Aims: to give students information about Harlem Renaissance; to emphasize the importance of Harlem Renaissance in Afro-American literature; to teach students the influence of Harlem Renaissance. Objectives

2. Jessie Redmon Fauset (1882–1961): Jessie Redmon Fauset started her career writing for the NAACP’s magazine, The Crisis, that was established by W.E.B. Du Bois. After some years, she became the magazine’s literary editor, working side by side with other writers like Anne Spencer, Alice Dunbar Nelson, Arna Bontemps, and Gwendolyn Bennett. Her 1st novel, There is Confusion (1924), got widespread acclaim.
3. James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938): James Weldon Johnson was an author and activist best identified for his literary work, “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” that was set to music by his brother and adopted as the official song of the NAACP in 1919.
4. James Langston Hughes (1901–1967): One of the most famous poets of the Harlem Renaissance movement, James Langston Hughes wrote his 1st book of poetry, The Weary Blues, in 1926. Hughes often contributed to the National Urban League’s magazine, Opportunity. Even though he mostly wrote poetry, he wrote essays too, including a powerful piece named as “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” (1926).

Sculptors, painters and printmakers were key contributors to the Harlem
Renaissance movement. Aaron Douglas, that is typically called as “the father of African -American art”, was a very important figure within the movement, outlined a contemporary visual language representing black Americans in a very new light. In his cycle of 4 murals, “Aspects of Negro Life”, commissioned by the Public Works of Art Project to imbelish the section of the New York Public library intended for analysis into black culture, he combined imagery from African-American history with scenes from modern life, fusing the influences of African sculpture, jazz music and geometric abstraction. Douglas was influenced by modernist movements like Cubism, and he and another artists found a good supply of inspiration in West Africa, specifically the sculptures and masks from Benin, Congo and Senegal. They viewed this art as a link to their African heritage.

Many artists turned to the art of antiquity, particularly Egyptian sculpture. One of these artists is Meta Warrick Fuller. Her sculpture Ethiopia (1921), was inspired by the reign of the Pharaohs in ancient Egypt, and is widely thought as the primary Pan-African American work of art. Her sculpture was an allegory for the musical and industrial contributions of African Americans to the development of US.

TASKS
1.Watch the video about the Harlem Renaissance and summarize it
https://youtu.be/90PTxdsqfsA?t=36

2.Look at the word search puzzle and find the names of Afro-American authors