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 - Poet3 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

James Weldon Johnson  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.) 

Writer Dorothy West  Tied for 2 nd 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 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.