|
Arthur P. Davis
Arthur Paul Davis (November 21, 1904 – April 21, 1996) was an influential American university professor, literary scholar, and the writer and editor of several important critical texts such as ''The Negro Caravan'', ''The New Cavalcade'', and ''From the Dark Tower: Afro-American Writers 1900–1960''. He was African-American. Influenced by the Harlem Renaissance, Davis has inspired many African-Americans to pursue literature and the arts. Early life and education Arthur P. Davis was born on November 21, 1904, in Hampton, Virginia. He was raised by his parents, Frances Nash Davis and Andrew Davis along with his eight brothers. In an autobiographical essay entitled "Columbia-College and Renaissance Harlem-Autobiographical Essay", Davis describes his father, who worked as a plasterer, as an authoritarian figure, "a Victorian head-of-the-house but also an excellent parent." Although Davis was a gifted grammar school student, he was also required to help contribute to the family hou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Negro Caravan
''The Negro Caravan'' is a collection of writings by African Americans edited by Sterling Allen Brown, Arthur Paul Davis, and Ulysses Lee. It was published in 1941. A writeup in the ''New York Times'' states it achieved "legend" status. It was published by Dryden Press. The book includes short stories, excerpts from novels, poetry, folk literature, drama, speeches, pamphlets, letters, biography, and essays organized chronologically by genre. It also includes biographical sketches of the writers. One reviewer, Harvey Curtis Webster, wrote of the book, "The pleasure of reading ''The Negro Caravan'' is hardly undermined by the fact that one emerges a more enlightened human being." In her newspaper column My Day, Eleanor Roosevelt wrote that ''The Negro Caravan'' "should be in everyone's library." References {{DEFAULTSORT:Negro Caravan 1941 books African-American literature Anthologies ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Virginia Union University
Virginia Union University is a private historically black Baptist university in Richmond, Virginia. It is affiliated with the American Baptist Churches USA. History The American Baptist Home Mission Society (ABHMS) founded the school as Richmond Theological Institute in 1865 shortly after Union troops took control of Richmond, Virginia, at the end of the American Civil War, for African-American freedmen to enter into the ministry. The college had the first academic library at an HBCU, building the library in 1865 the same year the college was established. Its mission was soon expanded to offer courses and programs at college, high school, and preparatory levels, to both men and women. This effort was the beginning of Virginia Union University. Separate branches of the National Theological Institute were set up in Washington, D.C., and Richmond, Virginia, with classes beginning in 1867. In Washington, the school became known as Wayland Seminary, named in commemoration of Dr. Fr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ulysses Lee
Major Ulysses Grant Lee Jr., Ph.D. (December 4, 1913January 7, 1969) was a U.S. soldier, scholar, professor, writer, editor and American military historian. He contributed to the Federal Writers' Project, co-edited ''The Negro Caravan'' with Sterling Brown and Arthur P. Davis, and wrote the official U.S. military history of African-American service in World War II, '' The Employment of Negro Troops'', published in 1963 by the United States Army Center of Military History. In addition his own service, Lee was connected to the military history of African Americans through his grandfather, who served in the U.S. Colored Troops, and his father, a Buffalo Soldier. Life and work Lee was a graduate of the notable majority-black Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C. He was awarded a bachelor's degree and a master's degree by Howard University, where he was also named a university fellow. At Howard he was a founding member of the short-lived Gamma Tau fraternity that was organized ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sterling Allen Brown
Sterling Allen Brown (May 1, 1901 – January 13, 1989) was an American professor, folklorist, poet, and literary critic. He chiefly studied black culture of the Southern United States and was a professor at Howard University for most of his career. Brown was the first Poet Laureate of the District of Columbia. Early life and education Brown was born May 1, 1901 on the campus of Howard University in Washington D.C., where his father, Sterling N. Brown, a former slave, was a prominent minister and professor at Howard University Divinity School. His mother Grace Adelaide Brown, who had been the valedictorian of her class at Fisk University, taught in D.C. public schools for more than 50 years. Both his parents grew up in Tennessee and often shared stories with Brown and his sister Mary Edna Brown (a founder of Delta Sigma Theta sorority) about famous leaders such as Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington. Brown's early childhood was spent on a farm on Whiskey Bottom Road in H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bessie Smith
Bessie Smith (April 15, 1894 – September 26, 1937) was an American blues singer widely renowned during the Jazz Age. Nicknamed the " Empress of the Blues", she was the most popular female blues singer of the 1930s. Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989, she is often regarded as one of the greatest singers of her era and was a major influence on fellow blues singers, as well as jazz vocalists. Born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Smith was young when her parents died, and she and her six siblings survived by performing on street corners. She began touring and performed in a group that included Ma Rainey, and then went out on her own. Her successful recording career with Columbia Records began in 1923, but her performing career was cut short by a car crash that killed her at the age of 43. Biography Early life The 1900 census indicates that her family reported that Bessie Smith was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in July 1892. The 1910 census gives her age as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alain Locke
Alain LeRoy Locke (September 13, 1885 – June 9, 1954) was an American writer, philosopher, educator, and patron of the arts. Distinguished in 1907 as the first African-American Rhodes Scholar, Locke became known as the philosophical architect —the acknowledged "Dean"— of the Harlem Renaissance. review of Jeffrey C. Stewart, ''The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke'' (Oxford University Press, 2018) He is frequently included in listings of influential African Americans. On March 19, 1968, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. proclaimed: "We're going to let our children know that the only philosophers that lived were not Plato and Aristotle, but W. E. B. Du Bois and Alain Locke came through the universe." Early life and education He was born Arthur Leroy Locke in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on September 13, 1885,Note: Locke always gave his year of birth as "1886", and many sources give 1886. He was, however, born in 1885. A note by Locke in the Alain Locke Papers (archived at ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The New Negro
''The New Negro: An Interpretation'' (1925) is an anthology of fiction, poetry, and essays on African and African-American art and literature edited by Alain Locke, who lived in Washington, DC, and taught at Howard University during the Harlem Renaissance. As a collection of the creative efforts coming out of the burgeoning New Negro Movement or Harlem Renaissance, the book is considered by literary scholars and critics to be the definitive text of the movement. "The Negro Renaissance" included Locke's title essay "The New Negro", as well as nonfiction essays, poetry, and fiction by writers including Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, and Eric Walrond. ''The New Negro: An Interpretation'' dives into how the African Americans sought social, political, and artistic change. Instead of accepting their position in society, Locke saw the new negro as championing and demanding civil rights. In addition, his anthology sought to change old ste ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marcus Garvey
Marcus Mosiah Garvey Sr. (17 August 188710 June 1940) was a Jamaican political activist, publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and orator. He was the founder and first President-General of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL, commonly known as UNIA), through which he declared himself Provisional President of Africa. Ideologically a black nationalist and Pan-Africanist, his ideas came to be known as Garveyism. Garvey was born into a moderately prosperous Afro-Jamaican family in Saint Ann's Bay and he was apprenticed into the print trade as a teenager. Working in Kingston, he got involved in trade unionism before he lived briefly in Costa Rica, Panama, and England. After he returned to Jamaica, he founded the UNIA in 1914. In 1916, he moved to the United States and established a UNIA branch in New York City's Harlem district. Emphasising unity between Africans and the African diaspora, he campaigned for an end to European colonial ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bill "Bojangles" Robinson
Bill Robinson, nicknamed Bojangles (born Luther Robinson; May 25, 1878 – November 25, 1949), was an American tap dancer, actor, and singer, the best known and the most highly paid African-American entertainer in the United States during the first half of the 20th century. His long career mirrored changes in American entertainment tastes and technology. His career began in the age of minstrel shows and moved to vaudeville, Broadway theatre, the recording industry, Hollywood films, radio, and television. According to dance critic Marshall Stearns, "Robinson's contribution to tap dance is exact and specific. He brought it up on its toes, dancing upright and swinging," adding a "hitherto-unknown lightness and presence." His signature routine was the stair dance, in which he would tap up and down a set of stairs in a rhythmically complex sequence of steps, a routine that he unsuccessfully attempted to patent. He is also credited with having popularized the word ''copacetic'' throug ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ethel Waters
Ethel Waters (October 31, 1896 – September 1, 1977) was an American singer and actress. Waters frequently performed jazz, swing, and pop music on the Broadway stage and in concerts. She began her career in the 1920s singing blues. Her notable recordings include "Dinah", " Stormy Weather", "Taking a Chance on Love", "Heat Wave", "Supper Time", " Am I Blue?", " Cabin in the Sky", "I'm Coming Virginia", and her version of "His Eye Is on the Sparrow". Waters was the second African American to be nominated for an Academy Award, the first African American to star on her own television show, and the first African-American woman to be nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award. Early life Waters was born in Chester, Pennsylvania on October 31, 1896 (some sources incorrectly state her birth year as 1900) as a result of the rape of her teenaged African-American mother, Louise Anderson (1881–1962), by 17 year old John Wesley (or Wesley John) Waters (1878–1901), a pianist and family acq ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Bruce Nugent
Richard Bruce Nugent (July 2, 1906 – May 27, 1987), aka Richard Bruce and Bruce Nugent, was a gay writer and painter in the Harlem Renaissance. Despite being a part of a group of many gay Harlem artists, Nugent was among only a few who were publicly out. Recognized initially for the few short stories and paintings that were published, Nugent had a long productive career bringing to light the creative process of gay and black culture. Biography Early life Richard Bruce Nugent was born in Washington, DC, on July 2, 1906, to Richard H. Nugent, Jr. and Pauline Minerva Bruce. He completed his schooling at Dunbar High School in 1920, and moved to New York following his father's death. After revealing to his mother that he decided to devote his life to only making art, she worried about his lack of interest in getting a stable job, so she sent him to Washington, DC, to live with his grandmother. To earn enough money to sustain the family, Nugent would pass as white to earn hig ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paul Robeson
Paul Leroy Robeson ( ; April 9, 1898 – January 23, 1976) was an American bass-baritone concert artist, stage and film actor, professional football player, and activist who became famous both for his cultural accomplishments and for his political stances. In 1915, Robeson won an academic scholarship to Rutgers College. While at Rutgers, he was twice named a consensus All-American in football and was the class valedictorian. He received his LL.B. from Columbia Law School while playing in the National Football League (NFL). After graduation, he became a figure in the Harlem Renaissance with performances in ''The Emperor Jones'' and '' All God's Chillun Got Wings''. Robeson performed in Britain in a touring melodrama, ''Voodoo'', in 1922, and in ''Emperor Jones'' in 1925. In 1928, he scored a major success in the London premiere of ''Show Boat''. Living in London for several years with his wife Eslanda, Robeson continued to establish himself as a concert artist and starred ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
