Small Group Socratic Seminar
The Harlem Renaissance (aka The New Negro Movement)
The Harlem Renaissance was the popular title for a time of African American cultural flowering that
spanned the 1920s, 30s, and beyond. At the time it was called the “New Negro Movement” and
though it was centered on Harlem, New York, the movement encompassed writers, artists, poets, and
musicians from many different cities and areas across the country. The movement called for a “new
negro,” one who was determined to transform the stereotypical image of black Americans away from
the image of inferior ex-slaves, toward that of proud icons for the culture.
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Influential NNR writers include Gwendolyn Brooks, of Chicago’s South Side, who won the
Pulitzer Prize for Annie Allen, a poetry collection that was published in 1950.
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Frank Davis, was famous for his poetry, as well as his activism in politics as a community
organizer in Chicago.
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Langston Hughes was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form jazz
poetry, and is perhaps one of the most famous NNR writers from Harlem.
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Zora Neale Hurston wrote four novels and more than 50 published short stories, plays, and
essays; she is best known for her 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. Between living in
Harlem and Florida, during the 1930s, she lived in Westfield, New Jersey, where Langston
Hughes was a neighbor.
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Claude McKay was a Jamaican-American writer and poet. In 1928, he published his most
famous novel, Home to Harlem, which depicted street life in Harlem, and which had a major
impact on black intellectuals in the Caribbean, West Africa, and Europe.
Instructions: Read through the text at least two times.
1. As a full group, have one person read through the whole text one time rather quickly to get a
sense of what it is all about.
2. Next, read through each text as you answer the questions for that poem. Be sure to discuss
the meaning & answers to the questions as a group.
3. All answers should be in complete sentences and in each of your own words. Do not copy
directly from the text or from other students.
The Weary Blues & How it Feels to Be Colored Me
1. How do the writers feel about the music they hear?
2. How is jazz described? The perfomers?
3. What techniques and words do the authors use to help you share the musician’s feelings?
4. How do the words used indicate the cultural origins of jazz and blues and their place in
American life? (To answer this question completely, look in your book, Chapter 14, Section 3.
Look specifically at the sections titled “Music” and “Harlem Renaissance.”)
kitchenette building & Visitors to the Black Belt
5. What feelings do these poems express?
6. What does the Black Belt and living in kitchenettes represent for the writers?
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Negro & except from Chicago’s Congo
7. Compare and contrast the experiences for blacks in Africa and in Chicago.
8. What is the African-American experience according to these poems? (i.e. What is it like to be
African-American?)
If We Must Die, Harlem & I, Too
9. What is the dream deferred? What happens to it when it is deferred?
10. How are fighting back (If We Must Die) and the exploding of a dream (Harlem) similar?
11. Do these poems hold out any hope for the future of African-Americans?
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Overall Questions: These questions ask you to go beyond the text and evaluate the claims made by
the text in light of your own thoughts and beliefs.
12. Is it possible to be mistreated in society and still have pride?
13. Most of these poems were written between the 1920s and 1950s. Do they still accurately
represent some African-Americans today?
14. Do you think these poems/excerpts could represent other groups today? Explain how.