Black American Poets

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Black American Poets
Gwendolyn Brooks
Langston Hughes
Paul Laurence Dunbar

• Life experience into literature

An interactive poetry lesson prepared by Mrs.
Thalen
Sterling Brown
Countee Cullen
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Raisin in the Sun

• In Lorraine Hansberrys A Raisin in the Sun we
  come to understand the challenges faced by a
  black family trying to move ahead in the world.
  They face bigotry and struggle with their own
  individual desires about assimilating to the
  culture.
• Many black American poets also wrote about the
  challenges of breaking the color barrier and
  finding a place in the country that was called
  The Melting Pot.

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Black American Poets

• This activity will allow you to learn a bit about
  5 poets who wrote about the experience of being
  black in a culture which had not completely
  accepted them.

Print handouts using buttons on left, then begin
by clicking the button for Langston Hughes.
Get Task Sheet
Get Grading Rubric
Langston Hughes
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Sterling Brown
Gwendolyn Brooks
Countee Cullen
Get Note- Taking Guide
Get Checklist
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Langston Hughes

• James Langston Hughes was born February 1, 1902,
  in Joplin, Missouri. His parents divorced when he
  was a small child, and his father moved to
  Mexico. He was raised by his grandmother until he
  was thirteen, when he moved to Lincoln, Illinois,
  to live with his mother and her husband,
  eventually settling in Cleveland, Ohio. It was in
  Lincoln, Illinois, that Hughes began writing
  poetry. Following graduation, he spent a year in
  Mexico and a year at Columbia University.

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Langston Hughes 2

• During these years, he held odd jobs as an
  assistant cook, launderer, and a busboy, and
  travelled to Africa and Europe working as a
  seaman. In November 1924, he moved to Washington,
  D.C.
• Hughes first book of poetry, The Weary Blues, was
  published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1926. He finished
  his college education at Lincoln University in
  Pennsylvania three years later. In 1930 his first
  novel, Not Without Laughter, won the Harmon gold
  medal for literature.

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Langston Hughes 3

• Hughes, who claimed Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Carl
  Sandburg, and Walt Whitman as his primary
  influences, is particularly known for his
  insightful, colorful portrayals of black life in
  America from the twenties through the sixties. He
  wrote novels, short stories and plays, as well as
  poetry, and is also known for his engagement with
  the world of jazz and the influence it had on his
  writing, as in Montage of a Dream Deferred.

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Langston Hughes 4

• His life and work were enormously important in
  shaping the artistic contributions of the Harlem
  Renaissance of the 1920s. Unlike other notable
  black poets of the period--Claude McKay, Jean
  Toomer, and Countee Cullen--Hughes refused to
  differentiate between his personal experience and
  the common experience of black America. He wanted
  to tell the stories of his people in ways that
  reflected their actual culture, including both
  their suffering and their love of music,
  laughter, and language itself.

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Langston Hughes 5

• Langston Hughes died of complications from
  prostate cancer in May 22, 1967, in New York. In
  his memory, his residence at 20 East 127th Street
  in Harlem, New York City, has been given landmark
  status by the New York City Preservation
  Commission, and East 127th Street was renamed
  "Langston Hughes Place."

Read Poem
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Quiz on Langston Hughes
Write your answers on printed quiz handout.

• Where was he born?
• Where was he educated?
• When was he first published?
• What did you find most interesting about this
  poet?

Print out quiz
Go to Paul L Dunbar
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Paul Laurence Dunbar

• Paul Laurence Dunbar was one of the first
  African-American poets to gain national
  recognition. He was born in Dayton, Ohio, on June
  27, 1872, to Joshua and Matilda Murphy Dunbar,
  freed slaves from Kentucky. His parents separated
  shortly after his birth, but Dunbar would draw on
  their stories of plantation life throughout his
  writing career. By the age of fourteen, Dunbar
  had poems published in the Dayton Herald. While
  in high school he edited the Dayton Tattler, a
  short-lived black newspaper published by
  classmate Orville Wright.

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Paul Laurence Dunbar 2

• Despite being a fine student, Dunbar was
  financially unable to attend college and took a
  job as an elevator operator. In 1892, a former
  teacher invited him to read his poems at a
  meeting of the Western Association of Writers
  his work impressed his audience to such a degree
  that the popular poet James Whitcomb Riley wrote
  him a letter of encouragement. In 1893, Dunbar
  self-published a collection called Oak and Ivy.
  To help pay the publishing costs, he sold the
  book for a dollar to people riding in his
  elevator.

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Paul Laurence Dunbar 3

• Later that year, Dunbar moved to Chicago, hoping
  to find work at the first World's Fair. He
  befriended Frederick Douglass, who found him a
  job as a clerk, and also arranged for him to read
  a selection of his poems. Douglass said of Dunbar
  that he was "the most promising young colored man
  in America." By 1895, Dunbar's poems began
  appearing in major national newspapers and
  magazines, such as The New York Times.

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Paul Laurence Dunbar 4

• With the help of friends, he published the second
  collection, Majors and Minors (1895). The poems
  written in standard English were called "majors,"
  and those in dialect were termed "minors."
  Although the "major" poems outnumber those
  written in dialect, it was the dialect poems that
  brought Dunbar the most attention. The noted
  novelist and critic William Dean Howells gave a
  favorable review to the poems in Harper's Weekly.

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Paul Laurence Dunbar 5

• This recognition helped Dunbar gain national and
  international acclaim, and in 1897 he embarked on
  a six-month reading tour of England.
• He also brought out a new collection, Lyrics of
  Lowly Life (1896). Upon returning to America,
  Dunbar received a clerkship at the Library of
  Congress in Washington, DC, and shortly
  thereafter he married the writer Alice Ruth
  Moore.
• While living in Washington, Dunbar published a
  short story collection, Folks from Dixie, a novel
  entitled The Uncalled, and two more collections
  of poems, Lyrics of the Hearthside and Poems of
  Cabin and Field (1899). He also contributed
  lyrics to a number

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Paul Laurence Dunbar 6

• His collections from this time include Lyrics of
  Love and Laughter (1903), Howdy, Howdy, Howdy
  (1905), and Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow (1905).
  These books confirmed his position as America's
  premier black poet.
• Dunbar continued to write poems.

Read Poem
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Quiz on Paul Laurence Dunbar
Write your answers on printed quiz handout.

• Where was he born?
• Where was he educated?
• When was he first published?
• What did you find most interesting about this
  poet?

Go to Sterling Brown
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Sterling Brown

• Sterling Brown was born in Washington, D.C., in
  1901. He was educated at Dunbar High School and
  received a bachelor's degree from Williams
  College. He studied the work of Ezra Pound and T.
  S. Eliot, but was more interested in the works of
  Amy Lowell, Edgar Lee Masters, Robert Frost and
  Carl Sandburg.

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Sterling Brown 2

• In 1923, he earned a master's degree from Harvard
  University and was employed as a teacher at the
  Virginia Seminary and College in Lynchburg until
  1926. Three years later, Brown began teaching at
  Howard University and in 1932 his first book,
  Southern Road, was published.

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Sterling Brown 3

• His poetry was influenced by jazz, the blues,
  work songs and spirituals and, like Langston
  Hughes, Jean Toomer, Countee Cullen, and other
  black poets of the period, his writing expresses
  his concerns about race in America. Southern Road
  was well received by critics and Brown became
  part of the artistic tradition of the Harlem
  Renaissance, but with the arrival of the
  Depression, Brown could not find a publisher for
  his second book of verse.

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Sterling Brown 4

• He turned to writing essays and focused on his
  career as a teacher at Howard, where he taught
  until his retirement in 1969.
• He finally published his second book of poetry,
  The Last Ride of Wild Bill, in 1975.
• Brown is known for his frank, unsentimental
  portraits of black people and their experiences,
  and the incorporation of African-American
  folklore and contemporary idiom into his verse.
  He died in 1989 in Takoma Park, Maryland.

Read Poem
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Quiz on S. Brown
Write your answers on printed quiz handout.

• Where was he born?
• Where was he educated?
• When was he first published?
• What did you find most interesting about this
  poet?

Go to Gwendolyn Brooks
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Gwendolyn Brooks

• The African American poet Gwendolyn Elizabeth
  Brooks was born June 7, 1917, to Keziah and David
  Brooks in Topeka, Kansas. Later that year the
  Brooks family moved to Chicago, where her two
  siblings were born. Brooks' mother discovered
  Gwendolyn's gift for writing when she was seven.
  She promptly encouraged this talent by exposing
  the girl to various forms of literature.

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Gwendolyn Brooks 2

• Her parents, however were very strict and she was
  not allowed to play with the kids in the
  neighborhood. As a child she lacked the sass and
  brass of the other girls in her class and became
  very isolated. As a result, she made few friends
  while in school. When Brooks was at home in her
  room she often created a world of her own by
  reading and writing stories and poetry. Due to
  her lack of social skills she became very shy and
  continued to be shy throughout her adult life.

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Gwendolyn Brooks 3

• After graduating from high school she went on to
  Wilson Junior College and graduated in 1936. Her
  early verses appeared in the Chicago Defender, a
  newspaper written primarily for the black
  community of Chicago. In 1939 she was married to
  Henry Blakely and they had two children, Henry
  junior and Nora Blakely. In 1945 Gwendolyn
  Brooks' first book entitled A Street In
  Bronzeville was published. In 1949 Annie Allen (a
  loosely-connected series of poems related to a
  black girl's growing up in Chicago) was published
  and received the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in
  1950, becoming the first African American to
  receive this prestigious award in poetry.

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Gwendolyn Brooks 4

• In 1953 Brooks' first novel is published Maud
  Martha. In 1963 she published Selected Poems and
  secured her first teaching job at Chicago's
  Columbia College. In 1967 at the Fisk University
  Writers Conference in Nashville, Brooks met the
  new black revolution. She came from South Dakota
  State College, which was all white, where she was
  received with love. Now she had arrived at an all
  black college where she was now coldly respected.
  After this trip Brooks says that she, is no
  longer asleep she is now awake. After 1967 she
  became aware that other blacks feel that way and
  are not hesitant about saying it. She appeals to
  her people for understanding and is more
  conscious of them in her writing.

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Gwendolyn Brooks 5

• In 1968 she published her next major collection
  of poetry, In the Mecca. The effect of her
  awakening is noticeable in her poetry. Brooks is
  less concerned with poetic form, and uses mostly
  free verse. In 1968 she was named poet laureate
  for the state of Illinois and was also the first
  African American to receive an American Academy
  of Arts and Letters Award in 1976.

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Gwendolyn Brooks 6

• Since then, Gwendolyn Brooks has gone on to
  receive over fifty honorary doctorates from
  numerous colleges and universities.   She has
  received two Guggenheim Fellowships and has
  served as Poetry Consultant to the Library of
  Congress. In 1990 she became professor of English
  at Chicago State University. Ms. Brooks died at
  the age of 83 Sunday December 3, 2000.

Read Poem
28
Quiz on Gwendolyn Brooks
Write your answers on printed quiz handout.

• Where was she born?
• Where was she educated?
• When was she first published?
• What did you find most interesting about
• this poet?

Go to Countee Cullen
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Countee Cullen

• Countee Cullen (1903 - 1946) was born Countee
  LeRoy Porter a leading figure with Langston
  Hughes in the Harlem Renaissance. This 1920s
  artistic movement produced the first large body
  of work in the United States written by African
  Americans. However, Cullen considered poetry
  raceless, although his 'The Black Christ' took
  a racial theme, lynching of a black youth for a
  crime he did not commit.

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Countee Cullen 2

• Countee Cullen was very secretive about his life.
  According to different sources, he was born in
  Louisville, Kentucy or Baltimore, Md. Cullen was
  possibly abandoned by his mother, and reared by a
  woman named Mrs. Porter, who was probably his
  paternal grandmother. Cullen once said that he
  was born in New York City - perhaps he did not
  mean it literally. Porter brought young Countee
  to Harlem when he was nine. She died in 1918. At
  the age of 15, Cullen was adopted unofficially by
  the Reverend F.A. Cullen, minister of Salem M.E.
  Church, one of the largest congregations of
  Harlem. Later Reverend Cullen became the head of
  the Harlem chapter of NAACP. His real mother did
  not contact him until he became famous in the
  1920s.

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Countee Cullen 3

• As a schoolboy, Cullen won a citywide poetry
  contest and saw his winning stanzas widely
  reprinted. With the help of Reverend Cullen, he
  attended the prestigious De Witt Clinton High
  School in Manhattan. After graduating, he entered
  New York University, where his works attracted
  critical attention. Cullen's first collection of
  poems, COLOR (1925), was published in the same
  year he graduated from NYU. Written in a careful,
  traditional style, the work celebrated black
  beauty and deplored the effects of racism.

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Countee Cullen 4

• The book included 'Heritage' and 'Incident',
  probably his most famous poems. 'Yet Do I
  Marvel', about racial identity and injustice,
  showed the influence of the literary expression
  of William Wordsworth and William Blake, but its
  subject was far from the world of their Romantic
  sonnets. The poet accepts that there is God, and
  'God is good, well-meaning, kind', but he finds a
  contradiction of his own plight in a racist
  society he is black and a poet.

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Countee Cullen 5

• A brilliant student, Cullen graduated from New
  York University Phi Beta Kappa. He attended
  Harvard, earning his masters degree in 1926. He
  worked as assistant editor for Opportunity
  magazine, where his column, 'The Dark Tower,'
  increased his literary reputation. Cullen's
  poetry collections THE BALLAD OF THE BROWN GIRL
  (1927) and COPPER SUN (1927) explored similar
  themes as Colour, but they were not so well
  received. Cullen's Guggenheim Fellowship of 1928
  enabled him to study and write abroad. He married
  in April 1928 Nina Yolande Du Bois, daughter of
  W.E.B. DuBois, the leading black intellectual. At
  that time Yolande was involved romantically with
  a popular band leader. Between the years 1928 and
  1934, Cullen travelled back and forth between
  France and the United States.

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Countee Cullen 6

• By 1929 Cullen had published four volumes of
  poetry. The title poem of THE BLACK CHRIST AND
  OTHER POEMS (1929) was criticized for the use of
  Christian religious imagery - Cullen compared the
  lynching of a black man to Christ's
  crucification. His marriage did not succeed and
  he divorced in 1930. One extra load for the
  marriage was Cullen's and Harold Jackman's close
  friendship. Jackman was a a teacher whom the
  writer Carl Van Vechten had used as model in his
  novel Nigger Heaven (1926). In 1940 Cullen
  married Ida Mae Robertson they had known each
  other for ten years.

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Countee Cullen 7

• As well as writing books himself, Cullen promoted
  the work of other black writers. But in the late
  1920s Cullen's reputation as a poet waned. In
  1932 appeared his only novel, ONE WAY TO HEAVEN,
  a social comedy of lower-class blacks and the
  bourgeoisie in New York City. From 1934 until the
  end of his life he taught English, French, and
  creative writing at Frederick Douglass Junior
  High School in the New York City. During this
  period he also wrote two works for young readers
  THE LOST ZOO (1940), poems about the animals who
  perished in the Flood, and MY LIVES AND HOW I
  LOST THEM, an autobiography of his cat.

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Countee Cullen 8

• In the last years of his life Cullen wrote
  mostly for the theatre. With Arna Bontemps he
  adapted her novel, God Sends Sunday (1931),
  entitled ST. LOUIS WOMAN (1946, publ. 1971) for
  the musical stage. Its score was composed by
  Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer, both white. The
  Broadway musical, set in poor black neighborhood
  in St. Louis, was criticized by black
  intellectuals for creating a negative image of
  black Americans. Cullen also translated the Greek
  tragedy Medea by Euripides, which was published
  in THE MEDEA AND SOME POEMS (1935), with a
  collection of sonnets and short lyrics.

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Countee Cullen 9

• As a poet Cullen was conservative he did not
  ignore racial themes, but based his works on the
  Romantic poets, especially Keats, and often used
  the traditional sonnet form. "Not writ in water
  nor in mist, / Sweet lyric throat, thy name. /
  Thy singing lips that cold death kissed / Have
  seared his own with flame." ('2. For John Keats,
  Apostle of Beauty') However, Cullen also enjoyed
  Langston Hughes's black jazz rhythms, but more he
  loved "the measured line and the skillful rhyme"
  of the 19th century poetry. After the early 1930s
  Cullen avoided racial themes. Cullen's later
  publications include ON THESE I STAND (1947), a
  collection of his favorite poems, and the play
  THE THIRD FOURTH OF JULY (publ. 1946). Cullen
  died of uremic poisoning in New York City on
  January 9, 1946. Private about his life, he left
  behind no autobiography.

Read Poem
38
Quiz on Countee Cullen
Write your answers on printed quiz handout.

• Where was he born?
• Where was he educated?
• When was he first published?
• What did you find most interesting about this
  poet?

Go to Bonus Assignment
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Rap Music Assignment

• Listen to music classified as Rap and read the
  lyrics very carefully. Find one song (and print
  out the lyrics) that you think expresses the
  frustrations of not belonging to the culture
  where the Speaker lives. Come prepared to make
  a presentation to the class that consists of
• playing the music
• giving a copy of the lyrics to the members of the
  class
• explaining the similarities between this rap
  music and any of the poems youve read for this
  activity

Get handout to take home
Finish
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Last Steps

• Once you have completed all worksheets, quizzes
  and paragraphs, you are done! Put all your
  material in the folder to be turned in before you
  begin working on the bonus assignment.
• I will sign your permission slip (on Bonus
  assignment handout) only after you have completed
  all other work.