Willis Richardson, Forgotten Pioneer of African-American Drama (Contributions in Afro-American & Afr

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By the time the Great Migration was over in , there were , black New Yorkers, most of whom resided in Harlem.

Walker and other owners of funeral homes, insurance companies, and newspapers helped to create a new business infrastructure within America's black community. James Van Der Zee. Shortly after leaving Jamaica and arriving in New York in , Marcus Garvey traveled around the United States lecturing on the need for unity to advance the race. Garvey enjoyed popularity among Harlem's working class, but he was often criticized by Renaissance figures like W.

Du Bois and A. However, Alain Locke considered him a formidable and valued force toward social, economic, cultural, and political change in the African-American community. Du Bois believed that the variety of artists, musicians, and writers of the New Negro Renaissance would permit African Americans to transcend racial difference, that their excellence in the artistic domain would ensure their acceptance into the human race in no uncertain terms.

Author of The Souls of Black Folk and a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Du Bois served on the organization's board of directors and also as its director of publicity and research, and as senior editor of its journal, The Crisis, from to He moved to New York City with his brother, J. Rosamond, in to write songs for musical theater. The two wrote the music and lyrics to the black national anthem, "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing. Author of Black Manhattan and God's Trombones: Born in Alabama, William Pickens worked in cotton fields in his youth and graduated from Talladega College in , then entered Yale University, graduating in Pickens wrote his first autobiography, The Heir of Slaves , in , in which he stressed the importance of education.

His second autobiography, Bursting Bonds , written in , demanded full citizenship for all African Americans. Bursting Bonds is considered a transitional book from Booker T. Born in Virginia, Charles S. Johnson traveled north to Chicago and attended the University of Chicago. His research on the race riot of became the subject of his landmark book, The Negro in Chicago. During the Renaissance era, organizations like the NAACP and the National Urban League produced and distributed nationally publications that kept members abreast of news, information, and discussions that were not covered in the general media.

Cofounded by Chandler Owen and A. Philip Randolph in , The Messenger was a political and literary magazine that set a radical and fearless style of writing by African Americans. Wallace Thurman, [unidentified], Roy Lancaster, Mrs. Des Verney, Frank R. Crosswaith, Miss Martin, A. Philip Randolph, and Miss Davis. The Back-to-Africa movement originated in the nineteenth century and encouraged those of African descent to return to the homelands of their African ancestors.

It became an ideal for several movements, including Garveyism and the Pan-African movement. In Survey Graphic , a national magazine that dealt with issues like poverty, anti-Semitism, unions, and the working class, produced an issue on "Harlem: Mecca of the New Negro. The classic music of Roland Hayes , Paul Robeson , and Marian Anderson was introduced to the world during the Harlem Renaissance. Hayes, a lyric tenor who began his professional career in with the Fisk Jubilee Singers, is considered the first African- American male artist to receive international acclaim. He first toured Europe in As an artist, attorney, activist, and All-American athlete, Paul Robeson was an influential figure in Harlem and worldwide.

In the s he performed in Harlem theaters, on Broadway, and on national and international tours. By the s he had traveled to Russia, where he became enthralled with communism and its international movement. Born in Tennessee in , Bessie Smith , known as "empress of the blues," migrated north to perform and by the s had become a headliner on the all-black Theater Owners Booking Association TOBA circuit. In Smith died of injuries sustained in a car accident in Mississippi. Gertrude Rainey , known as "Ma," was not the first woman to record blues vocals, but she was the acknowledged "mother of blues.

This is her band in about , when she played vaudeville theaters in Chicago and the Midwest. Band members, like those in King Oliver's band, were often southern born. They traveled to northern cities to play, occasionally in integrated clubs but more often in segregated ones. Left to right, standing: King Oliver cornet , Bill Johnson bass. Left to right, seated: The band was regularly "deputized" to fill in for the more famous orchestras of Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway Singer, dancer, and bandleader Cab Calloway became one of America's most popular entertainers in the s.

Language of Jive was published, which translated jive for curious fans. Born in Philadelphia in , Marian Anderson won first place and critical acclaim in a singing competition sponsored by the New York Philharmonic at Lewisohn Stadium in Harlem in Actress and entertainer Isabel Geraldine Washington and her sister Fredericka were born in Savannah, Georgia, and traveled with their family to Harlem in the Great Migration.

While dancing at the Cotton Club, Isabel met her future husband, Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, to whom she was married from until their divorce in African-American writers embraced conventional literary styles and also crafted forms that connected directly to the black experience. Paul Laurence Dunbar , the most famous black writer before the Renaissance, was best known for his poetry written in dialect. Later writers like Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes admired him, but some of his dialect compositions were criticized for making concessions to racist notions about African Americans.

Raised in Philadelphia, Jessie Redmon Fauset was among the most published novelists of the Harlem Renaissance. Du Bois that creative writing could be a source and inspiration of racial uplift. Hughes was introduced nationally in , when his poem "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" was featured in Crisis magazine. Author of poems, plays, essays, and short stories, Hughes was one of the most prolific and influential writers in the Renaissance era and until his death in Langston Hughes, Charles S.

Upon receiving an award from Opportunity magazine in for her short story "Spunk," Hurston transferred from Howard University to Barnard, where she majored in anthropology. In the s Zora Neale Hurston returned to Eatonville, Florida, to record oral histories dating back to the slavery era, histories she remembered hearing as a child. Mules and Men is considered a landmark in the literature of African American folk tales.

Washington's Tuskegee Institute before migrating to New York in While working as a railway waiter in , he met Max Eastman, who produced The Liberator, for which McKay served as co-executive editor until Du Bois, however, strongly criticized the book as licentious and beyond good taste.

African-American history

Much of Du Bois's criticism came from his concern that art be used as favorable propaganda for the struggles of African Americans. In this letter, Jamaican Claude McKay calls upon his friend Arthur Schomburg , originally of Puerto Rico, to be part of a group of African Americans dedicated to studying black life throughout the world.

Born in Washington, D. Marketed as a Negro writer by publishers but recorded as white in the federal census, Toomer imagined "a new race in America" and declared himself a member. Poet, novelist, children's writer, and playwright Countee Cullen was an early star of the Renaissance movement, winning numerous literary prizes, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, NAACP Spingarn Medal, and first prize from the prestigious Harmon Foundation in Daughter of a Danish immigrant and a West Indian man of color from St.

Bush at the White House. The New Deal did not have a specific program for blacks only, but it sought to incorporate them in all the relief programs that it began. All races had had the same wage rates and working conditions in the WPA. It set quotas for private firms hiring skilled and unskilled blacks in construction projects financed through the PWA, overcoming the objections of labor unions.

An immediate response was a shift in the black vote in Northern cities from the GOP to the Democrats blacks seldom voted in the South. Militants demanded a federal anti-lynching bill, but President Roosevelt knew it would never pass Congress but would split his New Deal coalition. In Chicago the black community had been a stronghold of the Republican machine, but in the Great Depression the machine fell apart. Voters and leaders moved en masse into the Democratic Party as the New Deal offered relief programs and the city Democratic machine offered suitable positions in the Democratic Party for leaders such as William Dawson , who went Congress.

The largest group of blacks worked in the cotton farms of the Deep South as sharecroppers or tenant farmers; a few owned their farms. Large numbers of whites also were tenant farmers and sharecroppers. Tenant farming characterized the cotton and tobacco production in the post-Civil War South. As the agricultural economy plummeted in the early s, all farmers in all parts of the nation were badly hurt. Worst hurt were the tenant farmers who had relatively more control and sharecroppers who had less control , as well as daily laborers mostly black, with least control.

The problem was very low prices for farm products and the New Deal solution was to raise them by cutting production. It accomplished this in the South by the AAA , which gave landowners acreage reduction contracts, by which they were paid to not grow cotton or tobacco on a portion of their land. By law, they were required to pay the tenant farmers and sharecroppers on their land a portion of the money, but some cheated on this provision, hurting their tenants and croppers. The farm wage workers who worked directly for the landowner were mostly the ones who lost their jobs.

For most tenants and sharecroppers the AAA was a major help. Researchers at the time concluded, "To the extent that the AAA control-program has been responsible for the increased price [of cotton], we conclude that it has increased the amount of goods and services consumed by the cotton tenants and croppers. Another consequence was that the historic high levels of turnover from year to year declined sharply, as tenants and coppers tend to stay with the same landowner. Researchers concluded, "As a rule, planters seem to prefer Negroes to whites as tenants and coppers. Once mechanization came to cotton after , the tenants and sharecroppers were largely surplus; they moved to towns and cities.

They served in segregated units. Famous segregated units, such as the Tuskegee Airmen and the U. Approximately 75 percent of the soldiers who served in the European theater as truckers for the Red Ball Express and kept Allied supply lines open were African American. The distinguished service of these units was a factor in President Harry S. Truman 's order to end discrimination in the Armed Forces in July , with the promulgation of Executive Order This led in turn to the integration of the Air Force and the other services by the early s. Large numbers migrated from poor Southern farms to munitions centers.

Racial tensions were high in overcrowded cities like Chicago ; Detroit and Harlem experienced race riots in Roosevelt , whom they widely admired.

The political leaders, ministers and newspaper editors who shaped opinion resolved on a Double V campaign: Victory over German and Japanese fascism abroad, and victory over discrimination at home. Black newspapers created the Double V campaign to build black morale and head off radical action.

Most Black women had been farm laborers or domestics before the war. Their efforts redefined citizenship, equating their patriotism with war work, and seeking equal employment opportunities, government entitlements, and better working conditions as conditions appropriate for full citizens. They broke through old stereotypes and far surpassed the limited, poorly paid roles available in race films produced for all-black audiences.

It took place from , through World War II , and lasted until Some historians prefer to distinguish between the movements for those reasons. In the Second Great Migration, more than five million African Americans moved to cities in states in the North, Midwest and West, including many to California , where Los Angeles and Oakland offered many skilled jobs in the defense industry.

More of these migrants were already urban laborers who came from the cities of the South. They were better educated and had better skills than people who did not migrate. Compared to the more rural migrants of the period —40, many African Americans in the South were already living in urban areas and had urban job skills before they relocated. Workers who were limited to segregated, low-skilled jobs in Southern cities were able to get highly skilled, well-paid jobs at California shipyards. More than 80 percent lived in cities.

Fifty-three percent remained in the Southern United States, while 40 percent lived in the Northeast and North Central states and 7 percent in the West. The Supreme Court handed down a landmark decision in the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. This decision applied to public facilities, especially public schools. Reforms occurred slowly and only after concerted activism by African Americans.

The ruling also brought new momentum to the Civil Rights Movement. Boycotts against segregated public transportation systems sprang up in the South, the most notable of which was the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Civil rights groups such as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference SCLC organized across the South with tactics such as boycotts, voter registration campaigns, Freedom Rides and other nonviolent direct action, such as marches, pickets and sit-ins to mobilize around issues of equal access and voting rights.

Southern segregationists fought back to block reform. The conflict grew to involve steadily escalating physical violence, bombings and intimidation by Southern whites. Law enforcement responded to protesters with batons, electric cattle prods, fire hoses, attack dogs and mass arrests.

In Virginia , state legislators, school board members and other public officials mounted a campaign of obstructionism and outright defiance to integration called Massive Resistance. It entailed a series of actions to deny state funding to integrated schools and instead fund privately run "segregation academies" for white students.

Board of Education Supreme Court decision. As a last-ditch effort to avoid court-ordered desegregation, officials in the county shut down the county's entire public school system in and it remained closed for five years. The largely black rural population of the county had little recourse. Some families were split up as parents sent their children to live with relatives in other locales to attend public school; but the majority of Prince Edward's more than 2, black children, as well as many poor whites, simply remained unschooled until federal court action forced the schools to reopen five years later.

Bayard Rustin the strategist who has been called the "invisible man" of the Civil Rights Movement; labor organizer and initiator of the march, A.

Also active behind the scenes and sharing the podium with Dr. It was at this event, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, that King delivered his historic " I Have a Dream " speech. This march, the Birmingham Children's Crusade , and other events were credited with putting pressure on President John F. Kennedy , and then Lyndon B. Johnson , that culminated in the passage the Civil Rights Act of that banned discrimination in public accommodations, employment, and labor unions. The "Mississippi Freedom Summer" of brought thousands of idealistic youth, black and white, to the state to run "freedom schools", to teach basic literacy, history and civics.

Other volunteers were involved in voter registration drives. The season was marked by harassment, intimidation and violence directed at civil rights workers and their host families. The disappearance of three youths, James Chaney , Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner in Philadelphia, Mississippi , captured the attention of the nation. Six weeks later, searchers found the savagely beaten body of Chaney, a black man, in a muddy dam alongside the remains of his two white companions, who had been shot to death. There was national outrage at the escalating injustices of the "Mississippi Blood Summer", as it by then had come to be known, and at the brutality of the murders.

In the Selma Voting Rights Movement , its Selma to Montgomery marches , and the tragic murders of two activists associated with the march, inspired President Lyndon B. Johnson to call for the full Voting Rights Act of , which struck down barriers to black enfranchisement. In the Chicago Open Housing Movement , followed by the passage of the Fair Housing Act , was a capstone to more than a decade of major legislation during the civil rights movement. By this time, African Americans who questioned the effectiveness of nonviolent protest had gained a greater voice.

More militant black leaders, such as Malcolm X of the Nation of Islam and Eldridge Cleaver of the Black Panther Party , called for blacks to defend themselves, using violence, if necessary. From the mids to the mids, the Black Power movement urged African Americans to look to Africa for inspiration and emphasized black solidarity, rather than integration. Politically and economically, blacks have made substantial strides in the post-civil rights era.

Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson , who ran for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination in and , brought unprecedented support and leverage to blacks in politics. There were 8, black officeholders in the United States in , showing a net increase of 7, since In there were black mayors.

The 39 African-American members of Congress form the Congressional Black Caucus , which serves as a political bloc for issues relating to African Americans. The appointment of blacks to high federal offices—including General Colin Powell , Chairman of the U. Economic progress for blacks' reaching the extremes of wealth has been slow. According to Forbes richest lists, Oprah Winfrey was the richest African American of the 20th century and has been the world's only black billionaire in , , and BET founder Bob Johnson briefly joined her on the list from to before his ex-wife acquired part of his fortune; although he returned to the list in , he did not make it in With Winfrey the only African American wealthy enough to rank among America's richest people, [] blacks currently comprise 0.

The dramatic political breakthrough came in the election, with the election of Barack Obama. He won overwhelming support from African American voters in the Democratic primaries, even as his main opponent Hillary Clinton had the support of many black politicians. African Americans continued to support Obama throughout his term. In , he won the presidential election against candidate Mitt Romney and was re-elected as the president of the United States. The post-civil rights era is also notable for the New Great Migration , in which millions of African Americans have returned to the South, often to pursue increased economic opportunities in now-desegregated southern cities.

After the Civil Rights Movement gains of the s—s, due to government neglect, unfavorable social policies, high poverty rates , changes implemented in the criminal justice system and laws, and a breakdown in traditional family units, African-American communities have been suffering from extremely high incarceration rates. African Americans have the highest imprisonment rate of any major ethnic group in the world.

The history of slavery has always been a major research topic for white scholars, but until the s they generally focused on the political and constitutional themes as debated by white politicians; they did not study the lives of the black slaves. During Reconstruction and the late 19th century, blacks became major actors in the South.

The Dunning School of white scholars generally cast the blacks as pawns of white Carpetbaggers during this period, but W. Du Bois , a black historian, and Ulrich B. Phillips , a white historian, studied the African-American experience in depth. Du Bois' study of Reconstruction provided a more objective context for evaluating its achievements and weaknesses; in addition, he did studies of contemporary black life.

Phillips set the main topics of inquiry that still guide the analysis of slave economics. During the first half of the 20th century, Carter G. Woodson was the major black scholar studying and promoting the black historical experience. Woodson insisted that the study of African descendants be scholarly sound, creative, restorative, and, most important, directly relevant to the black community.

He popularized black history with a variety of innovative strategies, including Association for the Study of Negro Life outreach activities, Negro History Week now Black History Month , in February , and a popular black history magazine. Woodson democratized, legitimized, and popularized black history. Benjamin Quarles —96 had a significant impact on the teaching of African-American history.

Quarles and John Hope Franklin provided a bridge between the work of historians in historically black colleges , such as Woodson, and the black history that is now well established in mainline universities. Quarles grew up in Boston, attended Shaw University as an undergraduate, and received a graduate degree at the University of Wisconsin. He began in teaching at Morgan State College in Baltimore, where he stayed, despite a lucrative offer from Johns Hopkins University.

Quarles' books included The Negro in the American Revolution , Black Abolitionists , The Negro in the Civil War , and Lincoln and the Negro , which were narrative accounts of critical wartime episodes that focused on how blacks interacted with their white allies. Black history attempted to reverse centuries of ignorance.

While black historians were not alone in advocating a new examination of slavery and racism in the United States, the study of African-American history has often been a political and scholarly struggle to change assumptions. One of the foremost assumptions was that slaves were passive and did not rebel. A series of historians transformed the image of African Americans, revealing a much richer and complex experience. Historians such as Leon F. Litwack showed how former slaves fought to keep their families together and struggled against tremendous odds to define themselves as free people.

Others wrote of rebellions small and large. In the 21st century, black history is regarded as mainstream. Opponents argue such curricula are dishonest, divisive, and lack academic credibility and rigor. Surveys of 11th and 12th-grade students and adults in show that American schools have given students an awareness of some famous figures in black history.

Both groups were asked to name 10 famous Americans, excluding presidents. Of those named, the three most mentioned were black: When distinguished historians were asked in to name the most prominent Americans, Parks and Tubman did not make the top From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. African-American topics History timeline. Black church Black theology Nation of Islam. Slavery in the United States. Religion in Black America and Black church. United States post—Civil War anti-racial discrimination reform movements. Great Migration African American. Second Great Migration African American.

Post-Civil Rights era in African-American history. Herbert Aptheker Lerone Bennett, Jr. Wesley Isabel Wilkerson Carter G. M James Asa G. African American portal Gullah portal United States portal. Retrieved 8 July Incredibly, most of the 42 million members of the African-American community descend from this tiny group of less than half a million Africans. S During the Slave Trade? Where they came from. The Struggle for Freedom: A History of African Americans. The Black Collegian Online.

Archived from the original on March 5, Retrieved June 4, Exchanging Our Country Marks: Freedom on My Mind: Archived from the original on June 14, Retrieved June 14, Archived from the original on June 4, American Slavery, — 2nd ed. A History of the American People, Volume 1: To , Cengage Learning, , p. Retrieved 28 August Phi Kappa Phi Forum. Archived from the original on June 10, Archived from the original on 4 March Retrieved June 15, Hill and Wang, paperback, , pp.

Hill and Wang, paperback, , p.

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The Life of Benjamin Banneker: American Nineteenth Century History. Retrieved June 16, Retrieved April 12, Lapsansky-Werner, and Gary B. Nash, "A Prelude to War: The 's," in The Struggle for Freedom: A History of African Americans Boston: Prentice Hall, , — Essays on the Background of the Civil War. Frederick Douglass' Civil War: Keeping Faith in Jubilee. Journal of Black Studies.

American Expansion and the Origins of the Deep South The Journal of Negro History. Penguin academics 2 ed. As long as they don't move next door: Retrieved June 17, Prolegomenon to a Social History". Journal of the Lancaster County Historical Society. Refining Generalization about Race Relations". Journal of Southern History. Retrieved April 6, Retrieved December 27, Confederate city in the crucible of war. University of Virginia Press. The Greenwood Press "Daily life through history" series. God has big plans for your life! The Boy From The Wild.

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One of the best African adventures of recent times. A Pilgrim for Freedom. A remarkable and gripping account of a boy fleeing a war-torn nation and eventually flourishing in America. All the Colors We Will See: Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism. An Illusion of Normal: A parent's mental illness through the eyes of a child. Review "Gray's excellent biography firmly locates Richardson in his Washington, DC, milieu, pointing out along the way how scholarly studies of the Harlem Renaissance continue to overlook other important sites of African American cultural production.

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