African American culture

Claude McKay was a Jamaican – American writer and poet who had a big impact in the Harlem Renaissance. He was the youngest child of the Thomas Francis Mackay and Ann Elizabeth Edwards who were well off farmers who had enough land to be able to vote. When Claude McKay was four years of…

Introduction The popular entertainment of a given time period is a direct result of the political, social, and cultural climates. In particular, investigating popular culture provides historians with a window into the values and ideologies of those without a voice. Popular culture, such as music, proves to be a major influence and outlet amongst disenfranchised and minority groups, who are able to find solidarity with one another through a mutually understood message in musical expression.…

The lively streets of Harlem become rich with culture, shackled Blues, and drunken prosperities unsealed by the shifting of times. With each bebop tune art and literature represent the “good times” conjured up a fervent desire, to produce meaning and give birth to communal and racial pride. This was the feeling of the Harlem Renaissance after World War 1. The Harlem Renaissance exemplified the expressive and free spirited voice of the African Americans who moved to the Northern cities after…

A Negro spiritual is a type of religious song originating among Black slaves in the American south. They are African-American spirituals that emerged from a mixture of the brutal institution of slavery, Christian influences, and African culture. There was a joy of love, mercy, grace, judgment, etc. among the themes enfolded throughout the songs. The Negro spiritual that caught my attention would be “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands”. This song is simple but has a powerful truth. This song…

who live with their mother in the deep south. Maggie is shy and humble and embraces her African-American culture and heritage while her other sister Dee has a problem accepting their culture and heritage. There are several examples in “Everyday Use” that show the reader what Maggie and Dee go…

Langston Hughes was one of the most important writers and thinkers of the Harlem Renaissance, which was the African American artistic movement in the 1920s that celebrated black life and culture. Hughes's creative genius was influenced by his life in New York City's Harlem, a primarily African American neighborhood. His literary works helped shape American literature and politics. Hughes, like others active in the Harlem Renaissance, had a strong sense of racial pride. Through his poetry, novels…

and intellectual flowering of great cultural, economic and identity assertion among African Americans (Rowen and Brunner, 2007; Rhodes, nd). This great period strong artistic and intellectual movement of African Americans was characterized by the wave of literary works centered on Negroes, which means that some of the works were written by them, or some of the works were all about them, their history, or their culture (Rhodes, nd). Technically, Harlem Renaissance cannot be considered a…

the yard, the quilts, and the turner. The quilts are a meaning of bond between the women of generations. The quilts have pieces of fabric that had meaning to the previous Johnson women. The story is told in first person by "Mama", a single African American woman living in the Deep South with one of her two daughters, the…

Fiero asserts that the African and Native American folk traditions share many similarities. One of the most comparable traditions between the African and Native American cultures would be the similarity they share in the art of mask creation. Fiero states, “Dance masks and clan helmets- which, like African masks, draw on the natural elements of wood, human hair and teeth, animal fur, and feathers (Fiero, Pg. 456).” This comparison by Fiero allows the resemblance of the two cultures masks making…

time for African American’s and immigrants. They were cussed at, swore at, beaten and were separated by race in public places. Langston Hughes was born on February 1 1902 in Joplin, Missouri. He grew up in a turbulent time of depression in America. The Ku Klux Klan had very many members during the 1910’s and 1920’s, which Langston was a teenager and young adult through. Mr. Hughes was an important writer and thinker of the Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance was the African American…