Black History: Writers of Color Posters & Prints, “J...-N...-”

Harriet Jacobs
Georgia Douglas Johnson
James Weldon Johnson
Elizabeth Keckley

Nella Larsen
Alain LeRoy Locke
Audre Lorde

Harriet Jacobs
b. 1813; Edenton, NC
d. 3-7-1897; Washington, DC

Poster Text: Incidents in the Life of A Slave Girl, a book by former slave Harriet Jacobs, was published in 1861. It was the first slave narrative written by a black woman. Jacobs was born and grew up a slave. She was abused repeatedly by her owners, and she spent seven years hidden in an attic to escape him. Later, she fled to be with her children and lived as a runaway slave. She was eventually bought by a woman who gave Harriet her freedom. This picture here shows a group of former slaves near Cumberland Landing, Virginia, in 1862.

Quote Appearing on This Print:
“The bill of sale!? Those words struck me like a blow. So I was sold at last! A human being sold in the free city of New York!... I well know the value of that bit of paper, but much as I love freedom, I do not like to look upon it. I am deeply grateful to the generous friend who procured it, but I despise the miscreant who demanded payment for what never rightfully belonged to him or his.”

The quote refers to Cornelia Willis, her employer and friend, buying her freedom for $300 in 1852.

FYI - Jacobs published her story with the name ‘Linda Brent’.

• more History Through Literature posters

Georgia Douglas Johnson
b. 9-10-1880; Atlanta, GA
d. 5-14-1966; Washington, DC

Georgia Douglas Johnson was a teacher, poet and playwright, noted also for her “Saturday Salons” that she hosted for forty years. Here her friends, such as Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, Anne Spencer, Richard Bruce Nugent, Alain Locke, Jessie Redmon Fauset, Angelina Weld Grimke and Eulalie Spence “could freely discuss politics and personal opinions.” Johnson called her home “Half Way House” for friends traveling through Washington, DC.

• Harlem Poets Poster Set

Author James Weldon Johnson Published First Book of Poetry in 1917, Photographic Print

James Weldon Johnson
b. 6-17-1871; Jacksonville, FL
d. 6-26-1938; Maine (car accident)

James Weldon Johnson was an author, educator, lawyer, politician, diplomat, critic, journalist, poet, anthologist, and songwriter, an early civil rights organizer and activist.

James Weldon Johnson quotes ~
• “Young man, young man, your arm's too short to box with God.”
• “The final measure of the greatness of all peoples is the amount and standard of the literature and all they have produced. The world does not know that a people is great until that people produces great literature and art.”
• “Labor is the fabled magician's wand, the philosopher's stone, and the cap of good fortune.”

Behind the Scenes or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House by Elizabeth Keckley (no commerically available poster)

Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley (Keckly)
b. February 1818; Virginia
d. May 1907; Washington, DC

A former slave who became a successful seamstress, Elizabeth Keckley, authored her autobiography, Behind the Scenes or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House, about her time as Mary Todd Lincoln's personal modiste (dressmaker) and confidante.

Nella Larsen

Nella Larsen
née Walker
b. 4-13-1891; Chicago, IL
d. 3-30-1964; Brooklyn

Nella Larsen wrote two novels and several short stories that were critically acclaimed.

Nella Larsen quotes ~
• “What are friends for, if not to help bear our sins?”
• “Authors do not supply imaginations, they expect their readers to have their own, and to use it.”
• “She hated to admit that money was the most serious difficulty. Knowing full well that it was important, she nevertheless rebelled at the unalterable truth that it could influence her actions, block her desires. A sordid necessity to be grappled with.”

Alain Leroy Locke, Photographic Print

Alain LeRoy Locke
b. 9-13-1885; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
d. 6-9-1954; NYC

Philosopher Alain LeRoy Locke an educator and patron of the arts best known for his writings on and about the Harlem Renaissance. Called by some the “Father of the Harlem Renaissance”, he was a motivating force in keeping the energy and passion of the Movement at the forefront.

Locke was the first African American Rhodes Scholar and chairman of the Howard University philosophy department.

Alain LeRoy Locke quotes ~
• “The pulse of the Negro world has begun to beat in Harlem.”
• “It must be increasingly recognized that the Negro has already made very substantial contributions, not only in his folk-art, music especially, which has always found appreciation, but in larger, though humbler and less acknowledged ways. For generations the Negro has been the peasant matrix of that section of America which has most undervalued him, and here he has contributed not only materially in labor and in social patience, but spiritually as well. The South has unconsciously absorbed the gift of his folk-temperament. In less than half a generation it will be easier to recognize this, but the fact remains that a leaven of humor, sentiment, imagination and tropic nonchalance has gone into the making of the South from a humble, unacknowledged source.” The New Negro, 1920
• “. . . not by way of the forced and worn formula of Romaticism, but throught the closeness of an imagination that has never broken kinship with nature. Art must accept such gifts, and revaluate the giver. ”

• The Philosophy of Alain Locke: Harlem Renaissance and Beyond

Audre Lorde
b. 2-18-1934; NYC, NY
d. 11-17-1992; St. Croix (breast cancer)

Writer and activist Audre Lorde was the State Poet of New York from 1991 to 1992.

Audre Lorde quotes ~
• “For women . . . poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of light within which we can predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action. Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives.”
• “Poetry is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before.”
• “. . . it is through poetry that we give name to those ideas which are — until the poem — nameless and formless, about to be birthed, but already felt.”

Claude McKay, Historic Print

Festus Claudius McKay
b. 9-15-1889; Jamaica
d. 5-22-1948 (heart attack)

Writer and poet Claude McKay attended Tuskegee Institute and Kansas State University after leaving Jamaica in 1912.

McKay became race conscious with his coming to the US and advocated full civil liberties as one of the most militant voices of the Harlem Renaissance.

• Complete Poems, Claude McKay

Toni Morrison
b. 2-18-1931; Lorain, OH

Opera singer Leontyne Price once said of her friend Toni Morrison: “She paints pictures with words. And reading or hearing those words is like listening to music.” The idea of comparing a book to a piece of music man seem stange at first. But people have always talked about Toni Morrison's unique and beautiful “voice.” By this they mean her almost magical way of making words on the printed page come alive in the reader's imagination, so that it sometimes seems as though she or her characters are speaking directly to you.When she was attending Howard University, Toni met the man she would later marry, a Jamaican student named Harold Morrison. The marriage ended in 1964, leaving her with two sons to raise on her own. She took a job as a textbook editor in New York, and began work on her first novel, “The Bluest Eye.” That was followed by “Sula” – a tragic story of two black women in Ohio. But it was her third novel, “Song of Solomon,” that first brought Toni Morrison widespread auccess and acclaim. In 1988, she won the Pulitzer Prize for her novel “Beloved.” And in 1993, she became the first African American to receive literature's highest award: the Nobel Prize. Toni Morrison's books have been praised by readers and critics for their beautiful language, vivid descriptions, and unusual combination of magic, superstition and realism. Her stories tell of the ancient struggles between men and women, between blacks and whites, between hatred and love. But most of all they tell about people – people whose lives had for too long been overlooked, and whose stories had for too many years been left untold. ...

• more Toni Morrison posters
• more Outstanding Contemporary African Americans posters
• Banned Books and Authors

Willard Motley, Historic Print

Willard Motley
b. 7-14-1909; Chicago, IL
d. 3-4-1965; Mexico City

Willard Motley wrote for Works Progress Adminstration (WPA) Federal Writers Project, was hired by Robert Sengstacke Abbott to write The Defenders newspaper “Bud Says” column (Bud Billikin Parade & Picnic), helped found the Hull House Magazine with Jane Addams, and wrote several novels. His first novel, Knock on Any Door, was made into a movie starring Humphrey Bogart.

Willard Motley quote ~
• “My race is the human race.”