...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...
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...Nina Wohl Columbia University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences AHIS W4855 African American Artists in the 20th and 21st Centuries Spring 2012 Research Paper – African American Art & the Great Depression The Great Depression was the worst economic downturn of the twentieth century. The federal government took unprecedented action to provide relief, recovery and reform. No group was harder hit by the Great Depression than African Americans. The New Deal was slow to deal with the unique situation faced by African Americans. The struggles of the Great Depression laid the foundation for the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Art would play an important role in influencing the future. Despite its limitations, the New Deal, through the Works Progress Administration’s (WPA) Federal Arts Program (FAP), was responsible for reshaping the cultural agenda and “marked a significant turning point in the production of black culture.”1 The artists of the Great Depression built upon the work done during the Harlem Renaissance. New Deal art extended and affirmed art that translated “politics into cultural terms.”2 The FAP looked for a “new sense of authentic American culture – one that championed national values and traditions by celebrating regional and racial diversity.”3 As a result, many artists worked to place African Americans in the historical narrative of the United States while combating long held stereotypes. None were less important than Aaron Douglas...
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...The Harlem Renaissance From 1920 until about 1930 an unprecedented outburst of activity among African-Americans occurred in all field of art. Beginning as a series of literary discussions in the lower Manhattan (Greenwich Village) and upper Manhattan (Harlem) sections of New York City, this African-American cultural movement became known as “The New Negro Movement’’ and later as the Harlem Renaissance. More than a literary movement and more than a social revolt against racism, the Harlem Renaissance exalted the unique culture of African- Americans and redefined African-Americans were encouraged to celebrate their heritage and to become “The New Negro,” a term coined in 1925 by sociologist and critic Alain LeRoy Locke. One of the factors contributing to the rise of the Harlem Renaissance was the great migration of African-Americans to northern cities (such as New York City, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.) between 1919 and 1926. In his influential book The New Negro (1925), Locke described the northward migration of blacks as "something like a spiritual emancipation." One of the factors contributing to the rise of the Harlem Renaissance was the great migration of African-Americans to northern cities (such as New York City, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.) between 1919 and 1926. In his influential book The New Negro (1925), Locke described the northward migration of blacks as "something like a spiritual emancipation." In the 1920's African-Americans seemed to have passed...
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...African American Culture The Harlem Renaissance was a pivotal period in American history that spanned the 1920s, marked by an extraordinary outpouring of African American art, literature, music, and thought. This cultural movement not only redefined African American identity but also had a profound impact on the broader American cultural landscape. The movement was characterized by a newfound sense of racial pride and a desire for social and economic equality. This book explores the contributions of key figures in the Harlem Renaissance, the impact of their work, and the lasting legacy of this significant cultural awakening. ORIGINS OF THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE The Great Migration, which saw millions of African Americans move from the rural South to urban centers in the North, set the stage for the Harlem Renaissance. Harlem, a neighborhood in New York City, became the epicenter of this cultural explosion. The migration brought a concentration of talented individuals who sought to escape the oppressive conditions of the South and to find new opportunities in the North. The vibrancy and diversity of Harlem provided the perfect environment for a cultural renaissance....
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...The Negro Speaks of Rivers “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” by poet Langston Hughes indeed spoke of rivers, but those rivers were a metaphor for a deeper subject. The poem is about the relevance of the rivers throughout African American history. At age seventeen Langston Hughes decided he was going to be a poet. He wrote “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” on an envelope in 1920 while traveling by train across The Mississippi River to visit his father in Mexico. The poem was published in June of the following year in The Crisis, a magazine popular in African American life. The poem’s beginning: "I’ve known rivers: I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins" is a representation of water being older than humanity. The line: “My soul has grown deep like the rivers" shows the connection of Hughes to his race. The line: "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" expresses the connection of the rivers to African American history, and how Abraham Lincoln worked to put an end to slavery in the United States. The poem's ending: "I’ve known rivers: Ancient, dusky rivers. My soul has grown deep like the rivers" again shows the rivers effect on African American history throughout the years...
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...“I Have A Dream ” Summative The “ I Have A Dream” Speech was given by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. the civil rights leader. On August 28, 1963 in front of 250,00 civil right supporters 60,000 of them being white. The speech was for everyone to be equal. The speech was about everyone being equal under God's nation and so the hatred towards one another. Dr. King believed that no matter what they will never be as equal like the whites. Dr. King starts by wanting the best for the nation and everyone around. He then transitions into stating his goals in his speech to have everyone equal. “ One hundred years later, the negro is still not free.” Dr. King uses this to show he wants the freedom of the citizens and how many other are suffering for freedom and equality....
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... P. Dash | Assignment Title | #2 Group AssignmentMartin Luther King Jr. - I Have A Dream | Due Date | Week 8 | Date Received | | DECLARATION | To be completed if this is an individual assignment: I declare that this assignment is my individual work. I have not worked collaboratively nor have I copied from any other student’s work or from any other source except where due acknowledgment is made explicitly in the text, nor has any part been written for me by another person. | Student ID | Student Name | Student Signature | Student 1 | | | | To be completed if this is a group assignment: We declare that this is a group assignment and that no part of this submission has been copied from any other student's work or from any other source except where due acknowledgment is made explicitly in the text, nor has any part been written for us by another person. | Student ID | Student Name | Student Signature | Student 1 | 4240138 | Danushka Nirmal De Silva | | Student 2 | 4235150 | Ngu Ing Sung | | Student 3 | 4237293 | Dashilla Ladaey | | Student 4 | 4237323 | Ahmad Akmal Afiq | | Student 5 | 100070566 | Lasse Svenning Jensen | | MARKER’S COMME Total Mark | | Marker’s Signature | | Date | | EXTENSION CERTIFICATE | This assignment has been given an extension by Unit Convenor | | Extended due date: | | Date Received | | Martin Luther King Jr. – I Have a Dream An analysis of a historically important leadership speech Words:...
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... Everybody even remotely connected with the school knew this. The teacher always pronounced his name with profound gusto as she pointed him out as the ideal student. Once I heard her say: “If he were white he might, some day, become President.” Only Aaron Crawford wasn’t white; quite the contrary. His skin was so solid black that it glowed, reflecting an inner virtue that was strange, and beyond my comprehension. In many ways he looked like something that was awkwardly put together. Both his nose and his lips seemed a trifle too large for his face. To say he was ugly would be unjust and to say he was handsome would be gross exaggeration. Truthfully, I could never make up my mind about him. Sometimes he looked like something out of a book of ancient history...looked as if he was left over from that magnificent era before the machine age came and marred the earth’s natural beauty. His great variety of talent often startled the teachers. This caused his classmates to look upon him with a mixed feeling of awe and envy. Before Thanksgiving, he always drew turkeys and pumpkins on the blackboard. On George Washington’s birthday, he drew large American flags surrounded by little hatchets. It was these small masterpieces that made him the most talked-about colored boy in Columbus, Georgia. The Negro principal of the Muskogee County School that he would some day be a great painter, like Henry O. Tanner. For the teacher’s birthday, which fell on a day about a week before commencement...
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...“Each generation must out of relative obscurity discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it” - Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth In cultures all over the world, music can be seen encompassing many aspects of life for many individuals. It is a form of mass communication that speaks directly to society as a cultural form", and often reflects a collection and pattern of personal experiences. Hip-hop or rap, an art form and culture nearly thirty years old originating from The Bronx, New York, has provided a forum for Black and Latino youth to express their respective cultures and speak on a number of issues. Today, Hip-hop is a global phenomenon that appeals to almost all ethnicities and is synthesizing a new culture that goes beyond race, education, and income. Hip-hop has been under continual metamorphosis since its 1970’s inner-city inception. Some of the original artists like Kurtis Blow chose to lament everyday life in the ghettos. Others, Sugar Hill Gang among them, took a more dance inspired approach to the music. But for both these and other artists from the early years of rap through the late 1980’s including KRS-One, Public Enemy, Queen Latifah and LL Cool J, fast beats and socially relevant lyrics were among the primary components of the music. By the 1990’s a new face of rap music emerged. It began with Ice T and later gained popularity with artists such as NWA (Niggaz Wit Attitude) whose first album shocked and titillated the rap world with their...
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...Ethel Gary and Charles White Sr. At a young age, White realized his passion for art and it was only fueled more when one day after school he met art students from the Art Institute of Chicago who taught him how to mix paint. Not too long after did White begin to skip school because of...
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...meanings, speech acts, moves, strategies and turns. In this paper our main focus is on the rhetoric of a speech. As we know where rhetoric is concerned we should inevitably deal with literature. In other words rhetoric is like a joint which connect literature with politics and establish a method of analyzing political speeches called polio-linguistic approach. Thus we can consider political discourses as pieces of literature. Literary techniques especially rhetorical devices serve as one of the most distinctive features of the greatest and most influential speeches of all time. There is no shortage of rhetorical devices used in these speeches, but we can prioritize them by count of repetitions in political discourses. In this study first I have represented the necessity of using these types of persuasive skills in political discourses, the methods within which politicians take advantages of these skills and the different sides of a successful speech. Then after a glance through different rhetorical devices, excerpts from four of the greatest speeches in history are provided with the rhetorical devices indicated in them. Finally a quite deep examination of the most important of these rhetorical devices is presented and the conclusion is made through comparing these samples. The primary purpose of every presenter or rhetorician is to grab people`s attention. After that he/ she needs to convey people`s thoughts and beliefs in his/her to desirable direction. This is a hard job...
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...The Harlem Renaissance The end of World War I set up conditions for a new culture to emerge. Due to the abundance of jobs the war created, many African-Americans moved to the northern cities. In fact, so many of them moved up north, they created strong African-American communities, including Harlem in New York City. During the 1920’s, Harlem became the Mecca of Black culture and was home to many talented individuals from all fields. Roughly lasting from the end of World War I to the stock market crash in 1929, the Harlem Renaissance was the time period in which black literature was first taken seriously and published by mainstream companies. Even though the Harlem Renaissance focused mainly on literature, it is also strongly related to the advances in African-American music, art and politics of the 1920’s. Although there were many themes associated with the works of the Harlem Renaissance, the four topics of interest that were focused on were, a longing for Africa, the beauty of African-Americans, the racism of the time and demonstrating that they too experienced universal concepts. Many African-Americans of the time began wondering about their ancestral past, prior to slavery, and looked to Africa for inspiration. Many African-Americans saw Africa as their original homeland and a place where blacks where not discriminated and oppressed. In the poem “Heritage,” Countie Cullen wrote “What is Africa to Me?,” a common question African-Americans were asking at the time. He also...
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...Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey edited by Amy Jacques-Garvey 1 Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey edited by Amy Jacques-Garvey The Journal of Pan African Studies 2009 eBook Dedicated to the true and loyal members of the Universal Negro Improvement Association in the cause of African redemption. Preface This volume is compiled from the speeches and articles delivered and written by Marcus Garvey from time to time. My purpose for compiling same primarily, was not for publication, but rather to keep as a personal record of the opinions and sayings of my husband during his career as the leader of that portion of the human family known as the Negro race. However, on second thought, I decided to publish this volume in order to give to the public an opportunity of studying and forming an opinion of him; not from inflated and misleading newspaper and magazine articles, but from expressions of thoughts enunciated by him in defense of his oppressed and struggling race; so that by his own words he may be judged, and Negroes the world over may be informed and inspired, for truth, brought to light, forces conviction, and a state of conviction inspires action. The history of contact between the white and Black races for the last three hundred years or more, records only a series of pillages, wholesale murders, atrocious brutalities, industrial exploitation, disfranchisement of the one on the other; the strong against the weak; but the sun of evolution is gradually rising...
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...our words can be twisted into racist statements without us realizing it. For my essay assignment I decided to see how the early publications of Life dealt with the challenges presented to journalism today. To see Life at the earliest stages of publishing could present to me an idea of how minorities, specifically African Americans in my research, were portrayed by the media. The year 1937 had many different portrayals of African Americans, however three common ideas highlighted how Life portrayed African Americans in 1937: the idea that African Americans are trouble to society, the idea that African Americans can have a prominent place in society, and the idea that African Americans were still considered property and in many instances liked it that way. I believe that these are understandable ideas and portrayals even though they may be frowned upon in today’s society. The first portrayal mentioned is how African American’s were, or caused, trouble. The first example is Joshua Cockburn’s troubles while moving into a new neighborhood. The Cockburn family had just moved into their new house before their Caucasian neighbor took the family to court because they neighbor felt African Americans could not live in the neighborhood. The article did not show any sympathy toward the Cockburn family and reported this story in a sense that made readers think that the Cockburn family caused too much trouble when in fact this was a petty argument. Unfortunately, Major Green’s troubles we much...
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...DuBois to the idea of Black nationalism in the United States. What were the major obstacles they faced in their articulation of the black Nationalist ideology? Booker T. Washington “was an American political leader, educator and author” who proved to be one of the most dominate figures in African American history in the United States (Booker, par. 1). William Edward Burghardt Du Bois “was a noted scholar, editor, and African American activist…[who] sought to eliminate discrimination and racism” (.. During the late 19th and early 20th century Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois were two great men who significantly influenced the idea of Black Nationalism in the United States. Though they both wanted to see an America where the Negro was treated with proper respect and equality, their views on how to obtain these noble goals contrasted one another. The ideology of DuBois and Washington were so completely different that people became subjected to following the doctrine of one or the other. With the knowledge that only one could be the “spokesman” for the race the two began a bitter battle to control the Black Nationalism ideology. Amid the competition against one another, both men still had to face other obstacles such as racism in order to further the goals of blacks of the period. Even though the two men had differing opinions on the ideology of Black Nationalism, both would greatly contribute to the idea of Black Nationalism. However, their differing positions on...
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