Go There To Know There

                                  photo from  this site. The Poet He sang of life, serenely sweet, With, now and then, a deeper note. From some high peak, nigh yet remote, He voiced the world's absorbing beat. He sang of love when the earth was young And Love, itself, was in his lays But ah, the world, it turned to praise A jingle in a broken tongue Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906), was born in Dayton, Ohio to parents who at the time, were newly freed slaves. Dunbar expressed a prodigious ability for poetry at the tender age of six. He grew up to excel in secondary school, becoming class president and editing the school newspaper. Later, he began publishing with the help of high school classmates, Orville and Wilbur Wright, who later helped to fund Dunbar's own press, The Dayton Tattler ( 1 ). Dunbar's first book of poetry, Oak and Ivy , publishe...

James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938) enjoyed a long and multifaceted career as essayist, critic, songwriter, poet, diplomat, attorney, educator and politician. In each of these capacities, Johnson dedicated his energies and passions toward the advancement of African Americans. Johnson was born in Jacksonville, Florida to parents of humble, yet noble vocations: his father worked as a headwaiter at the opulent St. James hotel; and his mother was the first female and black teacher at an elementary school in Florida. It was his mother who taught her son her love for music of the European tradition and English Literature ( 1 ). At the age of sixteen, Johnson became a student at Atlanta University. He graduated with his bachelor's degree in 1894, and later received an honorary MA from that institution. Johnson began a career in education with a teaching post at a rural, backwater Georgia school in which he taught the children of freed slaves. Later he continued at Stanton Preparatory Coll...

James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw and the Metaphor of the "Talking Book" "[My Master] used to read prayers in public to the ship's crew every Sabbath day; and then I saw him read. I was never so surprised in my life, as when I saw the book talk to my master, for I thought it did as I observed him to look upon it, and move his lips. I wished it would do so with me. As soon as my master had done reading, I followed him to the place where he put the book, being mightily delighted with it, and when nobody saw me, I opened it, and put my ear down close upon it, in great hopes that it would say something to me; but I was sorry, and greatly disappointed, when I found that it would not speak. This thought immediately presented itself to me, that every body and every thing despised me because I was black" (qtd xxxvi).  In the following video, an actor performs the script of Gronniosaw's narrative: The metaphor of the "Talking Book...

Born in Washington, D.C. in 1894 to Nathan Toomer and Nina Pinchback, Toomer spent his formative years oscillating between all-black and all-white schools: an experience that informed his resistance to any particular, racial background. His maternal grandfather, P.B.S. Pinchback was the first African American governor of Louisiana; however Toomer himself preferred to think of himself and his lineage, merely as American . During his young adulthood between 1914 and 1917, Toomer attended several institutions of higher learning, in which he studied physical fitness, social science, and history, but he never attained a degree. Following his education, Toomer went on to publish short stories. But it was his experience as a Georgia school principal that would help to shape his attitudes on race, and prompt him to identify himself as an African American. His 1923 publication, Cane was heralded as one of the most important novels of the Harlem Renaissance--and of the Lost Generatio...

George Samuel Schuyler (1895-1977) was an essayist, novelist, and journalist for The Pittsburgh Courier , known for his unapologetic conservative and assimilationist views concerning race relations. Born in Providence, Rhode Island, Schuyler grew up in Syracuse, New York. The author ascended from a long line of free blacks, some of whom, he claimed, had participated in the Revolutionary War. This heritage appears to have contributed to a sense of pride and confidence Schuyler possessed and articulated throughout his literary career. Schuyler's conservative leanings and active participation in the anti-Communism campaigns of the McCarthy era provoked controversy among African Americans who sometimes considered Schuyler not just an iconoclast, but a "traitor" (1220). Yet, Schuyler is heralded to this day for his literary contributions to the developing racial politics of the 20th century. Schuyler's novel, Black No More cast a satirical, yet critical eye on the pre...