Harlem Renaissance

Arna Bontemps
Poet, Novelist, Historian, Playwright, Editor, Anthologist

Arna Bontemps was born in Alexandria, Louisiana on October 13, 1902.  He attended Pacific Union College and graduated in 1923.  A teaching job at the Harlem Academy took him to New York the following year.  In 1926 his writings began appearing in Crisis, the magazine published by the NAACP, and in Opportunity, published by the National Urban League.  That same year he won the Crisis poetry prize for A Black Man Talks of Reaping and the Opportunity's Alexander Pushkin prize for Golgatha is a Mountain.  He also won the Alexander Pushkin prize in 1927 for The Return.  His first novel, God Sends Sunday was published in 1931.  Bontemps first children's book Popo and Fifina, Children of Haiti was published in 1932 in collaboration with Langston Hughes.  He wrote 15 other books for children and young adults including: Frederick Douglass: Slave, Fighter, Freeman (1959); and Young Booker: Booker T. Washington's Early Days (1972).  His acclaimed historical novel Black Thunder was published in 1936. 

Countee Cullen
Poet, Novelist, Playwright

Countee Cullen was born Countee Leroy Porter on March 30, 1903.  His mother died when he was a young boy and he was raised by Elizabeth Porter (assumed to be his maternal grandmother) until her death in 1918.  Countee was taken in by Reverend and Mrs. Frederick A. Cullen where he was given love and a stable home.  He was never officially adopted, but Countee was devoted to them and later took Cullen as his surname.  He attended New York University (NYU) and while an undergraduate student, wrote much of the material for his first two-volumes of poetry.  He graduated from NYU in 1925 and published his first book, Color.  Two years later Copper Sun and The Ballad of the Brown Girl: An Old Ballad Retold were published.  He also edited Caroling Dusk: An Anthology of Verse by Black Poets.  During the 1920s Countee Cullen was the best-known poet of the Harlem Renaissance.

William Edward Burghardt (W.E.B.) Du Bois
Writer, Critic, Intellect

W.E.B. Du Bois was one of the most influential African Americans before the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.  He was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts on February 23, 1868.  He attended Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee and later became the first African American to receive a PhD from Harvard University.  In 1900 Du Bois co-founded the National Association for the Advancement of Color People (NAACP) and in 1910 founded Crisis, the association's magazine.  As editor he published the works of Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen and other Harlem Renaissance writers, as well as his own opinions.  His first book, The Souls of Black Folk was published in 1903.  Du Bois died on August 27, 1963, the eve of the 1963 March on Washington.

Langston Hughes
Poet, Playwright, Fiction Writer, Autobiographer, Anthologist

Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri on February 1, 1902.  His father, a lawyer, moved to Mexico when he was a year old.  After graduating from high school in 1920, Hughes spent a year in Mexico with his father.  On the train ride to Mexico he wrote a poem The Negro Speaks of Rivers, which was published in the June 1921 issue of Crisis. In 1927 Hughes enrolled in Columbia University and attended for one year.  He later attended Lincoln University and graduated in 1929.  His first novel Not Without Laughter was published in 1930 and won the Harmon Gold Medal for literature.  He is well known for his use of Black Vernacular English in his writings. His most popular literary character was Jesse B. Semple.  "Simple" as he was called, was a fictional Harlem resident who had little education but was street-smart and had an opinion on everything from world wars to race relations.  Hughes body of work includes poems, novels, short-stories, plays, memoirs, newspaper columns and children literature.  He was the first African American author to support himself completely by his writings. 

Zora Neale Hurston
Writer, Folklorist

Zora Neale Hurston was born on January 7, 1891 in Notasulga, Alabama.  After her birth, her family moved to Eatonville, Florida, a new and predominately Black town that her father felt offered better opportunities for him to raise his large family.  As a child Zora was often at odds with her father.  When her mother died she left home and went to work as a maid for a traveling theater company. In 1925, she moved to New York and soon became  part of what became known as the Harlem Renaissance.  Alain Locke, educator and intellect, chose her short story Spunk for inclusion in his 1925 anthology, The New Negro.  She attended Barnard College and received a BA degree in 1928 for her research on black folklore.  Hurston authored seven books including Their Eyes Were Watching God, her most famous work. 

James Weldon Johnson
Diplomat, Poet, Novelist, Critic, Composer

James Weldon Johnson was born in Jacksonville, Florida on June 17, 1871.  He attended Atlanta University and graduated in 1894.  His brother Rosamond, who had received formal music training in Boston, asked him to collaborate in writing songs.  In 1900, the brothers composed Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing which became known as the Negro National Anthem.  In 1904 friends from Atlanta University invited him to join the Colored Republican Club,where his work for presidential candidate Theodore Roosevelt earned him a consulate post.  During his diplomatic career, which lasted for eight years, he served in Venezuela and Nicaragua.  Johnson continued to write throughout his different careers.  His novel The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man was published anonymously in 1912.  It was republished under his own name in 1927. His first collection of poetry, Fifty Years and Other Poems was published in 1917.  His second collection God's Trombones was published in 1927.  During the 1920s he edited three anthologies: The Book of Negro American Poetry (1922); The Book of Negro American Spirituals (1925); and The Second Book of Negro American Spirituals (1926).