Zeparina Coleman

The picture I pick is an African American family that is sitting outside and looks very poor. The family look like they are tired and they work hard every day. The picture shows four older people and four younger children. In this picture The Great Depression shows that times were hard and that people living arrangements was not the best. In the picture the family clothes do not look the best and some of there clothes look like they grew out of them and they have to wear them because that’s all the clothes they own.

Michelle Grace

If this picture was shown to anyone a few years before this picture was taking it would have been completely unacceptable. Women doing work, much less working on cars was appalling. The Great Depression was so brutal that the everyone needed work. Everyone needed work because everyone needed money. And everyone needed money because everyone wanted survive and provide. Women were now taking charge in society. Women understood that there was a demand for jobs to be done and that they had a demand for food. Women knew that they were smart and that the could learn and pick up on something, just the men could. So tthat'swhat they did; they picked up on the "mans" job and did the "mans" job.

Jasmyn Brown

Louis Armstrong born August 4, 1901 and died July 6, 1971 at age 69. As young man Armstrong suffered from disciplinary problems. As a result his parents sent him to a border school. The time he spent there he discovered his love for jazz and started to play the trumpet.
After Louis left border school his father bought him his first trumpet. Who knew that later that gift would make him one the biggest sensations of his time? In 1922 Armstrong joined a group called Creole Jazz Band, and he then became huge throughout Chicago. Louis Armstrong was also very well known for his amazing ability to scat. His trumpet and scatting hits included “Lazy River” and other great hits.

Angel Wilson

Zora Neale Hurston Zora Neale Hurston was a famous writer during the Harlem Renaissance. She had big influences during this time with her work. Her work symbolized southern black culture and has influenced black American literary figures. She represents part of the Harlem Renaissance by being one of the first black writers. She has had accomplishments of being a novelist, folklorist, and anthropologist. She combined literature with anthropology. Some of Zora Neale Hurston’s famous short stories are “Spunk” and "John Redding Goes to Sea" Zora’s first novel was Jonah’s Gourd.

Dominque Cowan

Langston Hughes (1902-1967)
Poet, novelist, playwright, essayist

In his explorations of race, social justice, and African-American culture and art, Hughes' writing vividly captures the political, social, and artistic climates of Harlem in the 1920s and 1930s. After a transitory adolescence, Hughes moved to Harlem in 1926, where he worked with and befriended such artists, writers, and scholars as Aaron Douglas, Countee Cullen, and Alain Locke. Infused and inspired by the jazz and blues that surrounded him at hot spots such as the Savoy Ballroom, Hughes weaved the rhythms of contemporary music into his poems. Often his writing riffed on the energy of life in Harlem itself.

Langston Hughes was known for the use of jazz and black folk rhythm in his poetry.

"Hughes had pride in his black heritage, strong political beliefs, and the will to survive in a society where racial equality had to be fought for" (Chow 1). Hughes conveyed ideas of strength and determination to believe in a better future. Langston Hughes innovated voice influenced many black writers.

Merry-Go-Round
Colored child at carnival:
Where is the Jim Crow section
On this merry-go-round,
Mister, Cause I want to ride?
Down South where I come from
White and colored
Can't sit side by side.
Down South on the train
There's a Jim Crow Car.
On the bus we're putin the back--
But there ain't no back
To a merry-go-round!
Where's the horse
For a kid that's black?

Treshia Alveranga

Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes was born February 1, 1902 in Missouri. In Ohio he was writing poem Langston Hughes recevied a scholarship to Lincoln university where his b.a. degree in 1929. Langston was a prolific writer. Langston Hughes was one of the most important writers and thinkers of the Harlem renaissance, which was the African American artistic movement in the 1920 that celebrated black life and culture . In the Harlem renaissance they had a strong sense of racial pride. In May of 1967 he died of cancer.

April rain song
Let the rain kiss you
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops
Let the rain sing you a lullaby
The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk
The rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night and I love rain

Shanel Dunn

Langston Hughes
I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.

Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed--

I, too, am America.

Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri his was a member of an abolitionist family. He attended Multi University Such As Lincoln and Columbia University. He wrote many poems and what he is most famous for is I Too. I Too is about the hard times in world towards African Americans. I Too is represents hope and faith to be considered as a true American.

Rashonda Brown

BILLIE Holiday was born April 7, 1915 in Philadelphia. Bille was born ( Eleanor Fagan). She grew up in Baltimore, Maryland in the 1920’s. She lived an Impoverish cgildhood efore moving to New York City. There she madeher true singing debut in obscure Harlem Night Clubs. She borrowed her Professsional name- Billie Holiday- from Screen Star Billie Dove. She quickly became an active participant in one of the most urban jazz scenes in the Country. At the Age of 18 she had more experience then most adult musicians . She cut her first record as part of a studio group led by Benny Goodmen. Billie’s career got a big push when she recorded four sides that went on to become hits. Later on she died in July 17, 1959, her Herion addiction lead to her death.

BILLIE’S BLUES LYRICS
Lord I love my man, tell the world I do
I love Lord I love my man, tell the world I do
I love my man, tell the world I do
But when he mistreats me
Makes me feel so blue

My man wouldn't give me no breakfast
Wouldn't give me no dinner
Fought about my supper and put me outdoors
Had the dark clay make black spots on my clothes
I didn't have so many
But I had a long, long way to go

Some men like me talkin' happy
Some calls it snappy
Some call me honey
Others think I got money
Some tell me baby you're built for speed
Now if you put that all together
Makes me everthing a good man needs

The message in this song was how the was having troubled relationship and unscrupulous and abusive men dragging her career down.

Tymir Davis

A person who changed the Harlem renaissance was Paul Robeson because of his acting, singing. Acting because he was one of first black actor. Singing because of the words he said in his songs like “A glory will live in the memory of nations and all generations will honor her name”.

Anthem of the USSR
United forever in friendship and labor
our mighty Republics will ever endure
the Great Soviet Union
will live through the ages
the dream of a people
their fortress secure.

[Chorus]
Long live pur Soviet Motherland
built by the people's mighty hand.
Long live her people united and free
strong in a friendship tried by fire
long may her crimson flag inspire
shining in glory for all men to see.

Zeparina Coleman

Billie Holiday was a singer and jazz vocalist. Billie Holiday Original name was Eleanora Fagan. She was born on April 7, 1915in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Some sources from Baltimore, Maryland said her birth certificate reportedly reads “Elinore Harris.”At the age of 18 Billie Holiday was discovered by a producer named John Hammond while she was performing in a Harlem jazz club. Hammond was getting Holiday recording work with an up coming clarinetist and bandleader Benny Goodman. With Goodman she sang vocals for several tracks, including her first commercial release “Your Mother’s Son-In-Law” and the 1934 top ten hit “Riffin’ the Scotch.” Billie Holiday went on to record with jazz pianist Teddy Wilson and others in 1935.Billie Holiday influence the Harlem Renaissance by becoming one of the first African American Women Blues Singer. She made several singles, including “What a Little Moonlight Can Do” and “Miss Brown to You.” That same year, Holiday appeared with Duke Ellington in the film Symphony in Black.

Olivia Arrington

William H. Johnson, was a painter in New York during the Harlem Renaissance. Johnson’s work include works such as “Jitterbugs”, which symbolizes the free movement, dancing, and jazz. Also, the painting expresses how African Americans, discovered the unique, exciting, and expressive style of art. Johnson started his work in Harlem, then traveled to France and Denmark, and was influenced by many other inspirations of the 1920’s.

“swingin’ and paintin’”
Let’s boogie pop!, said my paint brush,Let’s
Jitter said my paper, let’s get paintin’ said me as I guide my brush
with jazzy strokes.

Jitterbugs: Displays how African Americans Enjoying the art and culture of the 1920’s.

Christian Gilliard

Langston Hughes
A Dream Deferred
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?

James Mercer Langston Hughes was born Feb. 1, 1902. He was a famous poet, novelist, playwright, short story writer, and columnist. Hughes is best-known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance.

As one of the founders of the cultural movement known as the Harlem Renaissance, which he practically defined in his essay, ‘The Negro Artist and the Radical Mountain’ (1926), he was innovative in his use of jazz rhythms and dialect to depict the life of urban blacks in his poetry, stories, and plays. Having provided the lyrics for the musical Street Scene (1947) and the play that inspired the opera Troubled Island (1949), in the 1960s he returned to the stage with works that drew on black gospel music, such as Black Nativity (1961).

A prolific writer for four decades, he abandoned the Marxism of his youth, but never gave up protesting the injustices committed against his fellow African Americans. Among his most popular creations was Jesse B Semple, better known as ‘Simple’, a black Everyman featured in the syndicated column he began in 1942 for the Chicago Defender.

In his later years, Hughes completed a two-volume autobiography and edited anthologies and pictorial volumes. Because he often employed humor and seldom portrayed or endorsed violent confrontations, he was for some years disregarded as a model by black writers, but by the 1980s he was being reappraised and was newly appreciated as a significant voice of African Americans.

Christopher Scott

Zora Neale Hurston Biography (1903 - 1960)

Zora Neale Hurston was a famous writer during the Harlem Renaissance. . Writer, anthropologist, folklorist. She was born January 7, 1891 in Notasulga, Alabama. She studied at Howard University (1923–4), Barnard College (1928 BA), and did graduate work at Columbia University. She spent much of her life collecting folklore of the South (1927–31, 1938–9) and of other places such as Haiti (1937–8), Bermuda (1937–8), and Honduras (1946–8), publishing her findings in works including Mules and Men (1935).

Hurston lived in New York City and held a variety of jobs, such as teacher, librarian, and assistant to Fannie Hurst. She was associated with the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, and would later influence such writers as Ralph Ellison and Toni Morrison. She is best known for Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), a novel celebrating the lives of African-Americans. She also wrote a play called Spunk.

In 1950, Hurston moved to Florida and became increasingly conservative and alienated from her fellow African Americans, taking a stand even against school integration. She died 1960but she was not forgotten.During the 1970s her works were being rediscovered and recognized for their insights.

Mr. Sokoloff

Langston Hughes
Sometime in the 1920's someone heard Langston Hughes talking about the Harlem Renaissance; he said that Harlem is "not so much a place as a state of mind, the cultural metaphor for black America itself." The Harlem Renaissance was a rebirth and time of change for the African American identity. New literature, poetry, music and political thought was developed during this time.

Mr. Hughes was one of the main contributors to the flourishing of African-American literature and art centered in the Harlem section of New York City. This movement sought to create and embellish an identity for blacks unique from the broader American culture.

Read the beautiful poem below written by Mr. Hughes. I chose this poem because I love the images it makes me see. I also like how empowering and political it is; everyone can relate to having a dream come true or have it never happen. Mr. Hughes encourages African Americans to realize their dreams during the Harlem Renaissance!

"A Dream Deferred" 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?

Michelle Grace

Florence Mills (1895-1927)
Dancer, singer, actress
Florence Mills was known to a barrier breaking performer with a "Harlem attitude." Mills began her career at the young age of four, when she appeared on stage in an all African American musical. Her big break was after a cabaret tour. In 1921, she starred in "Shuffle Along" as the lead!
Mills gave others a courageous encouragement that helped other African Americans believe and understand that if you are talented, then bless others. It doesn't matter what race or creed.

Ms. Mills was born with the name Florence Winfrey, Florence Mills was known to a barrier breaking performer with a "Harlem attitude." Mills began her career at the young age of four, when she appeared on stage in an all African American musical. Her big break was after a cabaret tour. In 1921, she starred in play called "Shuffle Along" as the lead!
Mills gave others a courageous encouragement that helped other African Americans believe and understand that if you are talented, then bless others. It doesn't matter what race or creed. People have called her one of the greatest entertainers this world has ever seen, which is quite a statement. Mills was the first black international female superstar of the twentieth century. She danced, acted, sang, and entertained. People that i knew her personally called her truly lovable, charitable, a socially and an intellectually aware woman.
What made Mills not just a singer or actress, is that she was a true Renaissance woman. She had that spirit of the renaissance, the jen-say-qua that said "I can sing, act, dance, and yes i am beautiful and black. I am proud of my people." That came with the presence from other people she influenced, such as Duke Ellington, and other people she worked with such as William Grant
Still, Eubie Blake, and others. She was truly a icon for the renaissance.

Darrin Pearson

Countee Cullen

His second volume of poetry, Copper Sun (1927), met with controversy in the black community because Cullen did not give the subject of race the same attention he had given it in Color. He was raised and educated in a primarily white community, and he differed from other poets of the Harlem Renaissance like Langston Hughes in that he lacked the background to comment from personal experience on the lives of other blacks or use popular black themes in his writing. An imaginative lyric poet, he wrote in the tradition of Keats and Shelley and was resistant to the new poetic techniques of the Modernists. He died in 1946.

Simon the Cyrenian Speaks
He never spoke a word to me,
And yet He called my name;
He never gave a sign to me,
And yet I knew and came.

At first I said, "I will not bear
His cross upon my back;
He only seeks to place it there

But He was dying for a dream,
And He was very meek,
And in His eyes there shone a gleam
Men journey far to seek.

It was Himself my pity bought;
I did for Christ alone
What all of Rome could not have wrought
With bruise of lash or stone.

This poem is speaking about how Countee Cullen was saying how he wanted to knew god even though he never spoke a word and how he knew god was with him even if he didn’t see him. He says he didn’t want to do what Christ did but felt that was what god was asking him to do and he finishes by saying he suffered a pain for the love of god.