Ray was born in New York City on January 13, 1850 to Charlotte and Reverend Charles Bennett Ray. She was one of seven kids, growing up with two sisters and four brothers. Charlotte was the youngest of three girls. Her first years were spent in New York City but soon after in the 1860s Ray and her family moved to Washington, D.C. where she started school at the Institution for the Education of Colored Youth. This was the only school in the area that allowed African American girls.
Booker T. Washington was born as a slave in Virgina. William Edward Burghardt (W.E.B) DuBois was born a free man in Massachusetts. Despite the differences in how they were raised, they both wanted to try and improve the way African Americans were treated in society. Washington gave a speech called the Atlantic Compromise, and DuBois wrote an Article/essay called The Talented Tenth. Both of these written works outlined the author's position on race.
DuBois was born on February 23, 1868. He was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts unlike Washington who was born in the Deep South. DuBois had a completely opposite childhood compared to Washington as well. Dubois was said to have a happy childhood. He grew up feeling completely normal in society until one day DuBois and his school mates were exchanging visiting-cards when a girl who was new to school refused to take his card.
Richard Wright lived during the time where even though slavery had ended; racism was still very much alive. Where he lived it was very segregated. They followed the “Jim Crow” Laws. “The alleged “Jim Crow” law of 1881 was enacted by a legislature in which one house was controlled by the Republican Party and which included four Negro members. Only two Negro members voted against the measure; the other two did not vote.
He not only a strong supporter black's rights, but also of the rights of immigrants, women, and Native Americans. Douglass was born into slavery in Maryland as Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey. His mother was a slave and his father was most likely his white owner. He escaped slavery when he was 20 years old and chanced his name to Douglass. He learned the alphabet from his owner's wife Sofia, however her husband, his owner, told her not to teach slaves how to read and write.
Pratikshya Thapa Prof. Alex Kurian English 2328-73001 12 April 2017 Winnemucca, Hurston and Tan The American Literature consists of artists from various cultural and social background who devoted their life in literary works. There are number of female authors who are known for their magnificent writings. Sarah Winnemucca, Zora Neale Hurston and Amy Tan are some of the famous female American authors. They belong to different racial and cultural backgrounds but share a common ground when it comes to expressing their life experience and opinions through their literary art works.
Richard Wright’s poem “Between the World and Me” mourns the tragic scene of a gruesome lynching, and expresses its harsh impact on the narrator. Wright depicts this effect through the application of personification, dramatic symbolism, and desperate diction that manifests the narrator’s agony. In his description of the chilling scene, Wright employs personification in order to create an audience out of inanimate objects. When the narrator encounters the scene, he sees “white bones slumbering forgottenly upon a cushion of ashes,” and a sapling “pointing a blunt finger accusingly at the sky.”
During the 1920s, there was a period that was called the Harlem Renaissance, during which African Americans got the opportunity to be creative and express themselves through music and art. Langston Hughes and Louis Armstrong were a few of the famous people who came from this period in the 1920s. Another famous person that came out of the Harlem Renaissance was Zora Neale Hurston, a multi-talented African American woman who wrote stories that described the life and struggles of the 1920s through the stories she wrote. Hurston was an American writer, who was able to connect to the hearts of most people from all kinds of different races and religions during the period. Even today, her readers still feel the connection Hurston was trying to make
Louise and Delia What do most women want in a marriage? Is it hatred and an unfaithful husband? No! Women expect to have a husband who loves and cares for them.
Zora Neale Hurston used symbolism throughout the novel to express the influences that molded Janie’s emotional life. There were three moments when Hurston’s use of symbolism was used to demonstrate the forces that had an impact on Janie’s emotional life stood out, which are the vision of the pear tree, Nanny’s horizon rope, and Joe Starks’ head rag. One of the most referred and used symbolism throughout the novel is Janie’s pear tree vision. The vision occurs in chapter 2, but it continues to shape Janie’s decisions throughout her life from deciding to leave Logan Killicks to live with Joe Starks and then deciding to live with Vergible Woods after Joe’s death.
Hurston and Janie both endured oppression during their lives based upon their race and gender however, their strong wills propelled them threw unforeseen obstacle. Zora Neale Hurston was a phenomenal African American woman whom despite her rough childhood would become one of the most profound authors of the century. Throughout her lifetime she was the, “Recipient of two Guggenheims and the author of four novels, a dozen short stories, two musicals, two books on black mythology, dozens of essays, and a prizewinning autobiography” (Gates 4). Hurston had to overcome numerous obstacles because of her gender, economic status, and racial identity. Hurston was born in 1891 in Notasulga, Alabama but grew up in Eatonville, Florida.
Langston Hughes was born February 1st, 1902 in Joplin, Missouri. In the roaring 20’s he started writing professionally and was essential in portraying black life in America. Hughes grew up in a time of social injustice involving the treatment of minorities (specifically African Americans). As his career went on the Harlem Renaissance became a major movement in which he was essential to.
He was an African American man that had been born in Philadelphia, in 1986. He eventually went to Harvard and received degrees in both literature and philosophy. He was obviously a very intelligent man, and very talented in the subjects that he studied. Eventually, once the time of the Harlem Renaissance begun, he became very active in it, since he was a scholar in literature and philosophy, which was evolving during that time period. During that time period, he supported African American authors and writers, giving a significant amount of praise to Zora Neale
Lorraine V. Hansberry Author Lorraine Hansberry, who is considered one of the Great American authors, wrote during the Modernist period. She wrote “A Raisin in the Sun” in 1959. In this work, we can see evidence of the characteristics, themes and style identified with the Modernist movement which was extant in American letters between 1850’s and after WWII. Lorraine Hansberry wrote during this time period of American literature, and such, remains one of the most identifiable and iconic writers of her time. Lorraine Hansberry was born on May 19, 1930 in Chicago, Illinois.
Wright is best known for a lot of exceptional pieces of literature such as “Blueprint for Negro Writing” which is somewhat of a declaration of independence from Harlem Renaissance writers. Richard Wright was born 1908 on a plantation near Mississippi. Wright personified the classic American dream. He went from being deprived intellectually and in poverty to a figure stone in literature. It was Wright’s childhood that shaped his dream for getting an education.
