Harlem Renaissance Artists, Aaron Douglas and Lois Mailou Jones

Once riding in old Baltimore,
Heart filled, head filled with glee,
I saw a Baltimorean
Keep looking straight at me.
Now I was eight and very small,
And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out
His tongue, and called me, “Nigger.”
I saw the whole of Baltimore
From May until December;
Of all the things that happened there
That’s all I remember.

Incident
Countee Cullen

Grade Level 8-12
Art • Language Arts • Reading • Social Studies • U.S. History

As students strive to understand history, it is shaped by the information provided in their school curriculum. In African American history there is one main strategy demonstrated that blacks used in the struggle for Equal Rights. That main strategy is the non-violent, marching strategies of Dr. Martin Luther king Jr. The Harlem Renaissance used the arts as a means of “ Breaking the old attitude of “accommodation” to racism, and replaced it with pride in the Black Community. Through the use of books, Internet resources, videos, one can observe the many individual efforts of several Americans, which in retrospect led to, and American era called the Harlem Renaissance.

Rhapsody in Black Art of the Harlem Renaissance

Wonders of the African World

Harlem Renaissance Lesson Plan