1894 ? 1967
b. Washington, D.C., as Nathan Eugene Toomer. A major figure of the Harlem Renaissance, he is known for one work, Cane (1923), a collection of stories, poems, and sketches about black life in rural Georgia and the urban North.
1908 – 1997
A pharmacist who wrote newspaper ad copy, Petry came to notice when her book The Street, about life in Harlem, gained critical and popular success in 1946, selling 1.5 million copies. She later wrote additional novels, short stories, and children’s books, such as Tituba of Salem Village (1964) and Harriet Tubman: Conductor on the Underground Railway (1955).
1711 – 1806
The first known African American to publish literature, Hammon was a lifelong slave of the Lloyd family on Long Island. He was a favorite servant who was a clerk in the family business, a farmhand, and an artisan. Hammon was allowed to attend school and was a fervent Christian, as were the Lloyds. His first published poem was written on Christmas Day, 1760. An Evening Thought. Salvation by Christ with Penitential Cries: Composed by Jupiter Hammon, a Negro belonging to Mr. Lloyd of Queen’s Village, on Long Island, the 25th of December, 1760 appeared as a broadside in 1761. Three other poems and three sermon essays followed. In 1786 Hammon gave a speech, An Address to the Negroes of New York, to the African Society, in which he said that while he personally had no wish to be free, he did wish others, especially ?the young Negroes, were free.?
b. Philadelphia. Fuller co-founded the Afro-American Arts Theatre in Philadelphia, his hometown, in 1967. The Perfect Party (1969) was the first of Fuller’s plays to receive critical acclaim. Zooman and the Sign won an Obie Award in 1980. A Soldier’s Play, about a murder on a Louisiana military base, won the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It was adapted into a film, A Soldier’s Story, in 1984.
Alain LeRoy Locke was born on Sept. 13, 1886, in Philadelphia PA. He was an American educator, writer, and philosopher, who is best remembered as a leader and chief interpreter of the Harlem Renaissance.
He graduated from Harvard University (1907) with a degree in philosophy. Locke was the first black Rhodes scholar, studying at Oxford (1907-10) and the University of Berlin (1910-11). He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard (1918). For almost 40 years, until retirement in 1953 as head of the department of philosophy, Locke taught at Howard University, Washington, D.C.. During that time Locke became a distinguished member of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity Inc.
Locke stimulated and guided artistic activities and promoted the recognition and respect of blacks by the total American community. Having studied African culture and traced its influences upon Western civilization, he urged black painters, sculptors, and musicians to look to African sources for identity and to discover materials and techniques for their work. He encouraged black authors to seek subjects in black life and to set high artistic standards for themselves. He familiarized American readers with the Harlem Renaissance by editing a special Harlem issue for Survey Graphic (March 1925), which he expanded into The New Negro (1925), an anthology of fiction, poetry, drama, and essays.
Locke edited the Bronze Booklet studies of cultural achievements by blacks. For almost two decades he annually reviewed literature by and about blacks in Opportunity and Phylon, and from 1940 until his death he regularly wrote about blacks for the Britannica Book of the Year. His many works include Four Negro Poets (1927), Frederick Douglass, a Biography of Anti-Slavery (1935), Negro Art–Past and Present (1936), and The Negro and His Music (1936). He left unfinished materials for a definitive study of the contributions of blacks to American culture. His materials formed the basis for M.J. Butcher’s The Negro in American Culture (1956).
A humanist who was intensely concerned with aesthetics, Locke termed his philosophy “cultural pluralism” and emphasized the necessity of determining values to guide human conduct and interrelationships. Chief among these values was respect for the uniqueness of each personality, which can develop fully and remain unique only within a democratic ethos. Alain Locke passed away on June 9, 1954, in New York City.
Born in 1894, Bessie Smith was the greatest and most influential blues singer of the 20s. With her talent, her excessive personality and her wild ways, she became a huge black cultural symbol. Her enormous success represented triumph over the white domination of the entertainment industry. Her death in 1937 was at the prime of her career. She died after an auto accident that left her too badly injured to recover. The lore surrounding her death at the time was that she was taken to a white hospital and refused treatment, instead letting her bleed to death. Apparently what really happened was that she was taken to a colored hospital where she recieved treatment that included amputation of one arm. She died the next day. Although there were 7,000 people at her funeral, she went without a headstone until one was purchased by Janis Joplin.