Name: _________________________ Date: _____
The Harlem Renaissance
Directions. Use pgs. 354-358 of the textbook to answer the following questions.
1. People of the Harlem Renaissance. For each of the following , write a sentence
explaining the importance of that person to the development of African American
culture.
A. Marcus Garvey - _he promoted the idea of universal black nationalism and
organized a back to africa movement
_________________________________________
_______________________________________________________
B. Bessie Smith - _american blues singer ( empress of the blues )
___________________________________________
_______________________________________________________
C. Claude McKay - a writer. In his novels he showed ordinary african americans
struggling for dignity and advancement in the face of discrimination and economic
hardships___________________________________________
_______________________________________________________
D. Langston Hughes - _he captured the remarkable diversity of everyday afrian
american life_______________________________________
_______________________________________________________
E. Zora Neale Hurston - _travelled the rural back roads of her native florida
collecting folk tales in books such as mules and
men._____________________________________
_______________________________________________________
2. List three reasons that African Americans left the south and headed north during the
Great Migration.
A. _______segregation_________________________________________
_______
B. ___increase in the spread of racists ideology
_______________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
Name: _________________________ Date: _____
3. How many residents settled in Harlem? What part of the world did the immigrants in
Harlem come from?
_200,000, caribbean islands
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4. Describe two ways that Marcus Garvey differed from Booker T. Washington and
W.E.B. Dubois.
__garvey didn't call for blacks and whites to work together to improve america, he
instead advocated the separation of races.
____________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
5. Which book set the tone for the Harlem Renaissance? How (describe)?
___jean toomers, Cane. it presented african american life and folk culture in all its
richness
____________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________
6. Restate the main idea of Claude McKay’s poem “If We Must Die” in your own words.
___he showed ordinary African American struggling for dignity and advancement in
the face of discrimination and economic
hardships_____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________
____
7. What was a major theme in Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God?
________stereotypical ideas about relationships between men and women empower
men and disempower
women.____________________________________________________
8. What brought an end to the Harlem Renaissance?
The national financial collapse
_______________________________________________
Name: _________________________ Date: _____
9. Summarize the lasting impact that the Harlem Renaissance had on African American
Culture (3-5 sentences)
____________________________________________________________
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