First Black Middle Class in America Began in 1865 at

the close of the Civil War

Racial equality slowed down by Plessy v. Ferguson, a Supreme Court case declaring racial segregation to be “constitutionally acceptable.”

Southern states especially tried to minimize equality.

Boll weevils infesting cotton crops also caused less need for labor in the south.

Migration to the North In the North in

the U.S., all adult men were given the right to vote

It provided more job opportunities because of WWI and the Industrial Revolution.

School segregation was banned, so educational opportunities were improved.

More than seven million African-Americans moved north where racism “…was considered much less brutal.”

Harlem Outside New York City Harlem was

originally planned to house white commuters into the city. When housing developments grew faster than transportation to the city did, the white middle-class abandoned it.

Harlem developers began selling properties to black real estate agents and renting to black tenants.

Between 1900 & 1920 the number of African-Americans in Harlem doubled.

“The Black Mecca” “The Capital of Black America”

The country’s “best and brightest black advocates, artists, entrepreneurs, and intellectuals situated themselves in Harlem”; thus, the reason for the titles above.

Harlem Renaissance Standouts

(Just read.)

W.E.B. Du Bois – Civil Rights Activist

Black historian, sociologist, and Harvard scholar

Primary civil rights activist of the time

1909 helped to found the NAACP

Artists and writers of the 20s helped the cause.

Harlem Writers

(Just read.)

Harlem Renaissance Poets

“Theme for English B”

“Mother to Son”

“I, Too, Sing America”

Langston Hughes - Poet 3 Key Poems

More HR Poets

Lost parents, raised by the Cullens in Harlem

Graduated Phi Beta Kappa from NYU in 1925

Poem - “Incident”

Countee Cullen 1903-1946

James Weldon Johnson 1871- 1938

Born in Jacksonville, Fl Teacher then principal

who helped expand the school’s curriculum to include high school level courses

Civil rights leader; NAACP leader

God’s Trombones – famous poetry series

James Weldon Johnson (continued) Johnson once summed up his personal credo as a

black American in a pamphlet published by the NAACP: "I will not allow one prejudiced person or one million or one hundred million to blight my life. I will not let prejudice or any of its attendant humiliations and injustices bear me down to spiritual defeat. My inner life is mine, and I shall defend and maintain its integrity against all the powers of hell." Johnson was buried in Brooklyn's Greenwood Cemetery dressed in his favorite lounging robe and holding a copy of God's Trombones in his hand. (Just read.)

www.poetryfoundation.org

Writer Dorothy West 1907-1998

Tied for 2nd with Zora Neale Hurston in a story contest in NY

Founded the literary magazine, Challenge

When she died in 1998, she was the last surviving member of the Harlem Renaissance.

Zora Neale Hurston

Born in Alabama to a schoolteacher mother and preacher father

Childhood in Eatonville, Florida

Studied anthropology and traveled extensively collecting folklore from

1891 - 1960 Brief Biography

Z. N. Hurston (continued)

Florida, the Caribbean, and Latin American. Wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God in 1937

while she was in Haiti collecting folklore. In Haiti, she studied the voodoo culture. Wrote several books exploring the folklore

she discovered, including some for children Dust Tracks on a Road (1942) is her

autobiography. Buried in an unmarked grave in Fort Pierce,

Florida, in January of 1960

Zora Neale Hurston

• Alice Walker, who wrote The Color Purple, revived interest in Hurston in 1975 with both the public and publishers.

• She placed a marker on Hurston’s grave.