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Great Artists of the

Harlem Renaissance

B O S T O N

S Y M P H O N Y

O R C H E S T R A

Arts-integrated lesson

plans for students in

grades 8-12.

E D U C A T I O N A N D C O M M U N I T Y P R O G R A M S

Credits

Director of Education and Community ProgramsMyran Parker-Brass

Coordinator of Research and Curriculum DevelopmentShana Golden

© 2006 Boston Symphony Orchestra.

CoverJazz Musician © Corbis

The Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Department of Education and Community Programs has a variety of curriculum kits that are available for teachers and educators for grades K-12. For more information on our educational materials and programs, please contact the Education Office at: 301 Massachusetts Ave, Boston, MA 02115, (617) 638-9373.

Great Artists BSO Harlem Renaissance Kit 3

Table of Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Portraits of the Harlem Renaissance

Lesson Plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Supplementary Materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Sean McCollum, James Van Der Zee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Gerald Danzer, Looking at Photographs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Photographs by James Van Der Zee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Harlem Slang

Lesson Plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Supplementary Materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Zora Neale Hurston, “Glossary of Harlem Slang” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Zora Neale Hurston, “Story in Harlem Slang” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Zora Neale Hurston, “Characteristics of Negro Expression” . . . . . . . . . . 27

Faith Ringgold: Storyteller

Lesson Plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Supplementary Materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

Faith Ringgold, Crown Heights Story Quilt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Faith Ringgold, Who’s Afraid of Aunt Jemima . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Additional Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

Massachusetts Arts Curriculum Framework . . . . . . . . . 39


Introduction

THE BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA’S Harlem Renaissance kit was created in order to raise awareness about the rich artistic heritage of African-Americans. These materials

are intended for use by classroom teachers to supplement exist-ing curriculum. The kit is divided into three volumes: Founda-tions, Great Artists, Musical Figures.

This kit is a production of the Boston Symphony Orchestra De-partment of Education and Community Programs. Feedback is welcomed, please contact the BSO with any comments or ques-tions.

Shana GoldenBSO Education DepartmentBoston Symphony Orchestra


Portraits of the Harlem RenaissancePhotography of James Van Der Zee

Objectives Students will:Learn about the photography of James Van Der ZeeLearn techniques for analyzing visual art and photo-graphsDiscuss the characteristics of the Harlem Renaissance

Materials McCollum, Sean, “James Van Der Zee”

Danzer, Gerald, “Looking at Photographs”

Photographs by James Van Der Zee(Note: Photographic reproductions of James Van Der Zee’s work are included in this kit.)

Introduction Have the class read “James Van Der Zee” by Sean McCollum. Discussion: What was James Van Der Zee famous for? What techniques did he develop? What things did he emphasize in his portraits? How did his work document life during the Harlem Renaissance?

Development Show the class examples of photographs by James Van Der Zee.

For each photograph, have the class analyze the following (you can use the handout Looking at Photographs in the Supplemen-tary Materials):

SubjectFormPerspectiveUse of light and dark, shadowsMood, expressionBackground setting Props

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8 BSO Harlem Renaissance Kit Great Artists

Discussion: How does Van Der Zee bring out the personality of his subjects? What part of life do his photographs depict?How do James Van Der Zee’s photographs serve as a his-torical record of the Harlem Renaissance?

Activity #1 Have students choose a photograph by Van Der Zee to study. Students should do research on the group or person shown, and write a short biographical essay about the subject.

Activity #2 Using their own cameras, have students take photographs of friends, family, or school groups in the style of Van Der Zee’s portraits. Students should also write a brief description of the subject and the reason it was chosen.

Activity Extension Create a school exhibit of the student photographs, including a description or caption for each photo.


Supplementary Materials

The next few pages include materials that may be used with the Portraits of the Harlem Renaissance lesson plan. Included is a photo of the artist, the biography “James Van Der Zee” by Sean McCollum, and the handout “Looking at Photographs” by Gerald Danzer. Photographic reproductions of James Van Der Zee’s photographs are also included in the packaging for this kit.

James Van Der Zee was a photographer who lived in Harlem for more than 50 years. He owned a photography studio where he specialized in portraiture. Van Der Zee’s photographs captured the many faces of his community and the spirit of the times. His photos document the rise of a black middle class and the increasing prosperity of Harlem by focusing on the dignity, success, and independence of his subjects.

James Van Der Zee (1886-1983)

Photographer. Lived in Harlem. Born February 1, 1902 in Joplin, MO. Died May 22, 1967 in NY, NY.


James Van Der Zeeby Sean McCollum

THE PHOTOGRAPHER DEVELOPED AN IMAGE FOR THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE

In 1923 a young African-American couple dressed in their Sunday best stepped into a small photography studio on Harlem’s 135th Street. Inside, an eager black man with wide-set eyes took a long look at them. He smiled and seemed to watch how they smiled back. As he guided them toward the back room, he asked them where they were from, where they lived, how long they’d been married. He sat them before a fireplace painted on the wall, then went to a closet, pulled out a fur, and draped it on the woman’s shoulders. He glanced at the man’s arm and tucked in a fray-ing edge of sleeve. He circled them slowly, adjusted the lights, then went to his camera. What he saw when he looked through the lens was the Harlem he loved.

HARLEM’S FINEST FACE

During the glory days of the 1920s, hundreds of Harlem’s finest made the trip to James Van Der Zee’s studio for similar treatment. There, Van Der Zee took picture after picture, making sure that each one presented Harlem in the best light. In the process, he crafted a dazzling record of middle-class black life, a side of America rarely seen at the time.

Van Der Zee himself grew up in a world as privileged as the one his subjects inhabited. His par-ents, former servants of President Ulysses S. Grant, settled in Lenox, Massachusetts, a summer ha-ven for New England’s wealthy that was home to only half a dozen black families. There Van Der Zee was raised on a steady diet of music and art. In 1906, at the age of 20, he moved to Harlem and started the five-piece Harlem Orchestra. The group had some success, but to eat, he returned to another childhood talent — photography. In fifth grade, Van Der Zee had become the second person in Lenox to own a camera. He had taken hundreds of pictures of his family and others and developed them all himself. So in 1914, he signed on as a darkroom technician in a department store. At times he would fill in behind the camera, and within three years, he had the courage and the reputation to open his own studio. He called it “Guarantee Photo.”

First and foremost, Van Der Zee’s operation was a business, and he shot the people who could pay his price. In addition to studio portraits, he photographed clubs and church groups, sports teams and family gatherings, barber shops and pool halls. He shot funerals and weddings, soldiers and celebrities. Heavyweight champion Jack Johnson, the Reverend Adam Clayton Powell Sr., entertainers Bill “Bojangles” Robinson and Sunshine Sammy, singers Florence Mills and Mamie Smith — all were subjects for Van Der Zee’s lens. And when Marcus Garvey was looking for someone to chronicle the life of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, he chose James Van Der Zee.

Whether they were famous or unknown, Van Der Zee treated his subjects with equal respect. He used elaborate backdrops or filled his studio with scenery as though it were a stage. “I tried to pose each person in such a way as to tell a story,” he explained. He would often set his subjects in dramatic situations: parents listening to their kids play piano, a child speaking on the telephone, a gypsy telling an old man’s fortune.


FILLING IN THE BALD SPOTS

Van Der Zee expressed his own great pride in the Harlem community by carefully “beautifying” the photographs he took. He would retouch negatives to straighten teeth, add jewelry, or fill in a bald spot. “I tried to see that every picture was better-looking than the person,” he said. “I had one women come to me and say, ‘Mr. Van Der Zee, my friends tell that’s a nice picture, but it doesn’t look like you.’ That was my style.”

The photo montage — multiple images in one picture — was another technique Van Der Zee developed. After the death of the Reverend Powell’s daughter, he superimposed a portrait of her above the funeral scene, giving the eerie effect of her presence. In a wedding portrait, he inserted a ghostly image of a child to suggest the couple’s future. Said Van Der Zee, “I wanted to make the camera take what I thought should be there.”

In 1932, as their business struggled through the Depression, Van Der Zee and his wife and part-ner, Gaynella, moved to a less-expensive studio. When personal cameras became more available, people had much less need for a professional photographer. Van Der Zee was forced to shoot passport pictures and do other odd photographic jobs to make ends meet.

Then in 1968, Van Der Zee was “discovered” at the age of 82, when a photo researcher named Reginald McGhee stumbled on his collection of 75,000 photos covering six decades of African-American life. New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art featured his work in an exhibit called “Harlem On My Mind,” and almost overnight, Van Der Zee received national recognition. In the early 1980s, 60 years after the Harlem Renaissance, celebrities — this time with names like Bill Cosby, Muhammad Ali, and Lou Rawls — flocked to sit for Van Der Zee portraits.

Van Der Zee died in 1983 at the age of 96, leaving behind a legacy of images so compelling that it’s hard to see Harlem through any other eyes. “In these photographs,” writes McGhee, “you will not see the common images of black Americans — downtrodden rural or urban citizens. Instead, you will see a people of great pride and fascinating beauty”.

TM & © 2006-1996 Scholastic Inc. All rights reserved.


by Gerald Danzer, Chicago Metro History Education Center


Dancer, Harlem. (1925) Photo by James Van Der Zee.


Couple, Harlem. Photo by James Van Der Zee.


Black Jews, Harlem. (1929) Photo by James Van Der Zee.


Objectives Students will:Read and analyze the writings of Zora Neale HurstonLearn about slang used during the Harlem Renaissance

Materials Hurston, Zora Neale, “Glossary of Harlem Slang”

Hurston, Zora Neale, “Story in Harlem Slang”

Hurston, Zora Neale, “Characteristics of Negro Expression”

Introduction Have students read Zora Neale Hurston’s “Glossary of Harlem Slang”.

Discussion:

What is slang? Ask the class to come up with their own definition.

Discuss the difference between slang and dialect.

Slang. (noun) 1 : language peculiar to a particular group; 2 : an informal nonstandard vocabulary composed typically of coinages, arbitrarily changed words, and extravagant, forced, or facetious figures of speech

Dialect. (noun) 1 a : a regional variety of language distinguished by features of vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation from other regional varieties and constituting together with them a single language; d : a variety of language whose identity is fixed by a factor other than geography (as social class)

- adapted from the Merriam Webster Online Dictionary, www.webster.com.

Ask the students to find examples of slang on Hurston’s list that are still used today.

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Harlem Slang


Development Have students read part of the “Story in Harlem Slang” and write a summary.

Discussion: What is the perspective of the author? What does the language of the narrator tell you about his background? Does Hurston’s story give you a sense of what life was like in Harlem?

Have students read the sections Will to Adorn and Dialect from the essay “Characteristics of Negro Expression” by Zora Neale Hurston.

Discussion: What is the “will to adorn”? What does Hurston say are the Negro’s greatest contributions to the English language? How does Hurston describe the Negro dialect(s)?

Activity #1 Assign students to find a contemporary story, poem, or song that uses slang. Have students write a slang “dictionary” for the work they choose. Students should also analyze how the use of slang affects the readers perspective of the subject/ narrator.

Activity #2 Have students write a story in the style of Zora Neale Hurston, using contemporary (non-explicit) slang or dialect.

Activity Extension Have the class work together to compile a contemporary slang “dictionary” with words and definitions.



The next few pages include materials that may be used with the Harlem Slang lesson plan. Included is a photo of Zora Neale Hurston, and the following essays by Hurston: “Glossary of Harlem Slang,” “A Story in Harlem Slang,” and “Characteristics of Negro Expression.”

A novelist, folklorist, and anthropologist, Zora Neale Hurston was the prototypical authority on black culture from the Harlem Renaissance. In this artistic movement of the 1920s black artists moved from traditional dialectical works and imitation of white writers to explore their own culture and affirm pride in their race. Zora Neale Hurston pursued this objective by combining literature with anthropology. She first gained attention with her short stories such as “John Redding Goes to Sea” and “Spunk” which appeared in black literary magazines. After several years of anthropological research financed through grants and fellowships, Zora Neale Hurston’s first novel Jonah’s Gourd Vine was published in 1934 to critical success. In 1935, her book Mules and Men, which investigated voodoo practices in black communities in Florida and New Orleans, was also critically acclaimed.

The year 1937 saw the publication of what is considered Hurston’s greatest novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. The following year her travelogue and study of Caribbean voodoo Tell My Horse was published. It received mixed reviews, as did her 1939 novel Moses, Man of the Mountain. Her autobiography Dust Tracks on a Road was a commercial success in 1942, despite its overall absurdness, and her final novel Seraph on the Suwanee, published in 1948, was a critical failure.

Zora Neale Hurston was a utopian, who held that black Americans could attain sovereignty from white American society and all its bigotry, as proven by her hometown of Eatonville. Never in her works did she address the issue of racism of whites toward blacks, and as this became a nascent theme among black writers in the post World War II era of civil rights, Hurston’s literary influence faded. She further scathed her own reputation by railing against the civil rights movement and supporting ultraconservative politicians. She died in poverty and obscurity.

- adapted from Women in History, Lakewood Public Library. See http://www.lkwdpl.org/wihohio/hurs-zor.htm.

Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960)

Novelist, folklorist, anthropologist.


Zora Neale Hurston’sGlossary of Harlem Slang

Air out: leave, flee, stroll Astorperious: haughty, biggity Aunt Hagar: Negro race (also Aunt Hager’s children) Bad Hair: Negro-type hair Bailing: having fun Bam & down in Bam: down South Battle-hammed: badly fomed about the lips Beating up your gums: talking to no purpose Beluthahatchie: next station beyond Hell Big boy: stout fellow, in South it means fool Blowing your top: getting very angry; occasionally used to mean, He’s doing fine Boogie-woogie: type of dancing and rhythm, in South it meant secondary syphilis Bull-skating: bragging Butt sprung: a suit or a skirt out of shape in the rear Coal scuttle blonde: black woman Cold: exceeding, well, etc Collar a nod: sleep Collor a hot: eat a meal Colorscale: high yaller, yaller, high brown, vaseline brown, seal brown, low brown, dark brown Conk buster: cheap liquor; also an intellectual Negro Cruising: parading down the avenue Cut: doing something well Dark black: a casually black person Dat thing: sex of either sex Dat’s your mammy: same as, “So is your old man” Diddy-Wah-Diddy: a far place, a measure of distance Dig: understand Draped down: dressed in the height of Harlem fashion Dumb to the fact: you don’t know what you are talking about Dusty butt: cheap prostitute Eight-rock: very black person Every postman on his beat: kinky hair First thing smoking: a train Frail eel: a pretty girl Free school: free schools, pretty yellow teachers and dumb Negroes Function: a small, unventilated dance Gator-faced: long, black face with big mouth Getting on some stiff time: really doing well with your racket Get you to go: to force the opponent to run Ginny Gall: a suburb of Helll Gif up off of me: quit talking about me


Go when the wagon comes: You may be acting biggity now, but you’ll cool down when enough power gets behind you Good hair: Caucasian-type hair Granny Grunt: a mythical character to whom most questions may be referred Ground rations: sex, also under rations Gum beater: a blowhard, a braggart Gut-bucket: low dive, type of music Gut-foot: bad case of fallen arches Handkerchief-head: sycophant type of Negro; also an Uncle Tom Hauling: fleeing on foot I don’t deal in coal: I don’t keep company with black women I’m cracking but I’m facking: I’m wisecracking, but I’m telling the truth Inky dink: very black person I shot him lightly and he died politely: I completely outdid him Jar head: Negro man Jelly: sex Jig: Negro, a corrupted shortening of Zigaboo Jook: a pleasure house, in the class of gut-bucket Jooking: playing a musical instrument or dancing in the manner of the jooks Juice: liquor July jam: something very hot Jump salty: get angry Kitchen mechanic: a domestic Knock yourself out: have a good time Lightly, slightly, and politely: doing things perfectly Little sister: measures of hotness Liver-lip: pendulous, thick purple lips Made hair: hair that has been straightened Mammy: a term of insult Miss Anne: a white woman Mister Charlie: a white man Monkey chaser: a West Indian Mug Man: a small time thug My people!: sad and satiric expression in the Negro language Naps: kinky hair Nearer my God to Thee: good hair Nothing to the bear but his curly hair: I call your bluff Now you cookin’ with gas: now your talking Ofay: white person Old cuffee: Negro Palmer House: walking flat-footed Pancake: a humble type of Negro Park ape: an ugly, underprivileged Negro Peckerwood: poor and unloved class of Southern whites Peeping through my likkers: carrying on even though drunk Pe-ola: a very white Negro girl


Piano: spare ribs Pig meat: young girl Pilch: house or apartment Pitch toes: yellow girl Playing the dozens: low-rating the ancestors of your opponent Red neck: poor Southern white man Reefer: marijuana cigarette, also a drag Righteous mass or grass: good hair Righteous rags: the components of a Harlem-style suit Rug-cutter: originally a person frequenting house-rent parties, became a good dancer Russian: a Southern Negro up north, “Rushed up here” Scrap iron: cheap liquor Sell out: run in fear Sender: he or she who can get you to go, i.e., has what it takes Smoking: looking someone over Solid: perfect Sooner: anything cheap and mongrel Stanch: to begin Stomp: low dance Stormbuzzard: shiftless, homeless character Stroll: doing something well Sugar Hill: northwest sector of Harlem, near Washington Heights, many professionals The bear: confession of poverty The big apple: New York City The man: the law or powerful boss Thousand on a plate: beans Tight head: one with kinky hair Trucking: strolling V and X: five-and-ten-cent store West Hell: another suburb of Hell, worse than the original What’s on the rail for the lizard?: suggestion for moral turpitude Whip it to the red: beat your head until it is bloody Woofing: aimless talk Young suit: ill-fitting, too small Your likker told you: misguided behavior Zigaboo: a Negro Zoot suit with the reet pleat: Harlem style suit, padded shoulders, 43-inch trousers at the knee with small cuffs, high waistline


Zora Neale Hurston - Story In Harlem Slang (1942)

Wait till I light up my coal-pot and I’ll tell you about this Zigaboo called Jelly. Well, all right now. He was a sealskin brown and papa-tree-top-tall. Skinny in the hips and solid built for speed. He was born with this rough-dried hair, but when he laid on the grease and pressed it down overnight with his stocking-cap, it looked just like that righteous moss, and had so many waves you got sea-sick from looking. Solid, man, solid!His mama named him Marvel, but after a month on Lenox Avenue, he changed all that to Jelly. How come? Well, he put it in the street that when it came to filling that long-felt need, sugarcuring the ladies’ feelings, he was in a class by himself and nobody knew his name, so he had to tell ‘em. “It must be Jelly, ‘cause jam don’t shake.” Therefore, his name was Jelly. That was what was on his sign. The stuff was there and it was mellow. Whenever he was challenged by a hard-head or a frail eel on the right of his title he would eye-ball the idol-breaker with a slice of ice and put on his ugly-laugh, made up of scorn and pity, and say: “Youse just dumb to the fact, baby. If you don’t know what you talking ‘bout, you better ask Granny Grunt. I wouldn’t mislead you, baby. I don’t need to� not with the help I got.” Then he would give the Pimp’s sign, and percolate on down the Avenue. You can’t go behind a fact like that.So this day he was airing out on the Avenue. It had to be late afternoon, or he would not have been out of bed. All you did by rolling out early was to stir your stomach up. That made you hunt for more dishes to dirty. The longer you slept, the less you had to eat. But you can’t collar nods all day. No matter how long you stay in bed, and how quiet you keep, sooner or later that big gut is going to reach over and grab that little one and start to gnaw. That’s confidential right from the Bible. You got to get out on the beat and collar yourself a hot.So Jelly got into his zoot suit with the reet pleats and got out to skivver around and do himself some good. At 132nd Street, he spied one of his colleagues on the opposite sidewalk, standing in front of a café. Jelly figured that if he bull-skated just right, he might confidence Sweet Back out of a thousand on a plate. Maybe a shot of scrap-iron or a reefer. Therefore, Jelly took a quick backward look at his shoe soles to see how his leather was holding out. The way he figured it after the peep was that he had plenty to get across and maybe do a little more cruising besides. So he stanched out into the street and made the crossing.“Hi there, Sweet Back!” he exploded cheerfully. “Gimme some skin!”“Lay de skin on me, pal!” Sweet Back grabbed Jelly’s outstretched hand and shook hard. “Ain’t seen you since the last time, Jelly. What’s cookin’?”“Oh, just like de bear� I ain’t nowhere. Like de bear’s brother, I ain’t no further. Like de bear’s daughter� ain’t got a quarter,”Right away, he wished he had not been so honest. Sweet Back gave him a top-superior, cut-eye look. Looked at Jelly just like a showman looks at an ape. Just as far above Jelly as fried chicken is over branch water.“Cold in hand, hunh?” He talked down to Jelly. “A red hot pimp like you say you is, ain’t got no business in the barrel. Last night when I left you, you was beating up your gums and broadcasting about how hot you was. Just as hot as July-jam, you told me. What you doing cold in hand?”“Aw, man, can’t you take a joke? I was just beating up my gums when I said I was broke. How can I be broke when I got de best woman in Harlem? If I ask her for a dime, she’ll give me a ten


dollar bill; ask her for drink of likker, and she’ll buy me a whiskey still. If I’m lying, I’m flying!”“Gar, don’t hang out dat dirty washing in my back yard! Didn’t I see you last night with dat beat chick, scoffing a hot dog? Dat chick you had was beat to de heels. Boy, you ain’t no good for what you live.”“If you ain’t lying now, you flying. You ain’t got de first thin. You ain’t got nickel one.”Jelly threw back the long skirt of his coat and rammed his hand down into his pants pocket. “Put your money where your mouth is!” he challenged, as he mock-struggled to haul out a huge roll. “Back your crap with your money. I bet you five dollars!”Sweet Back made the same gesture of hauling out nonexistent money.“I been raised in the church. I don’t bet, but I’ll doubt you. Five rocks!”“I thought so!” Jelly crowed, and hurriedly pulled his empty hand out of his pocket. “I knowed you’d back up when I drawed my roll on you.”“You ain’t drawed no roll on me, Jelly. You ain’t drawed nothing but your pocket. You better stop dat boogerbooing. Next time I’m liable to make you do it.” There was a splinter of regret in his voice. If Jelly really had had some money, he might have staked him, Sweet Back, to a hot. Good Southern cornbread with a piano on a platter. Oh, well! The right broad would, or might, come along.“Who boogerbooing?” Jelly snorted. “Jig, I don’t have to. Talking about me with a beat chick scoffing a hot dog! You must of not seen ,me, ‘cause last night I was riding round in a Yellow Cab, with a yellow gal, drinking yellow likker and spending yellow money. Tell ‘em ‘bout me, tell ‘em!”“Git out of my face, Jelly! Dat broad I seen you with wasn’t no pe-ola. She was one of them coal-scuttle blondes with hair just as close to her head as ninety-nine is to a hundred. She look-ted like she had seventy-five pounds of clear bosom, guts in her feet, and she look-ted like six months in front and nine months behind. Buy you a whiskey still! Dat broad couldn’t make the down pay-ment on a pair of sox.”“Sweet Back, you fixing to talk out of place.” Jelly stiffened.“If you trying to jump salty, Jelly, that’s your mammy.”“Don’t play in de family, Sweet Back. I don’t play de dozens. I done told you.”“Who playing de dozens? You trying to get your hips up on your shoulders ‘cause I said you was with a beat broad. One of them lam blacks.”“Who? Me? Long as you been knowing me, Sweet Back, you ain’t never seen me with nothing but pe-olas. I can get any frail eel I want to. How come I’m up here in New York? You don’t know, do you? Since youse dumb to the fact, I reckon I’ll have to make you hep. I had to leave from down south’cause Miss Anne used to worry me so bad to go with me. Who, me? Man, I don’t deal in no coal. Know what I tell ‘em? If they’s white, they’s right! If they’s yellow, they’s mellow! If they’s brown, they can stick around. But if they come black, they better git way back! Tell ‘em bout me!”“Aw, man, you trying to show your grandma how to milk ducks. Best you can do is to confidence some kitchen-mechanic out of a dime or two. Me, I knocks de pad with them cack-broads up on Sugar Hill, and fills ‘em full of melody. Man, I’m quick death and easy judgment. Youse just a home-boy, Jelly. Don’t try to follow me.”“Me follow you! Man, I come on like the Gang Busters, and go off like The March of Time! If dat ain’t so, God is gone to Jersey City and you know He wouldn’t be messing ‘round a place like that.Know what my woman done? We hauled off and went to church last Sunday, and when they passed ‘round the plate for the penny collection, I throwed in a dollar. De man looked at me real


hard for dat. Dat made my woman mad, so she called him back and throwed in a twenty dollar bill! Told him to take dat and go! Dat’s what he got for looking at me ‘cause I throwed in a dol-lar.”“Jelly, de wind may blow and de door may slam; dat what you shooting ain’t worth a damn!”Jelly slammed his hand in his bosom as if to draw a gun. Sweet Back did the same.“If you wants to fight, Sweet Back, the favor is in me.”“I was deep-thinking then, Jelly. It’s a good thing I ain’t short-tempered. ‘T’aint nothing to you, nohow. You ain’t hit me yet.”Both burst into a laugh and changed from fighting to lounging poses.“Don’t get too yaller on me, Jelly. You liable to get hurt some day.”“You over-sports your hand your ownself. Too blamed astorperious. I just don’t pay you no mind. Lay de skin on me!”They broke their handshake hurriedly, because both of them looked up the Avenue and saw the same thing. It was a girl and they both remembered that it was Wednesday afternoon. All of the domestics off for the afternoon with their pay in their pockets. Some of them bound to be hungry for love. That meant a dinner, a shot of scrap-iron, maybe room rent and a reefer or two. Both went into the pose and put on the look.“Big stars falling!” Jelly said out loud when she was in hearing distance. “It must be just before day!”“Yeah, man!” Sweet Back agreed. “Must be a recess in Heaven� pretty angel like that out on the ground.”The girl drew abreast of them, reeling and rocking her hips.“I’d walk clear to Diddy-Wah-Diddy to get a chance to speak to a pretty lil’ ground-angel like that” Jelly went on.“Aw, man, you ain’t willing to go very far. Me, I’d go slap to Ginny-Gall, where they eat cow-rump, skin and all.”The girl smiled, so Jelly set his hat and took the plunge.“Baby,” he crooned, “what’s on de rail for de lizard?”The girl halted and braced her hips with her hands. “A Zigaboo down in Georgy, where I come from, asked a woman that one time and the judge told him ‘ninety days.’”“Georgy!” Sweet Back pretended to be elated. “Where ‘bouts in Georgy is you from? Delaware?”“Delaware?” Jelly snorted. “My people! My people! Free schools and dumb jigs! Man, how you going to put Delaware in Georgy? You ought to know dat’s in Maryland.”“Oh, don’t try to make out youse no northerner, you! Youse from right down in ‘Bam your own-self!” The girl turned on Jelly.“Yeah, I’m from there and I aims to stay from there.”“One of them Russians, eh?” the girl retorted. “Rushed up here to get away from a job of work.”That kind of talk was not leading towards the dinner table.“But baby!” Jelly gasped. “Dat shape you got on you! I bet the Coca Cola Company is paying you good money for the patent!”The girl smiled with pleasure at this, so Sweet Back jumped in.“I know youse somebody swell to know. Youse real people. You grins like a regular fellow.” He gave her his most killing look and let it simmer in. “These dickty jigs round here tries to smile. S’pose you and me go inside the café here and grab a hot?”“You got any money?” the girl asked, and stiffened like a ramrod. “Nobody ain’t pimping on me. You dig me?”


“Aw, now, baby!”“I seen you two mullet-heads before. I was uptown when Joe Brown had you all in the go-long last night. Dat cop sure hates a pimp! All he needs to see is the pimps’ salute, and he’ll out with his night-stick and whip your head to the red. Beat your head just as flat as a dime!” She went off into a great blow of laughter.“Oh, let’s us don’t talk about the law. Let’s talk about us,” Sweet Back persisted. “You going in-side with me to holler ‘let one come flopping! One come grunting! Snatch one from de rear!’”“Naw indeed!” the girl laughed harshly. “You skillets is trying to promote a meal on me. But it’ll never happen, brother. You barking up the wrong tree. I wouldn’t give you air if you was stopped up in a jug. I’m not putting out a thing. I’m just like the cemetery� I’m not putting out, I’m taking in! Dig?”“I’ll tell you like the farmer told the potato� plant you now and dig you later.”The girl made a movement to switch on off. Sweet Back had not dirtied a plate since the day be-fore. He made a weak but desperate gesture.“Trying to snatch my pocketbook, eh?” she blazed. Instead of running, she grabbed hold of Sweet Back’s draping coattail and made a slashing gesture. “How much split you want back here? If your feats don’t hurry up and take you ‘way from here, you’ll ride away. I’ll spread my lungs all over New York and call the law. Go ahead, Bedbug! Touch me! And I’ll holler like a pretty white woman!”The boys were ready to flee, but she turned suddenly and rocked on off with her ear-rings snap-ping and her heels popping.“My people! My people!” Sweet Back sighed.“I know you feel chewed,” Jelly said, in an effort to make it appear that he had had no part in the fiasco.“Oh, let her go,” Sweet Back said magnanimously. “When I see people without the periodical principles they’s supposed to have, I just don’t fool with ‘em. What I want to steal her old pocket-book with all the money I got? I could buy a beat chick like her and give her away. I got money’s mammy and Grandma change. One of my women, and not the best one I got neither, is buying me ten shag suits at one time.”He glanced sidewise at Jelly to see if he was convincing. But Jelly’s thoughts were far away. He was remembering those full, hot meals he had left back in Alabama to seek wealth and splendor in Harlem without working. He had even forgotten to look cocky and rich.1942


Zora Neale Hurston - Characteristics of Negro Expression (1934) <excerpts>

Will To Adorn

The will to adorn is the second most notable characteristic in Negro expression. Perhaps his idea of ornament does not attempt to meet conventional standards, but it satisfies the soul of its creator. In this respect the American Negro has done wonders to the English language. It has often been stated by etymologists that the Negro has introduced no African words to the language. This is true, but it is equally true that he has made over a great part of the tongue to his liking and has his revision accepted by the ruling class. No one listening to a Southern white man talk could deny this. Not only has he softened and toned down strongly consonated words like “aren’t” to “aint” and the like, he has made new consonanted words out of old feeble elements. Examples of this are “hamshanked,” “battle-hammed,” “double-teen,” “bodaciously,” “muffle-jawed.” But the Negro’s greatest contribution to the language is: (1) the use of metaphor and simile; (2) the use of the double descriptive; (3) the use of verbal nouns.

1. Metaphor and Simile

One at a time, like lawyers going to That’s a rope.

heaven. Cloakers- deceivers.

You sho is propaganda. Regular as pig-tracks.

Sobbing hearted. Mule blood- black molasses.

I’ll beat you till: (a) rope like okra, Syndicating- gossiping.

(b) slack like lime, (c) smell like onions. Flambeaux - cheap cafe (lighted by flambeaux).

Fatal for naked. To put yo’self on de ladder.

Kyting along.

That’s a lynch.

2. The Double Descriptive

High-tall Hot-boiling.

Little-tee-ninchy (tiny). Chop-axe.

Low-down. Sitting-chairs.

Top-superior. De watch wall.

Sham-polish. Speedy-hurry.

Lady-people. More great and more better.

Kill-dead.

3. Verbal Nouns

She features somebody I know. Jooking- playing piano or guitar as it is

Funeralize. done in Jook-houses (houses of ill-fame).

Sense me into it. Uglying away.

Puts the shamery on him. I wouldn’t scorn my name all up on you.

‘Taint everybody you kin confidence. Bookooing (beaucoup) around- showing off.

I wouldn’t friend with her.


Nouns from Verbs

Won’t stand a broke. That is such a compliment.

She won’t take a listen. That’s a lynch.

He won’t stand straightening.

The stark, trimmed phrases of the Occident seem too bare for the voluptuous child of the sun, hence the adornment. It arises out of the same impulse as the wearing of jewelry and the mak-ing of sculpture- the urge to adorn. On the walls of the homes of the average Negro one always finds a glut of gaudy calendars, wall pockets, and advertising lithographs. The sophisticated white man or Negro would tolerate none of these, even if they bore a likeness to the Mona Lisa. No commercial art for decoration. Nor the calendar, nor the advertisement spoils the picture for this lowly man. He sees the beauty in spite of the declaration of the Portland Cement Works or the butcher’s announcement. I saw in Mobile a room in which there was an over-stuffed mohair living-room suite, an imitation mahog-any bed and chifferobe, a console victrola. The walls were gaily papered with Sunday supplements of the Mobile Register. There were seven calendars and three wall pockets. One of them was deco-rated with a lace doily. The mantel-shelf was covered with a scarf of deep home-made lace, looped up with a huge bow of pink crepe paper. Over the door was a huge lithograph showing the Treaty of Versailles being signed with a Waterman fountain pen. It was grotesque, yes. But it indicated the desire for beauty. And decorating a decoration, as in the case of the doily on the gaudy wall pocket, did not seem out of place to the hostess. The feeling back of such an act is that there can never be enough of beauty, let alone too much. Perhaps she is right. We each have our standards of art, and thus are we all interested parties and so unfit to pass judgement upon the art concepts of others. Whatever the Negro does of his own volition he embellishes. His religious service is for the greater part excellent prose poetry. Both prayers and sermons are tooled and polished until they are true works of art. The supplication is forgotten in the frenzy of creation. The prayer of the white man is considered humorous in its bleakness. The beauty of the Old Testament does not exceed that of a Negro prayer.

Dialect

If we are to believe the majority of writers of Negro dialect and the burnt-cork artists, Negro speech is a weird thing, full of “ams,” and “Ises.” Fortunately we don’t have to believe them. We may go directly to the Negro and let him speak for himself. I know that I run the risk of being damned as an infidel for declaring that nowhere can be found the Negro who asks “am it?” nor yet his brother who announces “Ise uh gwinter.” He exists only for a certain type of writers and performers. Very few Negroes, educated or not, use a clear clipped “I.” It verges more or less upon “Ah.” I think the lip form is responsible for this to a great extent. By experiment the reader will find that a sharp “I’ is very much clearer with a thin taut lip than with a full soft lip. Like tighten-ing violin strings. If one listens closely one will note too that a word is slurred in one position in the sentence but clearly pronounced in another. This is particularly true of the pronouns. A pronoun as a sub-ject is likely to be clearly enunciated, but slurred as an object. For example: “You better not let me


ketch yuh.” There is a tendency in some localities to add the “h” to “it” and pronounce it “hit.” Prob-ably a vestige of old English. In some localities “if” is “ef.” In story telling “so” is universally the connective. It is used even as an introductory word, at the beginning of a story. In religious expression “and” is used. The trend in stories is to state conclusions in religion, to enumerate. I am mentioning only the most general rules in dialect because there are so many quirks that belong only to certain localities that nothing less than a volume would be adequate.


Storyteller: Faith Ringgold

Objectives Students will: Learn about the art of quiltmaking, and examine the story quilts of Faith Ringgold.Use their knowledge of the Harlem Renaissance to create an artwork.

Materials Images of Faith Ringgold’s quilts (Note: see the book, Faith Ringgold: The David C. Driskell Series of African American Art, Vol. 3, included in this kit.) Writing or art supplies

Background Faith Ringgold is a quiltmaker who is known for her “story

quilts.” She grew up in Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance. Her work grapples with many social issues that were prevalent in that period and which continue to be issues today. Although she is primarily know for her textile art, she has also produced many “picture quilts”, or paintings of quilts, that have met with critical acclaim.

Introduction Provide some background information on Faith Ringgold and her story quilts. Tell the students that Faith Ringgold was born in New York. She grew up in Harlem, where her father was a minister and her mother was a dress-designer. Her great-great grandmother was a Southern slave who worked on a plantation, and she passed the practice of quilt-making to her grandchildren.

Faith Ringgold was trained in art at the City College of New York. Although her background was in classical Western Art, her primary medium is quilt-making, a folk-art that has strong roots in the era of slavery. She is well-known for her Story Quilts, which relate tales of urban life and often have an underlying social commentary on feminist and African-American issues. Many of her works are featured in prominent museums and art galleries, such as: Jazz Stories: 2004, Tar Beach, and the Crown Heights Story Quilt.

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Development Show the students an example of Faith Ringgold’s work, such as the Street Story Quilt or the Crown Heights’ Story Quilt. Images of Faith Ringgold’s artwork can be found in the book Dancing at the Louvre: Faith Ringgold’s French Collection and Other Quilts.

Discuss how textile art can be used to relate a narrative, and how this art form can be used to document culture:

How are patterns used? What do the colors, textures, and construction of a quilt tell you about a culture or period in history?What kind of stories can be told with a quilt? Why is a quilt a good vehicle for a narrative?What types of issues does Faith Ringgold explore in her quilts? What types of characters or animals does she use to convey her stories?

Ask students to make a list of issues that were important during the Harlem Renaissance period.

Examples:The lack of African-American recognition in the arts and other intellectual disciplines. Lower economic class of slave immigrants. Political disenfranchisement of minority groups. Difference between “high” art and “low” art. Women in the working-class.

Discussion:

Are the issues that people faced during the Harlem Renais-sance still relevant today? What kind of new issues do we face in the world today?Why does Faith Ringgold focus on feminism and African-American topics in her work?

Activity Have students design one square of a patchwork quilt on a topic that is relevant to the Harlem Renaissance.

Students may choose a person, a place, or an idea. If necessary, have students draw names of Harlem Renais-sance artists from a hat so that each square is different. The patchwork square can be described in writing, or de-signed with paper or cloth art supplies.

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Activity Extension Have students design a square for a patchwork quilt that por-trays a person from the Harlem Renaissance and uses BOTH art and narrative. Students may write a short journal entry in the voice of the person they have chosen, which can be made part of each square.

Connect the squares to form a class quilt. Students in the class can “perform” the quilt by reading their narratives one after another.



The next few pages include materials that may be used with the Faith Ringgold: Storyteller lesson plan. Included is a photo of Faith Ringgold, and images of her story quilts Crown Heights Story Quilt and Who’s Afraid of Aunt Jemima.

Faith Ringgold began her artistic career more than 35 years ago as a painter. Today, she is best known for her painted story quilts -- art that combines painting, quilted fabric and storytelling. She has exhibited in major museums in the USA, Europe, South America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. She is in the permanent collection of many museums including the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and The Museum of Modern Art. Her first book, Tar Beach was a Caldecott Honor Book and winner of the Coretta Scott King Award for Illustration, among numerous other honors. She has written and illustrated eleven children’s books. She has received more than 75 awards, fellowships, citations and honors, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Fellowship for painting, two National Endowment for the Arts Awards and seventeen honorary doctorates, one of which is from her alma mater, The City College of New York.

-from www.faithringgold.com

Faith Ringgold (1930- )

Quiltmaker, writer, storyteller. Born in Harlem, NY.


Crown Heights Story Quilt, Faith Ringgold, 1994.

Who’s Afraid of Aunt Jemima, Faith Ringgold, 1983.


James VanDerZee The Studio Museum in Harlem. Harlem Renaissance: Art of Black America, Abradale Press/Harry N. Abrams, Inc., NY, NY, 1987.

VanDerZee, James. Various Portraits, Library of Congress Catalog, Prints.

Westerbeck, Colin. The James VanDerZee Studio, The Art Institute of Chicago, 2004.

Zora Neale Hurston Hurston, Zora Neale. The Complete Stories, Harper Perennial, NY, NY, 1996.

Lewis, Daniel Levering. The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader, Penguin Books, NY, NY, 1994.

Huggins, Nathan Irvin. Voices from the Harlem Renaissance, Oxford University Press, NY, NY, 1995.

Faith Ringgold Cameron, Dan. Dancing at the Louvre: Faith Ringgold’s French Collection and Other Story Quilts, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1998.

Ringgold, Faith, www. faithringgold.com.

Additional Resources*Not included in this kit


Massachusetts Arts Curriculum Framework

This packet has been designed with the following organizational structure from the Massachusetts Arts Curriculum Frameworks as a guide.:

CORE CONCEPT: Learning in, through and about the arts develops understanding of the creative process and appreciation of the importance of creative work.

Strand I: Creating and Performing Lifelong learners: LS 1. Use the arts to express ideas, feelings, and beliefs. LS 2. Acquire and apply the essential skills of each art form.

Strand II: Thinking and Responding Lifelong learners: LS 3. Communicate how they use imaginative and reflective thinking during all phases of creating and performing. LS 4. Respond analytically and critically to their own work and that of others.

Strand III: Connecting and Contributing Lifelong learners: LS 5. Make the connections between the arts and other disciplines. LS 6. Investigate the cultural and historical contexts of the arts. LS 7. Explore the relationship between arts, media and technology. LS 8. Contribute to the community’s cultural and artistic life.

It was our goal to provide examples that will help you begin exploring the Harlem Renaissance through an interdisciplinary approach. We hope that you will build upon each of the suggested ideas and activities as you introduce the Harlem Renaissance to your students.

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