The Harlem Renaissance: POETRY

Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960)

Zora Neal Hurston - Mules & Men

Mules & Men Text Excerpt
"How it Feels to be Colored Like Me"
Harlem Renaissance writer who celebrated African folklore in Their Eyes Were Watching God and other books
Lived in the first all-black town, Florida
Joined a traveling theater company to Harlem
Attended Howard University and Barnard College, where she studied anthropology Zora Neal Hurston and folklore
1935: Wrote Mules and Men, a book about folklore in Florida
1937: Their Eyes Were Watching God

Jean Toomer (1894-1967)

Poetry Selections Primary Sources

Of Mixed Birth. His mother was a former slave and white planter
He passed for white or black until his late teens, and was educated in white and black schools.He carried around identification that looked more white.
Like Hurston, he attended college and majored in cultural studies (anthropology, naturalism) and psychology
He believed in a New America, where race didn't matter. --Robert B. Jones, "Jean Toomer's Life and Career"

Langston Hughes (1902-1967)

mp3skull.com

The Negro Speaks of Rivers
The Weary Blues & Poetry Selections
Already well known by age 24, among white press and literary journals
Criticized by black intellectuals of his time for giving an "unattractive view of black life" in his poems
He describes his poems as about "workers, roustabouts, and singers, and job hunters" in New York

Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000)

Poem We Cool with Audio
Poem Song in Front Yard

First black author to win the Pulitzer Prize
Poet laureate
Her writing shows her "political consciousness," with several of her poems "reflecting the civil rights movement" of the 1960s
Describe her poetry as "folksy narrative" --
Elements of rap in her poetry

OTHER PRIMARY SOURCE DOCUMENTS

Zora Neale Hurston Plays

Harlem Renaissance Website at John Carroll Univ.

Virtual Archive & Education Center: Harlem Exhibits

The Harlem Renaissance