Timeline 2 Harlem Renaissance
As the Harlem Renaissance began, African Americans tried to express themselves to claim their identities and give work to display what the term “African American” meant to them. They had to decide how they would do so, many ways to demonstrate the aspects of an African American resulted from the yearning to define who or what exhibits an “African American” after slavery. For example, diction created one way for the African Americans to demonstrate their characteristics, imagery and applying black aesthetics as well. Specifically African Americans wanted to display that they could live daily life the way they wanted without the white race intervening. Zora Neal Hurston provides a literary piece Characteristics of Negro Expression that outlines the ways African Americans began to define who they are. This timeline will display the impact the Harlem Renaissance had on the African Americans.


1919: If We Must Die by Claude McKay in 1919
“If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain”

1919: To the White Fiends by Claude McKay in 1919
“Think you I am not fiend and savage too?
Think you I could not arm me with a gun
And shoot down ten of you for every one
Of my black brothers murdered, burnt by you?
Be not deceived, for every deed you do
I could match – out –match: am I not Afric’s son,”

1920: I Sit and Sew by Alice Moore Dunbar Nelson in 1920
“I sit and sew – my heart aches with desire –
That pageant terrible, that fiercely pouring fire
On wasted fields, and writhing grotesque things
Once men. My soul in pity flings
Appealing cries, yearning only to go
There in that holocaust of hell, those fields of woe –
But – I must sit and sew.”
1925: Incident by Countee Cullen in 1925
“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 that I remember.”

1926: Ballad of the Landlord by Langston Hughes in 1926
“What? You gonna get eviction orders?
You gonna cut off my heat?
You gonna take my furniture and
Throw it in the street?
Um – huh? You talking high and mighty.
Talk on – till you get through.”
You ain’t gonna be able to say a word
If I land my fist on you.”

1925-1927: Sonnet to a Negro in Harlem by Helene Johnson in 1927
"You are disdainful and magnificent-
Your perfect body and your pompous gait,
Your dark eyes flashing solemnly with hate,
Small wonder that you are incompetent
To imitate those whom you so despise-
Your shoulders towering high above the throng,
Your head thrown back in rich, barbaric song,”
1930: Southern Road by Sterling Brown in 1931
“Burner tore his – hunh-
Black heart away;
Burner tore his – hunh-
Black heart away;
Got me life, bebby,
An’ a day.
Gal’s on Fifth Street – hunh-
Son done gone;
Gal’s on Fifth Street – hunh-
Son done gone;
Wife’s in de ward, bebby,
Babe’s not bo’n.”

1934: I Want to be African by Paul Robeson in 1934
“Why disturb him if he is happy in his present state?’ There are two sufficient answers to that; one that he is not happy, except in so far as his natural gaiety of disposition overcomes his circumstances- and the fact that a sick man laughs is surely no reason for not attempting to cure his sickness; and the other is that there is a world-necessity above and beyond his immediate needs. This world – necessity is for an understanding between the nations and peoples which will lead ultimately to the ‘family of nations’ ideal.”