The Harlem Renaissance

A Slide Show

By Your (Nearly) Technologically Savvy Professor,

Chris De Santis

Images of Harlem . . .

“A City Within A City”

The Black Yankees

FlapperGirls

A Parade in Harlem

Protest March

ShoeShineMan

Soldiers on Parade

A Harlem Wedding Party

A Wealthy Harlemite

Madame C.J. Walker

MarcusGarvey

Marcus Garvey

UNIA Parade

Music and Dance in Harlem

The Cotton Club

BessieSmith

Bessie SingsThe BackwaterBlues

Billie Holliday

Cab Calloway

Duke Ellington

Duke Ellington Orchestra

A Young Duke

One more ofDuke

Ethel Waters

Ethel WatersBackstage

FletcherHenderson

Florence Mills

The FROGS!

The Fabulous Josephine Baker

Josephine withMinstrels

Louis Armstrong!

Louis one more time . . .

Singing “What Did I Do to be So Black and Blue?”

MinstrelShow

Mr. Bojangles

James ReeseEurope

Bill“Bojangles”Robinson

Paul Robeson

Sissel and Blake

Harlem Renaissance Art

AugustaSavage

MiguelCovarrubias

Book Cover

Cover ofThe Crisis

Book Cover

Book Cover

Book Cover

Jacob Reis

Born Peyton Hedgeman, he was given the name Palmer Hayden by his white commandingsergeant during World War I. In his town of brith, Wide Water, Virginia, he was often referred toas a self trained artist. He was a student at Cooper Union in New York and pursued independentstudies at Boothbay Art Colony in Maine. He studied and painted in France, where he lived forsome years.Hayden's reputation emanates from his realistic depictions of folklore and Blackhistorical events. He, like Douglas, was also among the first Black American artists to useAfrican subjects and designs in his painting.

The Big Bend Tunnelfrom the John Henry Series The Museum of African American Art Los Angeles.

Blue NileHatch Billops Collection, Inc., New York

The Janitor who PaintsThe National Museum of American ArtSmithsonian InstitutionWashington, D.C.

JeunesseWatercolor on paper, 14 x 17"Collection Dr. Meredith F. Sirmans,New York

William H. Johnson entered the Harlem Renaissance during its making. He came to New York in 1918 from Florence, South Carolina, to embark on his career. He became a student at the National Academy of Design. He was educated there for five years, during which he learned from greats such as George Luks and Charles Hawthorne. He then traveled to places in North Africa and Europe to paint and find residence. It was by the suggestion of Hawthorne that he traveled to Paris in 1826, where he settled, painted, and studied the works of modern European masters.

Girl in a Red Dress, ca. 1936

Self-Portrait, 1929

Swing Low Sweet ChariotNational Museum of American Art

Chain GangNational Museum of American ArtSmithsonian Institution,Washington, D.C.

Lois Mailou Jones was a pioneering artist of the Harlem Renaissance. Born in New England, her life was still clouded by the prejudices of an everyday African American life. She began her career after attending the School of the Museum of Fine Art in Boston. Afterwards, she went through the racial barriers to exhibit her works to the world. She persevered through many roadblocks and prejudices, without ever losing her passion to express herself through art.

Fishing SmacksMenemsha, Massachusettes, 1932

Negro Youth, 1929

Authors of the Harlem Renaissance

Claude McKay

ClaudeMcKay

If We Must Die

If we must die, let it not be like hogsHunted and penned in an inglorious spot,While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,Making their mock at our accursed lot.If we must die, O let us nobly die,So that our precious blood may not be shedIn vain; then even the monsters we defyShall be constrained to honor us though dead!O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!What though before us lies the open grave?Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

--Claude McKay

CounteeCullen

An olderCountee

JamesWeldonJohnson

JamesWeldonJohnson

JeanToomer

SterlingBrownReads . . .“Ma Rainey”

JessieFauset

Langston Hughes!!!

The Negro Speaks of Rivers (to W. E. B. B. DuBois)

I've known rivers:I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

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.

--Langston Hughes

NellaLarsen

NellaLarsen

NellaOne moretime

W. E. B. Du Bois

Du Bois

Zora Neale Hurston!!!

“You May GoBut This Will Bring You Back”

The

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