various northern cities during this Great Migration, though New York was the most popular, particularly the district of Harlem.” While the south suffered from their loss of cheap labor, the north began to flourish from the new culture and ideas that the blacks brought with them. The Harlem Renaissance was a result of the migration and of the new lifestyle African Americans brought to the north. The Harlem Renaissance was “a cultural phenomenon in which the high level of black artistic and cultural production demanded and received mainstream recognition, where racial solidarity was equated with social progress, and where the idea of blackness became a commodity in its own right.” For years African Americans...
Words: 896 - Pages: 4
...“I want to be a poet—not a Negro poet” (Hughes 348). In his essay “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” Langston Hughes covers many important points but his hook is one to mention. This hook focuses a lot on the main issue of the essay itself. The issue is that the negro poets want to write like the white poets implying that colored artists want to be white. This then leads to the fact that the white audiences turned to the artists of color and saw them as stereotypical entertainment mainly because these black artists were afraid of being themselves. Langston Hughes’s poem, “The Weary Blues” engages with themes of the Harlem Renaissance and the content of the poem expresses various issues Hughes discussed in “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain.” The poem, “The Weary Blues” is a powerful poem because it highlights the cultural traditions of the African American descent during a time of the Harlem Renaissance. The audience is able to...
Words: 1284 - Pages: 6
...In the 1920s and early 1930s a movement called the Harlem Renaissance took place. This was a literary, artistic and intellectual movement that created a new black cultural identity ("Harlem Renaissance," n.d.). There was an important group that was created during the Harlem Renaissance known as the NAACP. Also, there were important trials such as Sacco and Vanzetti, and the conviction in Scottsboro, Alabama. During the Harlem Renaissance many famous writers such as Paul Dunbar, and Langston Hughes wrote about what african americans experienced during this time. An influential poem written by Paul Dunbar during the Harlem Renaissance is We Wear the Mask, which talks about disguising our feelings. Langston Hughes also wrote influential poems such as I, Too and Song for a Dark Girl . There were many important things that happened during the Harlem Renaissance, including the creation of influential poems by...
Words: 1301 - Pages: 6
...Famous Harlem Renaissance During the early 20th century, African-American poets, musicians, actors, artists and intellectuals moved to Harlem in New York City and brought new ideas that shifted the culture forever. From approximately 1918 to the mid 1930s, talent began to overflow within this newfound culture of the black community in Harlem, as prominent figures—Langston Hughes ( The most prolific writer of the Harlem Renaissance. He casted off the influences of white poets and wrote with the rhythmic meter of blues and jazz), Claude McKay (urged African Americans to stand up for their rights in his powerful verses),Billie Holiday (Billie Holiday was one of the most influential jazz singers of all time. She had a thriving career for many years before she lost her battle with addiction), and Jean Toomer wrote plays and short stories, as well as poems, to capture the spirit of his times), to name a few—pushed art to its limit as a form of expression and representation. These are some of the famous African Americans who shaped the influential movement known as the Harlem Renaissance. During this period Harlem was a cultural center, drawing black writers, artists, musicians, photographers, poets, and scholars. In November 1924, Langston Hughes returned to the United States and worked various jobs. In 1925, he was working as a busboy in a Washington, D.C. hotel restaurant when he met American poet Vachel Lindsay. Hughes showed some of his poems to Lindsay, who was impressed...
Words: 806 - Pages: 4
...Harlem Renaissance Poets Martha Harris Strayer University World Cultures Stephen Ripley May 27, 2013 The Harlem Renaissance was a period in history of the United States in which a group of individuals such as, poets, authors, and artists came together to express themselves. Two of the poets that I would be talking about are W.E.B Du Bois, and Claude McKay, and how they contributed to the Harlem Renaissance era. In the social roots of the Harlem Renaissance can be tracked back to the Great Migration during the First World War, the philosophical roots reach back to the turn of the century and the work of black historian and sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963), whose The Philadelphia Negro (1899) was the first sociological text on a black community published in the United States. In 1903, in his book The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois had proposed that the identity of African Americans was fraught with ambiguity. (Sayre, 2012, pg. 1174) When in 1909 the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded to advance the rights of black, Du Bois became editor of its magazine, The Crisis. Du Bois sense of the double-consciousness informing African American experience (a double-consciousness that informs the very term “African American”) was often expressed in the magazine’s pages. In this role he wielded an unequaled influence among middle-class black and progressive whites as the propagandist for the black protest from 1910 until 1934. (Rudwick...
Words: 1232 - Pages: 5
