Class Updates: 2/27/13 and 2/28/13

Yesterday (2/27/13) we read four documents involving Marcus Garvey. There was a set of questions to go along with each reading. Marcus Garvey created the UNIA which prepared African Americans to leave; he wanted all African Americans to return to their “motherland” or homeland of Africa. Marcus’s plan differed greatly from African American leaders who wanted everyone to be together, while Marcus wanted everyone in their correct homeland. Today in class (2/28/13) we read several poems by Langston Hughes, these poems described life in the South. The poems describe how awful life is in the South with things like Jim Crow Laws and lynching going on, they describe how great life would be in the North.  We also listened to several songs by Duke Ellington that were made during the Harlem Renaissance, these included: East St. Louis Toodle-oo, The Mooche, and Mood Indiso. These songs were created when the Africans ended up in Harlem. This all started during “The Great Migration” when African Americans left the South to move to big cities in the North like Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia, Cleveland, and New York City. They left due to the racism and discrimination of the South and because of the job opportunities available in the North. The African Americans that went to New York City ended up in Harlem, and this is when the “Harlem Renaissance” developed in the 1920s and 1930s.