Black Poets Background

The Weary Blues (1926)

Langston Hughes 1st important volume

HBCU

“Historically Black College/Uni”, college Langston Hughes attended (Lincoln U)

The New Negro Movement

during Harlem Renaissance, brought black voice to American literature

James Weldon Johnson

characterized the Harlem Renaissance as “the flowering of Negro Literature”

The Great African-American Migration

fueled Harlem Renaissance, 1.6 mil South to North

Oak & Ivy (1893)

Paul Laurence Dunbar’s 1st published collection, contained formal & dialect poems

Dialect

a poem that uses specific language, pronunciation, and vocabulary to identify a cultural identity, Paul Dunbar famous for them

William Dean Howells

praised Paul Laurence Dunbar’s Majors & Minors

Paul Laurence Dunbar

godfather of Harlem renaissance

The Wright Brothers

friends, classmates, and neighbors of Paul Laurence Dunbar

New York University

Countee Cullen attended here

Harvard

Countee Cullen attends in 1925 after NYU

Color (1925)

first volume of poetry published by Countee Cullen

The Great Depression

economic downfall that ends the Harlem Renaissance

Frederick Douglass

influential speaker, former slave, “What to the Slave is the 4th of July”, autobiography

Countee Cullen

influential poet of Harlem Renaissance

Vachel Lindsay

“discovered” Langston Hughes

Columbia University

college Langston Hughes attended

Lincoln University

college Langston Hughes graduated

Thurgood Marshall

classmate of Langston Hughes at Lincoln U

1st African American Supreme Court Justice

Thurgood Marshall

Langston Hughes

most influential poet of Harlem Renaissance, “The Weary Blues”

Howard University

first HBCU

Phillis Wheatley

“Poems on various Subjects, Religious, & Moral”, first published volume of poetry by an African-American

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

first Black women to publish short story, founded National Association of Colored Women, influenced Harlem Renaissance

Plessy vs Ferguson

upheld “separate but equal” legalized Jim Crow laws

Reconstruction

period after Civil War to reinstitute the South into the Union

Dred Scott Decision

established the blacks were not citizens