During the Harlem Renaissance a new feeling of racial pride emerged in the Black Intelligencia. The Black Intelligencia consisted of African-American writers, poets, philosophers, historians, and artists whose expertise conveyed five central themes according to Sterling Brown, a writer of that time: “1) Africa as a source of race pride, 2) Black American heroes 3) racial political propaganda, 4) the “Black folk” tradition, and 5) candid self-revelation.” Two of the main people responsible for this new consciousness were W.E.B. Du Bois and Alain Locke. Du Bois laid a foundation for this dawn of racial pride in his essays. Locke took Du Bois’ initial idea one step further with his writings and aiding younger writers and artists that appeared during the Harlem Renaissance. Langston Hughes was one of the writers that Locke mentored. Hughes was a devote believer of exhibiting pride in the Black race; this theme was often exhibited in his writing. These three men have each contributed and advanced the sentiment of racial pride in their own unique way during the Harlem Renaissance.
In order to fully understand the contributions of W.E.B. Du Bois, Alain Locke, and Langston Hughes it is imperative to know their backgrounds. William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was born on February 23rd, 1868, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. He enrolled at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee where he was an editor for the school newspaper. Du Bois was admitted to Harvard in 1888, and in 1891 he received his M.A. in History. After Harvard, Du Bois traveled to Europe and studied in Berlin for a year. In 1894, he went to Wilberforce University and worked as a Professor of Classics. In 1895, Du Bois acquired his Ph.D. from Harvard thus becoming the first African-American to earn a doctorate. The following year Du Bois married Nina Gomer. In 1897, unable to find an academic position anywhere in the North, Du Bois and his new wife moved to Georgia where Du Bois taught at Atlanta University for over a decade. They had two children together: a son named Burghardt Gomer, who died when he was two years old, and a daughter, NinaYolande. Between the years of 1897 and 1914 while
Du Bois was a professor at Atlanta University he published sixteen research monographs analyzing the sociological conditions of African-Americans in America. He also published The Philadelphia Negro, a Sociological Study in 1899, the first case study done in the United States about an African-American community.
William Edward Burghardt (W.E.B.) DuBois was born February 23, 1863 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, a town with about 5000 inhabitants with only fifty African Americans. In his youth, Dubois did some newspaper reporting for his small town. Dubois graduated valedictorian from his high school. Following high school, DuBois attended Fisk University, a black liberal college in Nashville. After two years at Fisk University, DuBois transferred to Harvard his junior year. In 1890, he gradated cum laude from Harvard and was one of the six graduation speakers. He continued his education by pursuing graduate studies at the University of Berlin in history and economics. DuBois received his master of arts in 1891 and in 1895 received his doctorate in h...
Following the enforcement of emancipation and the passage of the thirteenth amendment in 1864, African Americans found themselves in a contradictory position of both newfound freedom and great discrimination. The newly freed slaves of America faced a society that mere years ago, considered them as nothing greater than property. During this period, two leaders of monumentally opposed schools of thought emerged in the African American community. Booker T. Washington, and William Edward Burghardt (W.E.B) Du Bois. These two thinkers were some of the most influential educators, authors, and orators of the American 19th century, and were also frequent critics of the other's methods and ideas. This was due to a sharp disagreement on the ‘right’ strategy for improving the condition of the black community. While they might not have agreed on the means, both of these remarkable men at least shared that common goal, and their efforts are best demonstrated by looking to the long standing success of institutions they founded and worked ( the Tuskegee institute and Atlanta University respectively). That being said, the diametrically opposed philosophies they supported still stand today, and each 'camp' can be identified in many contemporary debates over discrimination, society, and how to end racial and class injustice.
Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois are both writers who use realism as their literary mode. They both try to depict life the way it was and didn’t “sugar coat” it. They both also wanted more civil rights to be given to the blacks. Although they lived in the same era they had different opinions on how to get these rights. They think differently about education, racial advancement, and relationships between blacks and whites. Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois’ ideas are reflected in their different writing styles, and different backgrounds, along with his intentions, becoming important when their differences had one of the greatest impacts on the future.
W.E.B. DuBois was born on the twenty-third of February in 1868, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Great Barrington, Massachusetts was a free man town, in this African- Americans were given opportunities to own land and to live a better life. He attended Fisk University in Nashville Tennessee from 1885 to 1888. While attending this college this was the first time DuBois has ever been to the south and had to encounter segregation. After graduating from F...
W.E.B. DuBois attempted to tell African Americans what they should learn throughout schooling. He thought academics were of the utmost importance in order for African Americans to exist socially in society. Through academic schooling, he thought that 10 percent of the African American society would succeed and move on to become doctors, lawyers, politicians, etc.; they were called “the talented ten.” The subject material that would advance their learning would consist of the “trivium” and the “quadrivium.” The...
That’s when I first gained an appreciation of the Harlem Renaissance, a time when African Americans rose to prominence in American culture. For the first time, they were taken seriously as artist, musicians, writers, athletes, and as political thinkers”(Kareem Abdul-Jabbar). African Americans writers during this time was capturing the beauty of black lives. Blacks were discovering many reasons to have pride in their race. Racial pride was helping them achieve equality in society. People were starting to write the way they wanted, instead of the ways whites wanted. Creating their
The United States after the Civil War was still not an entirely safe place for African-Americans, especially in the South. Many of the freedoms other Americans got to enjoy were still largely limited to African-Americans at the time. At the beginning of the 20th Century, Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois emerged as black leaders. Their respective visions for African-American society were different however. This paper will argue that Du Bois’s vision for American, although more radical at the time, was essential in the rise of the African-American society and a precursor to the Civil Rights Movement.
The New Negro Movement, widely known as The Harlem Renaissance, rolled into Harlem, New York – and touched the whole of America – like a gale-force wind. As every part of America reveled in the prosperity and gaiety of the decade, African Americans used the decade as a stepping stone for future generations. With the New Negro Movement came an abundance of black artistic, cultural, and intellectual stimulation. Literary achievers like Langston Hughes, Zora Neal Hurston, Claude McKay, and Countee Cullen rocked the world with their immense talent and strove to show that African Americans should be respected. Musicians, dancers, and singers like Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Josephine Baker and Bessie Smith preformed for whites and blacks alike in famed speakeasies like The Cotton Club. Intellectuals like Marcus Garvey, W.E.B. DuBois, and Alain Locke stood to empower and unify colored people of all ages. The Harlem Renaissance was not just a moment in time; it was a movement of empowerment for African Americans across the nation, and remains as such today.
The Harlem Renaissance, originally known as “the New Negro Movement”, was a cultural, social, and artistic movement during the 1920’s that took place in Harlem. This movement occurred after the World War I and drew in many African Americans who wanted to escape from the South to the North where they could freely express their artistic abilities. This movement was known as The Great Migration. During the 1920’s, many black writers, singers, musicians, artists, and poets gained success including Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Marcus Garvey, and W.E.B. Du Bois. These creative black artists made an influence to society in the 1920’s and an impact on the Harlem Renaissance.
Occurring in the 1920’s and into the 1930’s, the Harlem Renaissance was an important movement for African-Americans all across America. This movement allowed the black culture to be heard and accepted by white citizens. The movement was expressed through art, music, and literature. These things were also the most known, and remembered things of the renaissance. Also this movement, because of some very strong, moving and inspiring people changed political views for African-Americans. Compared to before, The Harlem Renaissance had major effects on America during and after its time.
In the period after Reconstruction the position of African Americans in southern American society steadily deteriorated. After 1877 the possibilities of advancements for African Americans disappeared almost completely. African Americans experienced a loss of voting rights and political power created by methods of terrorization such as lynching. The remaining political and economic gains that were made during reconstruction were eventually whittled away by Southern legislation. By the 1900s African Americans had almost no access to political, social, or economic power. Shortly after this Jim Crow laws began to emerge, segregating blacks and whites. This dramatic transition from African American power to powerlessness after reconstruction gave birth to two important leaders in the African American community, Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois. Although these two remarkable men were both in search of a common goal, their roads leading to this goal were significantly different. This is most evident in the two most important documents of the men’s careers: Booker T. Washington’s, “1895 Atlanta Exposition Speech” and W.E.B. DuBois’ response to this, “The Souls of Black Folks.” These two men were both dedicated to solving the difficult problems African Americans experienced in the post reconstruction south. Both DuBois and Washington wanted economic prosperity for African Americans but they differed on what would be done to achieve this. Both men focused on education as a key to the improvement of black life but they differed on the form education should take. The true difference in these men’s extremely different routes to better the lives of African Americans after reconstruction was a product of their extremely different backgrounds. In this essay I will examine the documents, “1895 Atlanta Exposition Speech” by Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois’, “The Souls of Black Folks” in order to determine the paths that each of these men took towards the advancement of African Americans, and the reasons behind these methods.
Lewis’s viewpoint is not without it’s truths. The Harlem renaissance was overseen by a number of intellectuals such as Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey, and W.E.B. Dubois. Booker T. Washington‘s, a highly influential speaker of the age, words appealed to both Caucasians and African-Americans. Washington forged an interracial bridge of communication through his unique tactics in the quest for equality. He believed in more subtle ways of gaining equality through hard work, cunning, and humility. He stated, “The wisest among my race understands that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremist folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing.”(Salley, 15) With this statement, Washington himself denies that this new awakening in equality and arts could be forced,...
The Harlem Renaissance was a time of racism, injustice, and importance. Somewhere in between the 1920s and 1930s an African American movement occurred in Harlem, New York City. The Harlem Renaissance exalted the unique culture of African-Americans and redefined African-American expression. It was the result of Blacks migrating in the North, mostly Chicago and New York. There were many significant figures, both male and female, that had taken part in the Harlem Renaissance. Ida B. Wells and Langston Hughes exemplify the like and work of this movement.
Various people triggered the movement such as: artists Jacob Lawrence and Charles Alston; musicians Duke Ellington and Bessie Smith; writers Langston Hughes, W.E.B Du Bois, Jean Toomer, Rudolf Fisher, Countee Cullen and Zora Neale Hurston. Some older writers served as mentors like Claude Mckay, Alian Locke, James Weldon and Charles S. Johnson (Harlem Renaissance.) Two of the thousand persons who played a major role in the Harlem Renaissance were W. E. B Du Bois and Marcus Garvey. W. E. B Du Bois was a Black historian; sociologist, Harvard scholar and he wrote books such as, “The Souls of Black Folk” and “Returning Soldiers.” In New York Du Bois and a group of prominent African Ameri...
Du Bois examines the years immediately following the Civil War and, in particular, the Freedmen's Bureau's role in Reconstruction. He feels the Bureau's failures were due not only to Southern opposition and "national neglect," but also to mismanagement and courts that were biased. The Bureau did have successes, and there most important contribution to the progress was the founding of school for African American. Since the end of Reconstruction in 1876, Du Bois claims that the most significant event in African American history has been the coming about of the educator, Booker T. Washington. He then became the spokesman for the ...