1920-1930s

Langston Hughes

(the voice of the Harlem Renaissance)

1902-1967

 

Hughes speaks at UCLA in 1967

Hear Hughes read his own poetry in 1967 as he speaks to the students at the University of California, Los Angeles.

• “A Negro Speaks of Rivers”
• “I, Too”
• “I look at the world”
• “Dreams”
• “The Weary Blues”
• “Dream Variations”

Countee Cullen

1903- 1946

 

Zora Neale Hurston

1891- 1960

Claude McKay

1889-1948

W.E.B. Du Bois

1868- 1963

• The Souls of Black Folk

Jean Toomer

1894- 1967

James Weldon Johnson

1871- 1938

Nella Larsen

1891- 1964

Wallace Thurman

1902- 1934

Jessie Redmon Fauset

1882- 1961

Alain Locke

1886- 1954

Ralph Waldo Ellison

1914- 1994

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Racism Transcends the Harlem Renaissance and the Civil Rights Movement

Quick FYI:

• Harlem Renaissance= 1920s- 1930s
  • declined with the stock market crash of 1929.
• African American Civil Rights Movement= 1954- 1968
  • 1954- Brown v. Board decision declares segregation in public schools illegal.
  • 1968- Congress authorizes the 1968 Civil Rights Act, providing federal enforcement provisions for discrimination in housing. The 1968 expanded on previous acts and prohibited discrimination concerning the sale, rental, and financing of housing based on race, religion, national origin, sex, (and as amended) handicap and family status. This law enabled housing opportunities for blacks beyond the “ghetto.”
• Timeline of Anti-Slavery and Civil Rights

Mississippi Burning Killings of 1964

• Case was officially re-closed on June 21, 2016 (52 years after the incident)
  • NPR shares the story 
• As we watch the film Mississippi Burning in class, take notes on:
  •  the reasoning behind racial prejudice (a preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience) and discrimination (the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people or things, especially on the grounds of race, age, or sex).
    • How do the townspeople of Neshoba County, Mississippi justify their actions?
  • Why does racism persist even after such a literary period of seeming enlightenment?