Go There To Know There

"I cannot read a book but I can read the people." Sojourner Truth (1797-1883), was born a slave in Hurley, Ulster County, New York to James and Elizabeth, slaves owned by the wealthy Dutch landowner and patron, Johannes Hardenbergh, Jr. Her narrative, penned by amanuensis Olive Wilson, relates her early trials as she was separated from her parents and subject to numerous beatings and mistreatment by subsequent owners. She was sold from the Hardenbergh family into a second Dutch family who were vexed by her inability to speak English. Known as "Isabella," Sojourner changed hands several times and came of age in the household of John I. Dumont, where she was often burdened with the chores of two people. It has been said that she was strong, tall, and stout, and able to outwork most men. One slaveholder commented that she was "better than a man--for she will do a good family's washing in the night, and be ready in the morning to go into the field, wher...

"We are all bound up together in one great bundle of humanity" (Harper). Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825-1911) was born in Baltimore, MD, a slave state at the time of her birth. Harper, like her parents, was free. Orphaned at the age of three, she went to live with her mother's sister and her husband, William Watkins, an early civil rights activist. It was alongside her uncle that Harper commenced her devotion to civil rights causes by aiding him as a conductor on the Underground Railroad--thus defying the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. Watkins was a minister and ran a school for African American youth. There, young Frances received an "uncommonly thorough education...she showed promise in writing and elocution, a strong interest in radical politics and religion, and a special sense of responsibility and devotion to lofty ideals" (Gates, et al. 491). By the age of twenty, Harper had published her first volume of poetry. Though she gained popularity and h...

By the 1940s, the once bustling metropolis of African American creative energy that had been Harlem had been harshly impacted by a series of events that followed its cultural heyday. A second wave of the Great Migration brought migrants from other areas of the United States and the Caribbean, which led to overcrowding and racial tension among Harlemites; and the economic depression rendered Harlem largely a ghettoized area that rife with crime and racial injustice. The Harlem Race Riot of 1943 increased the growing tension in Harlem. The event signaled a growing assertiveness among blacks in Harlem to challenge white authority and to interrogate the systems of white power structures. Described as "graceful and articulate" Ann Petry was born in October 1911 and raised in Old Saybrook, Connecticut ( 1 ). She attended Pharmacy school there, perhaps following the example of her father, who owned a drugstore. In the 1930s she traveled to Harlem where she was an apprentice w...

Commonwealth Magazine One of the most celebrated poets of the Harlem Renaissance, Claude McKay was not originally from the United States. He was born in Sunny Ville, Jamaica. Known for his nostalgic poetic remembrances of his home in Jamaica, McKay's work evolved to include poetry that challenged the racism he encountered in the United States. Such poems as "If We Must Die" came as a direct outcry against the bloodshed from a series of race riots known as the Red Summer of 1919 (McBryde). If we must die, let it not be like hogs Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,  While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs, Making their mock at our accursed lot.  If we must die, O let us nobly die,  So that our precious blood may not be shed  In vain; then even the monsters we defy Shall be constrained to honor use though dead! O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe! Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,  And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow! What though...

Rudolph Fisher (1897-1934) is considered one of the most admired intellects and beloved figures of the Harlem Renaissance. A 'renaissance man' in the fullest sense of the term, Fisher's complex and varied talents enabled him to excel as a writer, musician, and medical doctor. Born in Washington, D.C., Fisher grew up in Providence, Rhode Island where he attended Classical High School. From there he attended Brown University, where he majored in both English and Biology. In his address to his graduating class at Brown, Fisher's words conveyed the young man's ability to integrate matters belonging to both the spiritual world and the world of science. Brown University's website quotes its alumnus as having deftly observed the twin purposes and development of science and faith. He noted that "As thinking Christians, we strive not to bring men to heaven, but to bring heaven to men, and with that the aim of science is identical. It is this oneness of purpose t...

                                                                               Photo Credit The first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize for the poetry collection, Annie Allen , Gwendolyn Brooks was born in 1917, in Topeka, Kansas to David Anderson Brooks, a janitor, and Kezia Brooks, a school teacher and classically trained pianist. Her mother taught at the very school in Topeka for which the court case Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas is named. Though she was born in Kansas, Brooks referred to herself as a Chicagoan, and it was there her education began on Chicago's South Side. She attended both integrated and segregated schools, completing her secondary education at Englewood High School in 1935 ( 1 ). By age fourteen, she was receiving praise for her poetry from ...

"This wretched situation was again aggravated by the galling of the chains, which now became insupportable, and the filth of the necessary tubs [toilets] into which the children often fell and were almost suffocated. The shrieks of the women and the groans of the dying rendered the whole a scene of horror almost inconceivable."--Olaudah Equiano, from   The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa the African   (London, 1789; Cited by   American Abolitionist ) .  One of the earliest first-hand accounts of slavery and the Middle Passage, Olaudah Equiano's   Narrative   has been credited by Dr. Gates, et al. with forming the 'prototype' of the traditional slave narrative. Equiano's project was intrepid and groundbreaking not simply because it was one of the earliest records of chattle slavery in the New World, but because it is among the first to counter the popular concept that the Bible justif...