Jacob Lawrence
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Jacob Lawrence was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey on September 7, 1917. He first began to take an intrest in art when he was in his early teens. While he was a teen he enrolled into the Utopia Children's Center. He regularly participated in the Harlem Art Workshop where he was exposed to African American art and african american artists. One artist he meet was Augusta Savage who helped him study art made by african americans and earn scholarships to the American Artists School. In 1930 he painted the series of formats and completed the 41 paintings which were apart of the life of Toussaint L'Ouverture. He continued to paint multiple paintings until he died on June 9, 2000.
The Seamstress Hole in the Clouds The Americas
Duke Ellington
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Duke Ellington was born on April 29, 1899 in Washington, D.C. He played in broadway night clubs as the bandleader of small 10 instrument bands. He became very successful for his love of different sounds and rhythms in his music. Duke appeared on films and radios, and also toured Europe on two occasions during the 1930's. Duke played an important role in the history of jazz music and earned 12 Grammy awards from 1959 till 2000, but he only received nine awards when he was alive. He lived a successful music career of over 50 years until he died on May 24, 1979 where over 12,000 people attended his funeral.
Langston Hughes
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Langston Hughes was born February 1, 1902 in Joplin, Missouri. After he was born his parents divorced and his dad moved to Mexico, while his mom moved around. Since both of his parents were away all the time Langston lived with his grandmother until he was in his early teens when his grandmother died. After the death of his grandmother Langston lived with his mother where they settled down in Missouri. Once he finished high school he stayed a year with his father down in Mexico where he wrote the poem "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" and was published in the Crisis magazine. He then came back to the United States and in 1925 he won first place in the Opportunity magazine literary competition for his poem "The Weary Blues". Langston earned a scholarship to Lincoln University, in Pennsylvania and published his first poetry book called The Weary Blues that was published by Knopf in 1926. Langston wrote many other poems and died on May 22, 1967 in New York City, NY. His ashes were interred beneath the entrance of Arthur Schomburg Center for Research in Black culture in Harlem.
William H. Johnson
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William Henry Johnson was born on March 18, 1901 in the town of Florence, South Carolina. When Johnson was still a child he realized his dream of being an artist but knew that he was the oldest child in his family so he quickly tucked away his dream. Johnson left their small segregated town in South Carolina in 1918 when he was 17 to pursue his dream of being an artist in New York. While he was in New York he enrolled into the National Academy of Design where he met Charles Hawthorne. Hawthorne knew that an african american artist like Johnson in the United States would be hard so Hawthorne raised money and sent him to Paris, France after he graduated in 1926. While Johnson was in Europe he meet many other artists who helped influence his style of work. He also meet his wife Holcha Krake in Europe as well. In 1930 Johnson and his wife moved back to the United States where he was arrested for painting on a local building that became a brothel. After the arrest Johnson and Holcha moved back to Europe. Not long after the move to Europe they left for New York City, New York because of the Nazis and racism. New York was more excepting of Johnson because of the Harlem Renaissance. When he was in New York he became a teacher at the Harlem Community Art Center and continued to paint on his spare time. In 1942 a fire destroyed Johnson's studio, burning everything to ashes and in 1944 his wife died of breast cancer. After his wife's death Johnson continually moved around until he was hospitialized and sent to Central Islip, Long Island, new York where he spent 23 years before he died on May 22, 1967.
Jitterbugs Oil on Burlap Seated Woman in Pink Blouse
Bessie Smith
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Bessie Smith was born on April 15, 1894 in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Her father died soon after she was born, which left her mother to take care of her and her siblings. Im 1906 her mother and two of her brothers died so her and the rest of her siblings had to live with their aunt. Around this time Bessie started performing as a street singer, and in 1912 Smith began performing as a dancer and a singer in the Moses Stokes minstrel show where the member Ma Rainey took Smith under her wing. Rainey gave her some early training and Smith continued to perform in mant theaters and also in a vaudeville circuit. In 1923 Bessie married a man named Jack Gee and in that same year the Columbia Records discovered her. Smith signed a contract with Columbia Records and became very successful. She toured and bought a custom railroad car to make traveling more comfortable. By the end of the 1920's Bessie was the highest paid black performer of her day, and earned the title "Empeross of the Blues". Right when she was at the height of her success her popularity began to die down due to financial issues during the Great Depression and her addiction to alcohol. In 1933 she was rediscovered and began to make new recordings which was brought into the Swing Era. On september 26, 1937 in Clarksdale, Missouri Bessie got into a car crash and refused to go to a "white hospital". She died that same day due to her serious injuries.
Countee Cullen
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Countee Porter Cullen was born on May 30, 1903. No one knows where he was born, but some sources say the he was born most likely either Louisville, Kentucky; Baltimore, Maryland; or New York City, New York. He lost his parents and brother when he was young, so it is believed that Cullen was raised by his grandmother until her death in his teen years. Carolyn Belle and Reverand Frederick A. Cullen then took him in. Reverand Cullen was a conservative minister at the renowned Salen Methodist Episcopal Church in Harlem. In 1918-1921, Cullen attended DeWitt Clinton High School, where he edited the school newspaper. From there, he went on to attend New York University, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1925 and won the Witter Bynner Poetry Prize. That same year, Cullen released his lauded debut volume of poetry, Color. In 1926, he graduated with a master's degree from Harvard University. Afterwards, he joined the editorial staff of Opportunity magazine, penning the column "Dark Tower," which was a review of works from the African-American literati. He was influenced by the works of John Keats, who was Cullen's favorite poet. Also, Percy Bysshe Shelley and A. E. Housman were people who greatly influened Cullen. He relied on traditional European structures and verse, though he incorporated ideas around African-American racial origin and experience in a lot of his work. Upon the publication of additional volumes (Copper Sun and The Ballad of the Brown Girl) in 1927, Cullen became one of the leading figures in the Harlem Renaissance. In the spring of 1928, he married Yolande Du Bois, who was the daughter of famed intellectual W.E.B. Du Bois. However, they divorced in 1930 when Cullen returned to America. In the early 1930s, poetic output was deminished, and Cullen took a job as a high school French teacher. He still continued to write, and he also became the first person to translate Euripide's classical work Medea in 1935. He was also a children's author and playwright as well. Cullen died on January 9, 1946 due to uremia and complications with his blood pressure. He was survived by his second wife, Ida May Roberson. After his death, his legacy lived on. a collection of his poetry was published 1947. It was called On These I Stand: An Anthology of The Best Poems by Countee Cullen. Many schools were also named after Cullen, as well as Harlem's 135th Street Branch library being renamed the Countee Cullen Library. After a period of dormancy, more attention has been paid by scholars to Cullen's life and writing. And Bid Him Sing was a biography published in 2012 by Charles Molesworth.