Harlem Children's Zone

Claude McKay was born in 1889, Sunny Ville, Jamaica. His work is known to be a key and fundamental turning point in the Harlem Renaissance, ranging from poems of life in Jamaica to authoritative and more sophisticated works of literature. Since Claude McKay was the youngest of eleven children, he was therefore sent to live with his oldest brother, who was a school teacher at the time. He was given the best education that was available and began to read and write poetry at the early age of ten.…

The Harlem Renaissance was also called The New Negro Movement because during the Harlem Renaissance era its arts— “in poetry, fiction, drama, music, painting, and sculpture”—proved the new ear of achievements for African Americans that were “hardly more than a half-century removed from slavery and enmeshed in the chains of a dehumanizing segregation.” Hence, the Harlem Renaissance was also called The New Negro Movement as this marked the birth of African American artists— “the foundations for…

Artist Frida Kahlo was born on July 6, 1907 in Mexico City, Mexico. She grew up in the family’s home where she was born. Her father, Wilhelm, was a German photographer who had immigrated to Mexico where he met and married her mother Matilde. She had two older sisters, Matilde and Adriana, and her younger sister, Cristina, was born the year after Frida. She grew up being an atheist. In 1922, Kahlo enrolled at the National Preparatory School. She was one of the few female students to attend the…

In Langston Hughes poem “I, Too, Sing America” the author gracefully speaks through the eyes of a dark skinned man living in 20th century United States. Readers are taken back to a time before African Americans were seen as equal in America. Hughes poem represents what millions of African Americans felt when they were personally discriminated against, simply because the color of their skin. Although the speaker is being treated unequally, he loves and believes in America, repeating the phrase…

Reading the book Their Eyes Were Watching God, one can discover many aspects of the Harlem Renaissance, including hardships, goals of the movement, and realistic situations that occurred in this era. These hardships and goals all led to the creation of Harlem Renaissance Ideals which demanded a change in the way that white people saw the African American race. Harlem Renaissance Ideals were introduced in the hope that African Americans could become more accepted for who they were. During this…

See Past the Skin Creator and benefactor of the Beats Generation, Jack Kerouac prevailed for his composition techniques and mongrel forms of African American culture, style, and music with a twist of European literary cultures to mirror Kerouac's ambitions of both to join the standard artistic convention furthermore to restructure it (Johnson). The Beats Generation offered a critique of middle class American values. "Beat" differently characterizes as a curtailed form of "beaten down" or of…

“An artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he might choose.” Poet, novelist and social activist, Langston Hughes was a proud, black American citizen entrenched within a society where racial segregation was strictly enforced. Challenging dominant perspectives regarding race, colour and the identity of being American, Langston Hughes stood up for those who were marginalised. As a result, he became a figurehead for those standing up for…

Of course, the events taking place in Hughes’s personal life affected his poetry. His childhood and adolescence were characterized by his parents’ split, discrimination, and world events that most likely had a direct impact on his life (“Langston Hughes”). “The first area found Hughes dwelling on isolation, despair, suicide, and the like--conventional themes for a young, romantic poet, to be sure, but notions strongly felt by Hughes personally as he struggled to overcome the effect of his…

Research Objective My research objective is to find information on Laura Ingalls Wilder. Laura was born in Pepin, Wisconsin on February 7, 1867 to Charles and Caroline Ingalls. Laura had three siblings. Mary, Caroline and Grace. Research Results Laura married A.J. (Almanzo James) Wilder in 1885. They got married in DA. On December 5, 1886, Rose Wilder was born. Almanzo and Laura lived in Mansfield Ward 1 Wright, Missouri. They resided on Commercial Street. On August 1,…

Paul Laurence Dunbar is a poet that was an African-American poet who was born in 1872. His parents were both freed slaves from Kentucky, he wrote stories about their plantation life. At the young age of fourteen he had one of his first poems published in the Dayton Herald. Dunbar did not attend college and took a job as an elevator operator. He self published his first book of poetry, Oak and Ivy in 1893. He sold copies to people riding in his elevator to help pay for publishing costs. In 1895…