Harlem Renaissance Exit Ticket

HARLEM
RENAISSANCE
STATIONS

Read through the stations to complete your

chart handout

1: People

Zoom in if needed

2: Art

Source 1: Into Bondage
Painted by Aaron Douglas
The painting refers to the Atlantic
slave trade of the 1600s to the
1800s where millions of Africans
were brought to America.

Source 2: Black Belt
Painted by Archibald J. Motley Jr.
The painting depicts a busy
street in the Black Belt (Chicago
neighborhood known for jazz &
clubs). There are various figures
in the painting. It is a
stereotypical depiction of black
nightlife as a wild party.

Source 3: Looking Upward
Painted by James Lesesne Wells which shows a figure making his way to an urban area but carrying a small model of a former home.
What did we discuss that
involved African Americans
moving throughout the US?

I, Too
By Langston Hughes
I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.
Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed--
I, too, am America.

Crazy for This Democracy
by Zora Neale Hurston
I have been made to believe in this democracy thing, and I am all for
tasting this democracy out. The flavor must be good. If the Occident is
so intent in keeping the taste out of darker mouths that it spends all
those billions and expends all those billions and expends all those
millions of lives, colored ones too, to keep it among themselves,
then it must be something good. I crave to sample this gorgeous thing.
So I cannot say anything different from repeal of all Jim Crow laws! Not
in some future generation, but repeal now and forever!!

Excerpt from “Crazy for This Democracy” an essay in The Negro Digest

Note: Jim Crow Laws refer to: laws enacted by state and local governments to separate white and black people in public and private facilities

​3: Literature

Multiple Choice

Station #3, Question 11
Based on the literature of the station, which thesis statement would best support literature of the Harlem Renaissance?

• Due to lack of jobs, African Americans moved back to the South following the Great Migration.

• African Americans face many struggles & acts of discrimination, yet they are American & should receive democracy.

• Literature has always been very important in the US and African American writers want their chance to get their work published.

4: Music

JAZZ
Style of music that boomed out of Harlem in the
1920s, coming from the New Orleans. It was often played in speakeasies. The style is defined as the use of improvisation, many rhythms, and swinging notes. Jazz evolved from slave work songs, spirituals (religious Black American folk songs), blues, brass band music, and ragtime.

BLUES
Blues is a vocal and instrumental
form of music based on the use of the blue notes-- notes sung or played at a slightly lower pitch than that of the major scale for expressive purposes. It emerged as a form of self-expression in African-American communities of the United States from spirituals, work songs, and rhymed simple narrative ballads. The blues influenced later American and Western popular music, as it became the roots of jazz, rhythm and blues, bluegrass and rock and roll.

Duke Ellington
Louis Armstrong
Bessie Smith

Billie Holiday

Open Ended

What impact do you think the Harlem Renaissance had on African Americans? (do you think it help African Americans' lives? why do you think they chose to write / make art about the topics they did?)

Open Ended

What impact on America in general? (what do you think white Americans thought when they saw or read some of the products of the Harlem Renaissance)