American Literature Context ( passing)

Question 1

Harlem Renaissance

Answer 1

1920’s-30’s Art and literature by harlem culture, to express themselves.

Question 2

Langston Hughes
“The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain”

Answer 2

“We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, it doesn’t matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly too.”

Question 3

Tragic Mulatto Trope

Answer 3

-Dominant 19th century trope
-mixed race figure, normally female
-meets a tragic end (death)

Question 4

American Dream- Declaration of Independence

Answer 4

“Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”

Question 5

American Dream- Manifest destiny

Answer 5

White americans divinely ordained to settle the entire continent of North America (included taking land from natives)

Question 6

Jim Crow Laws

Answer 6

mandated racial segregation in all public facilities in the states of the former Confederate States of America and in some others, beginning in the 1870s.

Question 7

Reinhart Case

Answer 7

Fears of Black heritage being revealed and being ostracised from both communities.

Question 8

‘The autobiography of an ex-coloured man’
James Weldon Johnson,

Answer 8

About a man who passes who regrets his loss of a sense of identity

Question 9

Caleb Johnson, ‘Crossing the Color Line’, (August, 1931)

Answer 9

“crossing the color line is so common an occurrence that the Negroes have their own well-understood word for it.”

Question 10

Colour Line (Term)

Answer 10

colour line=The racial segregation after the abolition of slavery

Question 11

W.E.B. Du Bois, “The Talented Tenth”

Answer 11

‘The Talented Tenth of the Negro race must be made leaders’

Question 12

Brazil, The Chicago Defender (October 1925)

Answer 12

‘Writer Says Brazil Has No Color Line’

Question 13

‘one drop rule’

Answer 13

‘one drop rule’ meaning that if a person was 1/8th black they would be considered black

Question 14

Colourism in Well to do Harlem

Answer 14

Colorism in Harlem shown by irene

Question 15

NAACP

Answer 15

focused on raising coloured people led by W.E.B Du Bois

Question 16

Terror Campaigns and KKK

Answer 16

Ku klux Klan and lynching , invoking fear after the abolition of slavery

Question 17

W.E.B Du Bois Education

Answer 17

‘education is not simply a matter of schools; it is much more a matter of family and group life—the training of one’s home, of one’s daily companions, of one’s social class.’

Question 18

Nella Larsen

Answer 18

-Daughter of a Danish mother and west Indian father (referred to as a tragic mulatto)
-Struggled to find a place where she belonged, faced divorce and frequent racism.
-passed and joined the white community
-excluded from the upper society of the middle class

Question 19

The Great Migration

Answer 19

Movement of 6 million Black americans to west/north, in pursuit of promised non agricultural, education and escape from violence/oppression in 1910->70’s