Untitled Flashcards Set

TOPIC 3.11

The New Negro Movement and the Harlem Renaissance

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

LO 3.11.A

Describe ways the New Negro movement emphasized self-definition, racial pride, andcultural innovation.

ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE

EK 3.11.A.1

The New Negro movement encouraged

African Americans to define their own identity

and to advocate for themselves politically in

the midst of the nadir’s atrocities.

EK 3.11.A.2

The New Negro movement pursued

the creation of a Black aesthetic, which

was reflected in the artistic and cultural

achievements of Black creators.

EK 3.11.A.3

The New Negro movement produced

innovations in music (e.g., blues and

jazz), art, and literature that served as

counternarratives to prevailing racial

stereotypes. These artistic innovations

reflected the migrations of African Americans

from the South to urban centers in the North

and Midwest.

EK 3.11.A.4

The New Negro movement encompassed

several political and cultural movements,

including the Harlem Renaissance. The

Harlem Renaissance was a flourishing of

Black literary, artistic, and intellectual life that

created a cultural revolution in the United

States in the 1920s and 1930s.This movement highlighted the contributions of African American artists, writers, and musicians, leading to a greater appreciation of Black culture and identity.

§ The New Negro movement began in the late nineteenth century, evolving and

assuming various and often contradictory forms, ranging from Booker T. Washington’s

accommodationist strategies to Marcus Garvey’s claims that his movement was the

embodiment of The New Negro. Alain Locke redefined the trope in terms of an aesthetic

movement.

§ Black aesthetics were central to self-definition among African Americans. In The New

Negro: An Interpretation, Alain Locke encourages young Black artists to reject the burden

of being the sole representative of a race. He emphasizes that the value of creating a Black

aesthetic lies not in creating tangible cultural artifacts but rather in a shift of the “inner

mastery of mood and spirit” (in “Negro Youth Speaks”).

§ Alain Locke became the first African American Rhodes Scholar in 1907.

TOPIC 3.12

Photography and Social Change

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

LO 3.12.A

Explain how African Americans

used visual media in the

twentieth century to enact

social change.

ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE

EK 3.12.A.1

African American scholars, artists, and

activists turned to photography to counter

racist representations that were used to

justify their mistreatment and Jim Crow

segregation.

EK 3.12.A.2

During the New Negro movement, African

American photographers, seeking to create

a distinctive Black aesthetic, grounded their

work in the beauty of everyday Black life,

history, folk culture, and pride in an African

heritage.

EK 3.12.A.3

African American photographers, such as

James Van Der Zee, recast global perceptions

of African Americans by further illustrating

the qualities of the “new negro.” They

documented Black expression, labor, leisure,

study, worship, and home life, and highlighted

the liberated spirit, beauty, and dignity of

Black people.

§ James Van Der Zee is best known for his photographs of Black Harlemites, particularly

the Black middle class. He often used props (including luxury items) and special poses to

capture the vibrant personalities of everyday African Americans and leading figures such

as Marcus Garvey and Mamie Smith.

§ At the 1900 Paris Exposition, the Exhibit of American Negroes, curated by W.E.B. Du Bois,

displayed more than 300 photographs of African Americans. The exhibit demonstrated

the diversity and achievements of African Americans. It included dozens of charts and

infographics in English and French with data grounded in demographic, scientific, and

sociological research on the status of African Americans. The exhibit was visited by 45

million people and increased the global reach of the New Negro movement. The success of this exhibit not only highlighted the cultural contributions of African Americans but also fostered a greater understanding of their historical and contemporary challenges.

TOPIC 3.13

Envisioning Africa in Harlem Renaissance Poetry

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

LO 3.13.A

Explain how Harlem

Renaissance poets express

their relationships to Africa in

their poetry.

ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE

EK 3.13.A.1

Harlem Renaissance writers, artists, and

scholars explored connections to and

detachments from their African heritage as a

response to the legacies of colonialism and

Atlantic slavery.

EK 3.13.A.2

Some Harlem Renaissance poets used

imagery to counter negative stereotypes

about Africa’s people and landscapes.

EK 3.13.A.3

Some Harlem Renaissance poets explored

the relationship between Africa and African

American identity and heritage through

personal reflection.

TOPIC 3.14

Symphony in Black: Black Performance in Music, Theater, and Film

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

LO 3.14.A

Describe African Americans’

contributions to American

music in the 1930s and 1940s.

ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE

EK 3.14.A.1

In the early decades of the twentieth century,

the Harlem Renaissance and the Jazz Age

opened opportunities for African American

record labels, musicians, and vocalists to gain

a wider audience. The rise of radio broadcast

African American genres including blues,

gospel, and jazz across the nation.

EK 3.14.A.2

Blues music has its roots in slavery. Beginning

as acoustic music in the American South,

a new, electric version evolved as African

Americans moved north during the Great

Migration. The heightened emotion of blues

music conveys themes such as despair and

hope, love, and loss, using repetition, call and

response, and vernacular language.

EK 3.14.A.3

Jazz has been described as the United

States’ most distinctive contribution to

the arts. Like blues, jazz originated among

African American communities in the South

(New Orleans) and developed new styles

following migration to the North, Midwest, and

West. From big band to free jazz, the genre

continues to evolve in the present day.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

LO 3.14.B

Describe African Americans’

contributions to American

theater and film in the 1930s

and 1940s.

ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE

EK 3.14.B.1

Black performers flourished in cabarets, on

Broadway, and in film in the early twentieth

century. Hollywood also produced all-Black

musicals, such as Cabin in the Sky (1943)

featuring prominent Black actors, musicians,

and dancers*. Ethel Waters was the first

African American to star in her own television

show (1939).

sources:

§ Duke Ellington – “It Don’t Mean a Thing” (1943) (video, 2:45)

§ Katherine Dunham, Cabin in the Sky, 1940

§ Ethel Waters in Cabin in the Sky, 1943

§ Cast of Cabin in the Sky, 1943

Duke Ellington produced the short musical film Symphony in Black: A Rhapsody of Negro

Life (1934) depicting various scenes of African American life including work, love, and

religious scenes.

TOPIC 3.15

Black History Education and African American Studies

SOURCES

§ “The Negro Digs Up His Past” by Arturo A. Schomburg, in The New Negro: An

Interpretation edited by Alain Locke, 1925

§ The Mis-Education of the Negro by Carter Godwin Woodson, 1933

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

LO 3.15.A

Explain why New Negro

movement writers, artists, and

educators strove to research

and disseminate Black history

to Black students.

ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE

EK 3.15.A.1

New Negro movement writers, artists, and

educators believed that United States

schools reinforced the idea that Black

people had made no meaningful cultural

contributions and were thus inferior. They

urged African Americans to become agents

of their own education and study the history

and experiences of Black people to inform

their future advancement.

EK 3.15.A.2

Artists, writers, and intellectuals of the New

Negro movement refuted the idea that African

Americans were people without history or

culture and created a body of literature and

educational resources to show otherwise. The

early push to place Black history in schools

allowed the contributions of the New Negro

movement to reach Black students of all ages.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

LO 3.15.B

Describe the development and

aims of the Black intellectual

tradition that predates

the formal integration of

African American Studies

into American colleges

and universities in the mid-

twentieth century.

ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE

EK 3.15.B.1

The Black intellectual tradition in the United

States began two centuries before the formal

introduction of the field of African American

Studies in the late 1960s. It emerged through

the work of Black activists, educators, writers,

and archivists who documented Black

experiences.

EK 3.15.B.2

Beginning in the late eighteenth century,

the African Free School provided an

education to the children of enslaved and

free Black people in New York. The school

helped prepare early Black abolitionists for

leadership.

EK 3.15.B.3

The Black Puerto Rican bibliophile Arturo

Schomburg’s collection, donated to The New

York Public Library, became the basis of the

Schomburg Center for Research in Black

Culture.

EK 3.15.B.4

The sociologist and activist W.E.B. Du Bois’s

research and writings produced some of

the earliest sociological surveys of African

Americans.

EK 3.15.B.5

Anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston’s writings

documented forms of African American

culture and linguistic expression.

EK 3.15.B.6

The historian Carter Godwin Woodson

founded what became Black History Month, in

addition to publishing many works chronicling

Black experiences and perspectives in

history.

The son of formerly enslaved people, Carter Godwin Woodson became the founder of

what is now the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH);

created Negro History Week, which became Black History Month; and published many

works of African American history that started with African origins through the early

twentieth century.

§ Arturo Schomburg’s collection included rare artifacts that reflected the diverse artistic,

literary, and political contributions of the African diaspora, including correspondence

that belonged to Toussaint L’Ouverture, newspapers originally published by Frederick

Douglass, and poems by Phillis Wheatley.

TOPIC 3.16

The Great Migration

SOURCE

§ Anonymous Letter Beckoning African Americans to leave the South, published in

The Messenger, March 1920, in Call and Response, 258

§ The Migration Series by Jacob Lawrence, 1940–1941 (various panels, in particular

Panel No. 1)

§ Map of The Great Migration

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

LO 3.16.A

Describe the causes of the

Great Migration.

ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE

EK 3.16.A.1

The Great Migration was one of the largest

internal migrations in United States history.

Six million African Americans relocated in

waves from the South to the North, Midwest,

and western United States from the 1910s

to 1970s.

EK 3.16.A.2

Labor shortages in the North during the First

World War and Second World War increased

job opportunities in northern industrial cities,

appealing to African Americans in search of

economic opportunities.

EK 3.16.A.3

Environmental factors, such as floods, boll

weevils, and spoiled crops, left many Black

Southerners impoverished.

EK 3.16.A.4

African Americans relocated in search of

safety for their families. The dangers of

unmitigated lynching and racial violence

prompted many Black people to leave the Jim

Crow South.

ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE

EK 3.16.A.5

A new railway system and the Black press

made the Great Migration possible. Trains

offered a means to travel, and the Black press

provided encouragement and instructions for

African Americans leaving the South.

Explain the impact of the

Great Migration on Black

communities and American

culture.

EK 3.16.B.1

The effects of the Great Migration

transformed American cities, Black

communities, and Black cultural movements.

The migration infused American cities such

as New York, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Los

Angeles with Black Southern culture, creating

a shared culture among African American

communities across the country.

EK 3.16.B.2

The Great Migration transformed African

Americans from primarily rural people to

primarily urban dwellers. Black Southerners

forged new connections to their northern

environment, such as engaging with nature

for leisure rather than livelihood/labor.

EK 3.16.B.3

As underpaid and disempowered Black

laborers began to leave the South, racial

tensions increased. Employers often resisted

the flight of African Americans and at times

had them unjustly arrested.

EK 3.16.B.4

The National Urban League was founded

in New York City in 1910 as an interracial

organization. The Urban League assisted

African Americans migrating from the rural

South during the Great Migration, helping

them acclimate to northern urban life and

secure housing and jobs. The Urban League

would later support A. Philip Randolph’s

1941 March on Washington and work directly

with the Southern Christian Leadership

Conference during the Civil Rights movement.

In The Migration Series, artist Jacob Lawrence chronicles African Americans’ hopes and

challenges during the Great Migration. His work is known for its social realism due to his

use of visual art to depict historical moments, social issues, and the everyday lives of

African Americans.

TOPIC 3.17

Afro-Caribbean Migration

SOURCES

§ “Restricted West Indian Immigration and the American Negro” by Wilfred A.

Domingo, 1924 (published in Opportunity, Oct. 1924, pp. 298–299)

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

LO 3.17.A

Explain the reasons for the

increase in Black Caribbean

migration to the United States

during the first half of the

twentieth century.

ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE

EK 3.17.A.1

Afro-Caribbeans were affected by the decline

of Caribbean economies during the First

World War, and the expansion of United

States political and economic interests in

the Caribbean, such as the acquisition of

the Panama Canal (1903)*. They came to the

United States for economic, political, and

educational opportunities.

Describe the effects of Afro-

Caribbean migration to the

United States in the early

twentieth century and the

migration’s effect on African

American communities.

EK 3.17.B.1

More than 140,000 Afro-Caribbean

immigrants arrived between 1899 and 1937.

Most settled in Florida and New York.

EK 3.17.B.2

The arrival of Afro-Caribbean immigrants

to African American communities sparked

tensions but also created new blends of Black

culture in the United States.

EK 3.17.B.3

Afro-Caribbean migration to the United

States increased the religious and linguistic

diversity of African American communities in

the United States, as many of the new arrivals

were Catholic, Anglican, and Episcopalian and

hailed from non-English-speaking islands.

ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE

EK 3.17.B.4

Afro-Caribbean intellectuals also contributed

to the radicalization of Black thought in

the twentieth century by infusing their

experiences of Black empowerment and

autonomy into the radical Black social

movements of the time.

Source Notes

§ Africans and their descendants born in the West Indies first arrived in what became the

United States in the seventeenth century when enslaved people from Barbados, Jamaica,

and other British colonies in the Caribbean were brought to British North American

colonies to work on plantations. In the early nineteenth century, in the wake of the Haitian

Revolution, formerly enslaved people found refuge in cities like New Orleans, Charleston,

Norfolk, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York.

§ Prominent early twentieth-century, Afro-Caribbean immigrants include Claude McKay

(Jamaica), Arturo Schomburg (Puerto Rico), and Marcus Garvey (Jamaica).

TOPIC 3.18

The Universal Negro Improvement Association

SOURCES

§ “Address to the Second UNIA Convention” by Marcus Garvey, 1921

§ Marcus Garvey at His Desk, 1924

§ Marcus Garvey in Harlem, 1924

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

LO 3.18.A

Describe the mission and

methods of the Universal

Negro Improvement

Association (UNIA).

ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE

EK 3.18.A.1

Marcus Garvey led the largest pan-African

movement in African American history as

founder of the UNIA. The UNIA aimed to unite

all Black people and maintained thousands

of members in countries throughout the

Caribbean, Latin America, and Africa.

EK 3.18.A.2

Marcus Garvey’s Back-to-Africa movement

popularized the phrase “Africa for the

Africans” and founded a steamship company,

the Black Star Line, to repatriate African

Americans to Africa.

LO 3.18.B

Describe the impact of

Marcus Garvey and the

Universal Negro Improvement

Association (UNIA) on political

thought throughout the African

diaspora.

EK 3.18.B.1

Garvey inspired African Americans, who

had faced intense racial violence and

discrimination, to embrace their shared

African heritage. He championed the ideals

of industrial, political, and educational

advancement and self-determination through

separatist Black institutions.

ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE

EK 3.18.B.2

Garvey outlined the UNIA’s objective to

achieve Black liberation from colonialism

across the African diaspora. This framework

became the model for subsequent Black

nationalist movements throughout the

twentieth century. The UNIA’s red, black, and

green flag continues to be used by advocates

of Black solidarity and freedom worldwide.