Skip navigation.

Unit 1: Worlds to Meeting and

Unit 6: Emergence of Modern America

Long Long Road to Harlem

by Deborah Stence

 

Grade 11 American Studies; Grade 11, 12 Harlem Renaissance

Discipline: Integrated American Literature and U.S. History

Lesson Abstract:

Long Long Road to Harlem begins with a far reach back to Nigeria to acquaint students with African cultural roots, presenting a glimpse of how that culture was preserved through generations of captivity, enslavement and sharecropping, then taking them along the journey North to the historic urban celebration of collective creative expression that had been stored for centuries until The Great Migration would restore the identity of its people.

 The Long Long Road to Harlem unit traces the African American culture from its African roots, through slavery and emancipation, and onto the Northern celebration of identity by way of The Harlem Renaissance. Lessons within the unit connect life experiences of Middle Passage captives, plantation slave laborers, sharecroppers, northbound migrants who became city dwellers later in articulating the voice of The New Negro.  Literary and creative visual arts are paired with songs of the time periods to depict thoughts, feelings, values and ideals that sustained the culture and traditions of a sub-culture despite exclusion from and disregard by the general population. Part 1  The Roots of Renaissance lesson takes students back to the narratives of slaves who were kidnapped and stolen from their homeland then shipped overseas and placed into lifelong captivity, pairing those stories with the music of Amistad.  --(Judie Whittaker and Sandy Pekar’s)--The Hollers and Work Songs lesson explores the use of music for keeping pace, maintaining rhythms to make unpleasant work go faster while numbing the mental pain of bondage.) Part 2  So THAT’s Why They Called It Blues teaches the hardships of sharecropping through a short story, “Sisters of the Rain,” stressing the multi-generational effort required to transition toward the urban north. The lesson highlights themes common to the story along with The Blues lyrics of the twentieth century.  Part 3  Welcome to the Great Migration (dev. With Linda Keifer) charts the trip north into the song and dance of city life as the clubs get moving.  Whittaker--Finally the last two lessons (dev. With Judie Whittaker) focus on the connection between visual arts and music through the lives of two renowned men, the painter Jacob Lawrence and photographer James Van Der Zee.)  The Big Idea behind the unit:  How do people manage to preserve their cultural identity despite generations when it is silenced and suppressed?

Roots of Renaissance

VAT Unit 1: Worlds Meeting

Lesson 1:

A five class period experience (45 minute classes)

The first class period: Introduction by Powerpoint Presentation

Questions to be answered by the end of the five segments:

  1. Why is the published slave narrative so important to us?
  2. What are the ways in which the transported captives “took their culture with them?”
  3. Connect to the lesson:  How have your own families brought their culture along with them?

Class period 1:  Introductory Lesson through Powerpoint Presentation

  • Played with background music: Soundtrack of “Amistad” CD
  • access from amazon.com for song samples that can play through by pushing “listen to all” button
  • Go to powerpoint presentation:
  • Study the presentation
  • Go back again to review the questions  
  • Take time for discussion of what answers students have identified so far

Class Periods 2 and 3:

  • Read and discuss the slave narratives of Salih Bilali and Olaudah Equiano
  • Answer the questions presented at the end of the Roots of Renaissance presentation.
  • Discuss the songs from Amistad that were played as background to the powerpoint. Play a minute of each to remind students of what they heard while they studied the presentation.  Have them identify which songs made the most impression and why.

Assignment:

  • Write an epic poem for one of the narratives you have read. (writing will be done for homework so you will have two nights for that assignment.) 
  • Produce a powerpoint of the epic poem that you construct and illustrate with a classmate.  You may send it to my address as attachment so that you can add background music which you have selected previous to class time. 
  • Share epic powerpoints with the class.

Extension Activity:

  • Ask students to present their reactions to the use of background music.
  • Interview family members to find how, when and why their people came to America or to this part of America.  With consideration to their own heritage, have them select appropriate background music for when they report their findings back to class.

Lesson 2:   So THAT’S Why They Called It Blues

The Sharecropper’s Experience through Story and Song (six class periods)

Questions to be answered from the story and songs:

  1. Defining Blues as a musical celebration of life’s daily sorrows, and defining theme as a statement about life, identify from the story 3 themes for blues tunes.
  2. How did the American Dream move forward from one generation to the next?
  3. How did the blues move forward with the dream from one generation to the next?

Class One: 

  • Introduce students to J. California Cooper’s
  • “Sisters of the Rain” from her collection Some Soul to Keep
  • Play softly instrumental versions of standard blues in background during reading to get the beat and rhythm into student imaginations in preparation for later songwriting: “Summertime” from Best of Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, Audio CD (August 26, 1997) Label: Polygram Records ASIN: B0000047FO
  • Read part 1 Discuss the realities of sharecropping life
  • Provide several pictures that students can match with moments in the story
  • Next class: Read part 2: Discuss shifting values from generation to generation

Class period 2:  

  • Read part 3: Discuss What values and ideals are in conflict in the story

Class period 3:   

  • Read part 4:  Discuss the outcome of the story, the reasons for it, the message in it    
  • Have students choose the six most poignant phrases or images or statements in the story. Highlight their choices or underline.  Do a read around the room several times until students have read all of their selections.  Repetition is welcome here.  As they listen to themselves they notice that they have constructed a poem in the oral tradition. 

Class period 4:   

  • Analyze the basic pattern of a blues song: structure, purpose tune, repetition. Play a couple of examples.  Before assigning this assessment project I always define Blues as a musical celebration of daily life created to move the pain of hardship out of the human heart to relieve the weary soul.  Go to the Pitt. Site to play some samples. Ask students to say why one is their favorite so they really LISTEN.

Assessment activity:

  • Students may work in pairs (artists with composers.)  For homework one of each pair will write a song “Sister’s Got the Blues” and the artist will create a visual storyboard that retells the story in color for the class display case.  Presentations follow after they have two or three nights to complete the projects.
Class period 5   
  • Present the projects to the class.

Extension Activities:

  • Students can go to pbs.org/the blues to get historic meaning and to meet featured blues artists from the genre.  They can write a review in the voice of a music critic by going to amazon.com for blues CD samples.

  • Students can visit this site to learn how many distinctions there are in regional blues genre

  • Students can write their own “down home” blues or create and perform a blues song for other characters they have studied 

                                            

Lesson 3 : Welcome to The Great Migration:The Road to Self Expression for the African American

(lesson dev. With Linda Keifer) Presented as a Powerpoint

This lesson will combine art, poetry, photography, music and dance to celebrate the promise of opportunity in the north while acknowledging the struggle to get there and the fact that living conditions were not necessarily an improvement over the stifling overcrowded shacks they left back home.  New Names appear as poets, singers, dancers take their rightful place in the urban Renaissance.

Big Question:

How does music define and characterize the life of its times?

Questions for the song: 

  1. What are three ways in which the beat, rhythm, lyrics, tempo and instruments of “Spreadin’ Rhythm Around” (performed  by Billie Holliday and Teddy Wilson, written by Ted Koehler and Jimmy McHugh) convey the mood and atmosphere of the Harlem Renaissance?
  2. How does the dance of the day also convey the spirit of the age?
  3. Compare the themes and experience of music and dance with the messages in the poems of Gwendolyn Brooks (“Kitchenette Building”) and Langston Hughes (“Mother to Son.”) Reconcile the differences in a reaction journal entry for homework.

Assessment activity:

  • Write a poem about how the living is in Danbury or somewhere else you have lived previously.  Consider the sights, sounds, smells and feelings as you construct your verses and images.  If possible, take a picture or draw one to correspond to your poem.
  • Choose a song and a dance that represent your experience in 2006.  Bring them in and trade with a classmate to analyze if your poem agrees with the song.  

Lesson 2   Picture That!  James Van Der Zee Captures the Faces of Harlem

(lesson developed by J. Whittaker and D. Stence)

Questions to be addressed:

  1. How did photography serve as an art form that expressed the socioeconomic changes of the Harlem community?
  2. In what ways did the photographer use his art to “tell a story?”
  3. How did music, non-fiction literature and visual art work together to demonstrate the culture of “The New Negro?”

The Lesson Itself:

This lesson would follow the background introduction to the Harlem Renaissance.

 

The Big Question for this individual lesson:

How does photography serve as a primary source document to teach history?

The Lesson

Students will acquaint themselves with the biographical information about James Van Der Zee by reading the text and answering the following questions:

  1. How does family background prepare James for being at ease with the well-to-do?
  2. What distinction in the fifth grade equips James for his hobby?
  3. How does one of his early jobs equip James with skills which turn his hobby into a career?
  4. What does the name of his studio indicate about James’ confidence in his own abilities?
  5. How did James choose his clientele?
  6. What was James’ objective when he arranged people in poses?
  7. What photography technique did James develop?
  8. Explain that technique.
  9. It is said that Van Der Zee’s work was important because it changed completely the image of African Americans.  Explain how and why.
  10. Besides his talent with photography, what other interest qualified James to be considered as a “Renaissance Man?”
  11. Explain what James did to keep work coming in during depression years when professional photographs were luxuries that people could do without.
  12. Think about it:   A photograph is always a reliable source and can be trusted for accuracy as historic documentation. True or False?   Decide and then read on…

Filling in the bald spots...

Van Der Zee expressed his own great pride in the Harlem community by carefully "beautifying" the photographs he took. He would retouch negatives to straighten teeth, add jewelry, or fill in a bald spot. "I tried to see that every picture was better-looking than the person," he said. "I had one women come to me and say, 'Mr. Van Der Zee, my friends tell that's a nice picture, but it doesn't look like you.' That was my style."

Now go back to question 12 and decide again if it is true or false.

Further information on How to Read a Photograph .

Assessment Activity Options

  • Take and develop black and white photos of people and meaningful objects.

  • Take photos of school groups in situations that create interest and tell stories rather than presenting a yearbook line-up.

  • Take photos that record family history, tradition, custom.

  • Create a montage of the photograph collection produced in this unit and put it on display in the class.

 

Extension activity:  Writing a “folksong”

Browse through the collection of class photos to get ideas of the stories told in the pictures then work with a songwriting partner to produce lyrics for a song that captures one or more of the stories they tell. 

Song activity: 

Listen to the Duke Ellington rendition and the Louis Armstrong rendition of “The Sunny Side of the Street.”

Questions to answer about the song:

  • What is the subject of the song? The setting?

  • What is the singer’s mood?  Why?

  • Where is the metaphor?

  • Turn the song’s message into a one-sentence statement about life (otherwise known as a theme.)

  • How are the lyrics of this song connected to Van Der Zee the man, Van Der Zee the artist and the time and place in which he lived and worked?

Lesson Extensions

  • Find out more about James Van Der Zee.
  • Research the accomplishments of any of these Harlem Renaissance era photographers: James Latimer Allen, Walter Baker, Roy DeCarava, Austin Hansen, R.E. Mercer, Gordon Parks, Marvin Smith and Morgan Smith.

Lesson 3:  Jacob Lawrence Goes Hi-tech and Brings Color to The Great Migration

(lesson developed by J. Whittaker and D. Stence)

The Big Idea for this lesson: 

Creative expression is a construct of repetition and motif that is common to both visual and performing (audio) arts that transcends time periods.

Questions to be addressed in this lesson:

  1. How does Jacob Lawrence demonstrate the same objective as Vander Zee in using his art to tell a story?

  2. How does Lawrence’s Migration Series provide a link between the African American’s present and past?

  3. What are the motifs from which you can draw parallels between Lawrence’s art and the songs played from Jazz for Kids?  

Students will explore this lesson by way of a webquest to answer the questions (included below) given to them in a printed handout.

Go into “Meet Jacob Lawrence”

From “Early Childhood”:

  • Explain how Lawrence was trained at a young age.

      From  “Teen Years”

  • Explain how home played an important part in Lawrence’s art.

      From  “His Harlem Community”

  • What scenes did he use from the neighborhood?

  • Make note of the materials he used to create a painting.

       From “Visions of Harlem”

  • Explain the new subjects that begin to appear in his paintings.

  • Name two of the people whose work influenced Jacob Lawrence

       From  “Picturing Narratives”

  • Define and describe The Migration Series.

  • Browse through the pictures and write one sentence apiece for three of the story panels.

       From  “Jacob Lawrence’s Art”

  • Detail “His Painting Method” from “The Migration Series”

  • Explain the ways in which he used and applied the paint.

  •  What were the ways in which Lawrence’s art used repetition?

Performance Assessment Activity

From “Create Your Own Visual Narrative” “Storyboard Templates”

  • Choose Linear or Non-linear for step 1 of your story Painting

  • Print it out

Choose your story as Jacob Lawrence did:

  • From the neighborhood

  • From home

  • From the sights and sounds around you

  • From the colors and patterns that draw your attention

Try painting with Lawrence’s method:

  • Sketch out the scenes of your story on your brown paper canvas
  • Use one color at a time across panels
  • Add white to lighten colors but keep colors consistent in shade
  • Begin with black/darker colors then move toward lighter shades

Corresponding Activity

Listen to the songs on the Jazz for Kids CD as you work.

Song Analysis Activity:

  1. Listen to the lyrics as the songs play.
  2. In groups of three, each take one of the songs from the sample list
  3. Jot down the sounds that are repeated through your group’s selection
  4. Add the words, phrases, sentences that seem to form patterns
  5. Report back to the class the results of your song analysis 

The Question: 

What are the similarities between the creative techniques of both artist and composers?

Lesson Extensions

  • Find out more about Jacob Lawrence.
  • Research the accomplishments of any of these Harlem Renaissance era painters: Romare Bearden, Aaron Douglas, Palmer Hayden, Malvin G. Johnson, William H. Johnson, Lois Mailou Jones, and Archibald J. Motley, Jr.

Themes addressed in the course:

  • Culture and tradition are part of society and people find ways to preserve them despite all circumstances.
  • The power of music can bring people through the toughest of times and circumstances.
  • The American Dream is a constant idea whose characteristics vary from one generation to the next as do values, ideals and priorities.
  • Where people live and when they live there determine who they become as individuals and as a community.
  • Achieving great dreams takes time and requires the effort of generations of family.