"Aaron-Douglass" (May 26,1899-February 2,1979)

Was an African American painter,illustrator and arts educator.He was a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance.

He was born in Topeka Kansas,to Aaron & Elizabeth Douglass.He developed an interest in art during his childhood and was encouraged in
his pursuit by his mama.Aaron graduated from Topeka High School in 1917.

Aaron received a B.F.A. from the University of Nebraska in 1922 and a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Kansas the next year.
Commenting on his days at the University of Nebraska,where he won a
prize for drawing,he recalled:"I was the only black student there.Because I was sturdy and friendly,I became popular with both faculty  and students." His ability to get along notwithstanding,Aaron longed to draw from an undraped model and felt constrained by the
"Victorian attitudes" that prevented the school from using nudes in the classroom.

In 1925,Aaron moved to New York City settling in Harlem.Just a few months after his arrival he began to produce illustrators for both The Crisis and opportunity,the two most important magazines associated with the Harlem Renaissance.He also began studying with Winold Reiss,
a German artist who had been hired by Alain Locke to illustrate The New Negro. Winold teaching helped Aaron develop the modernist style he would employ for the next decade.Aaron engagement with African & Egyptian design brought him to the attention of William Edward Burghardt Du Bois and Dr.Locke,who
were pressing for young African American artists to express their African heritage and African American folk culture in their art.

In 1926,he married Alta Sawyer.They lived together in Harlem and for the next several,years opened their home to an important,powerful circle of artists and writers we now call the Harlem Renaissance.

Aaron was heavily influenced by the African cultured he painted for.His natural talent plus new acquired inspiration allowed him to be considered the "Father of African American arts."  That title led him to say," Do not call me the Father of African Arts,for I am just a son,of Africa,and paint what inspires me.'   

In addition to his magazine illustrations for two the most important African-American magazines of the period,he illustrated books, painted,canvases and murals,and tried to start a new magazine showcasing the work of younger artists and writers.It was during the early 1930s that Aaron completed the most important works of his career,his murals at Fisk University (on which he had the assistance of Painter Edwin Harleston) and at the 135th Street Branch of the New York Public Library (now the Schomburgh Center for Research in Black).

Throughout his early career,Aaron looked he looked for opportunities to increase his 
knowledge about art. In 1928-29,Aaron studied African and Modern European art at
the Barnes Foundation in Merion,Pennsylvania,on a grant from the foundation.In 1931 he traveled to Paris,where he spent a year studying more tradition French painting and drawing techniques at the at the Academie Scandinave.

In  1940,he moved to Nashville, Tennessee,where he founded the Art Department at Fisk University and taught for 27 years.Coinciding with this move was a shift to a more traditional painting style,including portraits and landscapes.His striking illustrations,murals,and paintinngs of the life and history of people depict an emerging African American individuality in a powerful personal way.Working primarily from the 1920s-1940s,Aaron linked African American with their African past and proudly showed African American contributions to society decades before
the dawn of the Civil Rights movement.His work made a lasting impressing on future impressing on future generations of African American artist.

Best represented by black & white drawings with African American silhouetted figures, as well as by portraits,landscapes,and murals,Aaron art  fused modernism with ancestral African images,including fetish motifs,masks,and artifacts.His work
celebrates African American versatility and adaptability,depicting people in a variety-of settings-from rural and urban scenes to churches to nightclubs.His illustrations in books by leading African American leading African American writers
established him as as the African American artist of the period.

Beginning in the 1920s,Aaron illustrations appeared in books by James Weldon Johnson,Countee,Alain Locke,and other prominent African American writers,activists,and intellectuals.They were also featured in such magazines as The
Crisis,Opportunity,Harper's and Vanity Fair.From the late 1920s-the 1940s,his art was shown across the United States at universities,galleries,hotels,and museums,
including the Harmon Fondation in New York,the museum of of Fine Arts in Dallas
Howard University's Gallery of Art,the traveling show of Harlem Renaissance artsworks sponsored by the Studio Museum of Modern Art.Aaron died in Nashville.

    

"Lois-Mailou-Jones"(November 3,1905-June 9.1998)

Was an artist who painted  and influenced other during the Harlem Renaissance and beyond,during her long teaching and artistic career.Lois

was the only African-American painter of the 1930s & 1940s to achieve fame abroad,and the earliest whose subjects extend beyond the realm of portraiture.She was born in Boston Massachusetts and is buried on Martha's Vineyard in the Oak Bluffs Cemetery.


Her daddy,Thomas Vreeland Jones was a building superintendent who later became a lawyer after becoming the first African American to earn a law degree from Suffolk Law School,her mama Carolyn Jones was cosmetologist.

Some of her art work.

Lois parents encouraged her her to draw and paint as a child in water color.During childhood her mama took her and her brother to Martha's Vineyard where she became lifelong friends with novelist Dorothy West.She attended  The High School of Practical Arts in Boston.Meanwhile she took Boston Museum of Fine Arts evening classes and worked as an apprentice in constume design.


Lois held her first solo exhibition at the age of 17.From 1923-1927 she attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston studying design,taking night courses at the Boston Normal Art School.Lois purchased graduate work at the Design Art School and Harvard University.She continued her education even after beginning work,attending classes at Columbia University and receiving her bachelor's degree from Howard University in 1945,graduating magna cum laude.


In 1928 she was hired by Charlotte Hawkins Brown after some initial reservations,and founded the art department at Palmer Memorial Institute in North Carolina.As a prep school teacher Lois coached a basketball team,taught Folk Dancing and played the Piano for church services. Only one later,she was recruited to join the art department at Howard University in Washington D.C.,and remained as professor of design and watercolor painting until her retirement in 1977.While developing her own work as an artist,she was also known as an outstanding mentor.


In 1934 she met Louis Vergniaud Pierre-Noel,who would become a prominent Haitian artist,while both were graduate students at Columbia University.They corresponded for almost twenty years before marrying in the south France in 1953.Louis & Pierre lived in Washington,D.C. and Haiti.They had no children.Pierre died in 1982.


In the early 1930s Louis exhibited with the William Harmon Foundation and other institutions,produced plays and dramatic presentations and began study of masks from various cultures.In 1937 she received a fellowship to study in Paris at the Academie Julian.During one year's time she produced over 30 watercolors.She returned to Howard Universityand began teaching watercolor painting.Louis said of her time in Paris:




THE French were so inspiring.The people would stand and watch me and say 'mademoiselle,you are so wonderful.'In other words the color of my skin didn't matter in Paris and that was one of the main reasons why I think was encouraged to really think I was talented.


In 1938 Louis produced Les Fetiches (1938) a stunning,African inspired oil which is owned by the Smithsonian American Art Museum,her Les Fetiches was instrumental in transitioning negritude'-a distincity francophone artistic phenomenon-from the predominantly literary realm into the visual.Lois work provided an important visual link to Negritude authors including Aime Cesaire,Leon Damas,and Leopold Sedar Senghor.It was one of her best known works,and her first piece which combined traditional African forms with Western techniques and materials to create a vibrant and compelling work.She also completed Parisian Beggar Woman with text supplied by Langston Hughes.


Her maine source of inspiration was Celine Marie Tabary,also a painter,whom she worked with for many years.Celine subbited Lois paintings for consideration for jury prizes since works by African-American artists were not always accepted.Lois traveled extensively with Celine,including to the South of France,and they frequently painted each other.They taught art in the 1940s.


In the 1940s and early 1950s Lois exhibited at the Phillips Collection,Seattle Museum of Art,National Academy of Design the Barnet Aden Gallery,Pennsylvania's Lincoln University,Howard University galleries in New York and the Corcoran Gallery of Art.In 1952 Lois Maliou Jones Peintures 1937-1951,a collection of more than 100 reproductions of her French paintings,was published.


In 1954 Lois was a guest professor at Centre D'Art and Foyer des Artes Plastiques in Port-au-Prince,Haiti where the government invited her to paint Haitian people and landscapes.He work became energized by the bright colors.She and her husband returned there during summers for the next several years,in addition to trips to France.There she completed "Pleasant girl,Haiti" and also exhibited her work.In 1955 she unveiled portraits of the Haitian president and his wife commissioned by United States President Dwight David Eisenhower.


Lois numerious oils and watercolors inspired by Haiti are probably her most widely known works.In them her affinity for bright colors,her personal understandings of Cubism's basic principles and search for a distinctly style reached apogee.In many of her pieces one can see see the influence of the Haitian Culture,with its African influences,which reinvigorated the way she looked at the world.These include Ode toKinshasa and Ubi Girl from Tai.Her work became more abstract and hard-edged,after her marriage to Pierre Noel.Her impressionist techniques gave way to a spirited,richly patterned and brilliantly colored style.


In 1962 she initiated Howard University's first art student tour of France,including study at Academie de la Grande Chaumiere and guided several more tours over th years.In the 1960s she exhibited at The School of the Museum of Fine Arts,Boston Cornell University,and galleries in France,New York and Washington D.C.


In 1968 Lois  documented work and and interviews of contemporary Haitian artists for Howard University's "The Black Visual Arts" research grant.And continued the project in 1969 and 1970,traveling to eleven African countries.Her report Contemporary African Art was published in 1970 & 1971 she delivered 1000 slides and other materials to the University as fulfillment of the project.In 1973-74 she she researched "Women artists of the Caribbean and Afro-American Artists.


Her research inspired Lois to synthesize a body of designs and motifs that she combined in large,complex compositions.Lois return to Africa themes in her work of the past several decades coincided with the African American expressionistic movement in the United States during the 1960s.Skillfully integrating aspects of  African masks,figures,and textiles into her vibrant paintings,Lois continued to produce exciting new works at an astonishing rate of speed,even in her late eighties.In her nineties,Lois still painted Bill Clinton & Hillary Clinton collected of her island one of island landscapes Breezy Day at Gay Head while they were at the White House.

"Effie Lee Newsome"{1885-1979}

Born Mary Effie Lee in Philadelphia,was a Harlem Renaissance writer.She mostly wrote children's poems,and was the first African-American poet whose work was mostly in this area.She edited a column in The Crisis from 1925 until 1929,called "The Little Page,"where she made drawlings and wrote poetry for children and parables about being young and African American in 1920s.Effie also illustrated for children's magazines and edited children's columns for Opportunity.

She also wrote poems for adults,which included in The Poetry of the Negro (1949).Her only volume of poetry was Gladiola Gardens (1940).


In addition to her writing,she worked as a librarian at an elementary school in Wilberforce,Ohio.Effie attended Wilberforce University,Oberlin College,the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts,and the University of Pennsylvania.


Mary Effie Lee,better known as Effie Lee Newsome,was born in Philadelphia,to parents Benjamin Franklin & Mary Elizabeth Ashe Lee.Her daddy was a Bishop and led the family from Texas to Ohio during Effie's childhood.Effie would later receive her higher education from Wilberforce University (1901-1904),Oberlin College (1904-1905),the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts (1907-1908),and the University of Pennsylvania (1911-1914).


Starting in 1917,Effie began working with W.E.B.Du Bois on The Crisis Magazine.Effie would continue to contribute to a section of the Crisis known as The Little Page,until 1934.In 1920,Mary married Rev.Henry Nesby Newsome and thereafter was known as Effie Lee Newsome.After marriage,both Effie and Rev.Henry moved to Birmingham,Alabama,later relocated to Wilberforce,Ohio.While in Ohio,Effie worked as a librarian in an elementary school and continued to build her career as a writer during the Harlem Renaissance.


Effie was primarily known as a nature poet and and contributor to children's literature her impression upon the people of the Harlem Renaissance was clear.Upon starting to write for the Crisis in 1917,and then in 1925,writing for her own section of the magazine known as the Little Page,Effie was given a specific task.
It was Effie's job to teach the African American youth to be colored was to be beautiful.Such ideas were present in poems such as Effie's To a Black Boy.She was was also expected to teach the African American youth about their history as a people and how to turn the anger toward white American into love and compassion.Effie's contribution to children's literature was aligned to some degree with that of W.E.B. Du Bois,her editor in the early days of the NAACP.Their work together is an important part of Effie's story,for it was Effie's job to carry on within the pages of The Crisis Magazine (the NAACP monthly) what W.E.B.had tried to achieve in his periodical for children,the Brownies' Book (also under NAACP auspieces).

"May-Miller" (married name name May Sullivan),January 26,1899-February 8,1995.

The daughter of a Howard University sociologist,May grew up in an intellectual household in which W.E.B.Du Bois and Booker T.Washington were frequent guests.She graduated from Howard University in 1920,earning an award for her one-act play Within the Shadows.Afterward she taught secondary school and continued to write.

A prizewinning play,The Bog Guide (1925),helped establish May  in the African American scene,and  she became the most widely published woman playright  of the Harlem Renaissance.May openly addressed racial issues in plays such as Scratches (1929),which commented on color and class bias within the African American community;Strgglers in the Dust(1930),about African Americans in the military;and Nails and Thorns (1933),which dramatized lynching.She also wrote many historical plays,four of which (including Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth) were anthologized in Negro History in Thirteen Plays (1935).

May retired from teaching in 1943 and became a prolific poet,publishing seven volumes that included  Into the Clearing (1959) and Dust of Uncertain Journey (1975).May also held  several posts as a visiting faculty member.

"Alice Ruth Moore Dunbar Nelson"(July 19,1875-September 18,1935)

Was an American poet,journalist,and political activists.Among the first generation born free in the South after the Civil War,Alice was one of the prominent African Americans involved in the artistic flourishing of the Harlem Renaissance.Her first husband was the poet Paul Lawrence Dunbar the poet.He noticed her picture and one of her poems in the Boston Monthly Review in 1895,and was instantly infatuated.They began a two year correspondence and finally met in February 1897.They were married on March 6,1898 in New York City,New York and moved to Washington,D.C.The marriage initiated a tumultuous relationship and they separated in 1902.As husband and wife they shared literacy pursuits and celebrity status in Washington,but their life together was marred by Lawrence physically abusive treatment of Alice.In one incident she was sent to a Washington D.C. hospital where she nearly died after attack.She left him, and moved to Delaware.Shen then moved to Wilmington,Delaware and taught at Howard High School for more than a decade.In 1910,she married Henry Arthur Callis,a prominent physician and professor at Howard University,they ended up divorce.From 1913-1914,Alice was coeditor and writer for the A.M.E. Review,an influential church publication by the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME).In 1916 she married the poet and civil rights activist Robert J.Nelson.Alice joined him in becoming active in politics in Wilmington and the region.They stayed together for the rest of their lives.From 1920,she coedited the Wilmington Advocate,a progressive African American newspaper.Alice also published The Dunbar Speaker and Entertainer,a literary anthology for an African American audience.
She was an activist for African Americans and women rights,especially during the 1920s& 30s.While continued to write stores and poetry,she became
more political active in Wilmington,and put more effort into numerous articles and journalism on leading topics.In 1915, she was field organizer for the Middle Atlantic States for the
woman's suffrage movement.In 1918,she was field representative for the Woman's Committee of the Council of Defense.In 1924,Alice campaigned for the passage of the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill,but the Southern Democratic block in Congress defeated it.From about 1920 on,she made a commitment to journalism and was highly successful columnist,with articles,essays and reviews appearing as well in newspapers,magazines,and academic journals.
She was a popular speaker and had active schedule of lectures through these years.Her journalism career began with a rocky start.During the late 19th century,it was still unusual for women to work outside of the home,let alone
an African-American woman,and the journalism business was a hostile,male-dominated field.
In her diary,she spoke about the tribulations associated with the profession of journalism-"Damn bad luck i have with pen.Some fate has decreed i shall never make money by it" (Diary 366).She discusses being denied pay for articles and issues she had receiving proper recognition for her work.
Alice moved from Delaware to Philadelphia in 1932 with Henry,when he joined the Pennsylvania Athletic Commission.During this time,her health was in decline and she died from a heart aliment.Alice was made an honorary member of Delta Signma theta sorority.Her papers were collected by the University of Delaware.
  

"Nancy Elizabeth Prophet" (March 19,1890-1960)

Was born in Warwick,Rhode Island,to a family with deep roots in the region.She described her mam,Rosa E.Walker Profit,as a "mixed race Negro."Her daddy William H.Profit,claimed both African American and Native American ancestry;his mama was a Narragansett-Pequood who brought William's daddy out of slavery and then married him.The sculptor,who identified herself as "mulatto" in a 1910 census,changed her identity "Indian"in the 1920 census.This ambivalence about her racial heritage plagued Elizabeth throughout her life.Invited in 1959 to be included in the book American Negro Art,she refused insisting that "an anthropologist must certainly know that I am not a Negro,and though I am of mixed race blood,two races which I represent are quite different from that which you wish your publication to represent."It appears that Elizabeth did not feel close to her family,who discouraged her artistic ambitions.In fact,she had to her drawings and paintings from her parents,who considered such activities a waste of time.She gained admission to the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD),one of the most respected art schools in the country,in 1914,paying her tuition by working as a housekeeper for a private family in Providence.She graduated in 1918 with a degree in painting and freehand drawing.Soon afterward Elizabeth changed the spelling of her surname,possibly to distance herself from her family.Despite social pressure to marry,produce children, and devote herself to family life,Elizabeth insisted on pursuing a career as an artist.She did marry in 1915.Her husband, Francis Ford, was ten years her senior and had attended Brown University,he never graduated.The marriage was troubled from the start by financial difficulties,infidelities,by both,parties and periods of prolonged separation.The couple officially separated in 1932.After graduation,Elizabeth tried to support herself by making portraits,but was not successful.At the same time,racist attitudes limited her opportunities.When submission of her work was accepted for a local exhibition,she was told not to attend the opening.Frustrated and angry,Elizabeth decided to try her luck abroad.She sailed for Paris in 1922,leaving her husband behind.She arrived in Paris with only $380 in her pocket.She quickly rented a studio in the Montparnassee district,for two months was unable to leave her bed because of emotional exhaustion.When she was finally able to begin sculpting,Elizabeth thrived on this creative stimulation.Her money ran out completely.She had to move frequently,always seeking cheaper rent,and at one point that she was stole food from a dog's dish.She kept on working despite these hardships.She studied with the respected sculptor Victor Joseph Sefoggin at L'Ecole Nationale des Beaux  Arts,and in 1924 had wooden bust included in the Salon d'Automne exhibition.She titled one of her first Paris works,a female nude,Poverty.In 1924 a benefactor gave her money for materials to make first life-size statue,Volonte;.in 1926 frustrated that the work was not going well Elizabeth smashed the statue.Poor and hungry,the sculptor was so desperate that she attempted to raise a few vegetables in a patch of ground near her residence.Elizabeth became so frail that by 1925 she was admitted to the hospital with malnutrition.She poured her feelings into her diary,writing of exhilaration through her work but also chronicling difficulty and near-despair.Her precarious financial situation was a frequent theme.In a passage from 1926,quoted in Notable Black American women,she wrote:"Days of plenty,and then days of want.Poverty,destable,poverty,how you trail behind me ever screeching out presence.Think you to ever make me a subject of your kingdom?Never! Though I die of hunger I shall never bend the knee to your Majesty for I am not of your race."Elizabeth often went without food or sleep,she persevered with her work.In 1927 another American sculptor in Paris,Mabel Gardner,met Elizabeth and became so concerned about her circumstances that she wrote to American actress Louise Brooks for help.Louise helped organize financial support for Elizabeth though the Students Fund of Boston,which sent the destitute artist $30 a month for two years.Her works from this period were included in the Salon d'automne in 1925,1926,& 1927,and were also accepted in exhibitions at RISD and in Boston.Among the many influential people who took interest in her life and work was W.E.B.Du Bois,with whom she had developed an intimate relationship before moving to Paris.The couple was often together in France,where W.E.B.---was married---traveled for the third and fourth Pan-African Congresses.When the two were apart,W.E.B. wrote letters encouraging Elizabeth and praising her talent.These were an important source of emotional comfort for the artist during her long periods of obscurity.In 1929 Elizabeth returned to the United States for eleven months.She was feted by leading patrons of the arts,and stayed for much of the with the Du Bois--family.She made gallery contacts and sold a major,piece,Discontent,to collectors who donated it to the art museum at RISD.Even so,Elizabeth returned France with little money.W.E.B.Du Bois had been unable to help her get financial support backing for future projects,though he did continue giving her moral support.Back in Paris,Elizabeth again found herself battling poverty and obscurity.By the early 1930s her work,was beginning to attract attention.French author Edouard Champion and his wife Julia,admirers of Elizabeth's work began paying the artist's rent and providing her with meals.This support enable her to continue working,and she exhibited two sculptures in Paris in 1932.French critics praised her work for its vision,originality,and expressiveness.In 1932 Elizabeth visited the United States to promote her work.She exhibited in Boston and was elected a member of the Art Association of Newport,Rhode Island,where several o her works of her works were included in the organization's Twenty-First Annual Exhibition.Among these was Elizabeth's best-known piece,Congolaise,a cherry wood head of a Masai warrior that critic Michael Duncan,many years later in Art in America,described as a "gorgeously carved" work that "sensitively portrays an elegant African warrior devoid of any air of the primitive."While in the United States,Elizabeth approached the Harmon Foundation about obtaining a teaching position at an African American university.Florence Read president of Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia,responded positively Elizabeth had second thoughts  and returned to Paris in in 1933.A desperate year followed after she failed to win a Guggenheim fellowship.To heat her studio Elizabeth was forced to borrow money,and she ran afoul of the law over her inability to pay import taxes.Ten thousand francs in debt by 1934 and nearly estranged  from her patrons the Champions,she lived on nothing but tea and marmalade while working 18-hour days to renovate her studio.When a second invitation came that year from from Spelman,which W.E.B. had pushed the college to arrange,Elizabeth took the job.She began teaching there in the fall of 1934.With artist Hale Woodruff she expanded Spelman's art department,remaining on the faculty until 1944.Elizabeth was considered a demanding but through teacher,many students found her odd and aloof.She socialized with W.E.B. and his colleagues,she eventually fund life in Atlanta Dull.At the same time,W.E.B. became involved with a new woman and Elizabeth felt abandoned.She looked elsewhere for romance,possibly,among her students.Elizabeth was also frustrated by the demands that teaching made on her time.She longed to work but had no proper studio at Spelman;as a result her own sculpture suffered.Increasigly withdrawn,Elizaeth descended into eccentric behaviors that further alienated from the campus mainstream.Always elegantly and dramatically dressed,she walked around the college speaking in whispers and carrying a live rooster that she brought to class for her students to sketch.Elizabeth picked mushrooms from the college lawn and cooked them with eggs.On one occasion,disappointed with a student's clay head of a woman,Elizabeth smashed the work to pieces.Elizabeth complained that her makeshift studio on campus was a grave.

"Arna Bontemps"(Octomber 13,1902-June 4,1973)

Hoping for a much better life outside the racially oppressive South and Alexandria,Louisiana where Arnaud Wendell Bontemps the middle class Bontemps family moved to the Watts community just south of Los Angeles.They soon abandoned Catholicism and became devout Seventh Day Adventists.Arna mama was a schoolteacher and his daddy,a bricklayer,was determined to have the family assimilate into the dominant white culture.In 1923,Arna graduated from Pacific Union College,an Adventist school in California,and found work in the US Post Office.He next used his church collections to secure a teaching job at the Harlem Academy in New York City in 1924.Arna arrival in the metropolis coincided with the height of the Harlem Renaissance and-inspired by the creative energy that surrounded him,and encouraged him by his associates-over the next three years he wrote poetry that garnered the Alexander Pushkin Prize from Opportunity,the journal of the National Urban League and the Poetry Prize from The Crisis,the publication of the NAACP.Married in 1926 to a former student,he published his first novel,God Sends Sunday (1931),a racy tale of a jockey's hectic life based on some of the true experiences of his Uncle Buddy,was followed by the award-winning "A Summer Tragedy (1932),a broadly anthologized,unsentimental short story concerning eledery married Mississippi Delta sharecroppers who commit suicide.During this period he forged lasting friendships with Langston Hughes & Countee Cullen.Eventually,the Great Depression dispersed talented Harlemites like Arna who returned to the South to teach in the early 1930s at Oakwood Junior College,another Adventist school.Considered a pioneer among African American historical fiction writers,Arna authored the best known of his novels,the critically-acclaimed Black Thunder (1936),which was based on the actual event of a slave revolt in Virginia led by Gabriel Prosser in 1800.Arna was largely responsible for bringing to prominence the genre of African American children's literature with Popo & Fifina: Children of Haiti (1932) and subsequent works. In 1938 he penned his final novel, Drums at Dusk (1939).Disappointing sales and mixed reviews of the novel persuaded him to concentrate even more on literature for young readers until the 1960s,when he published Personals (1965),a collection of poetry,and wrote the introduction to a paperback.edition of Black Thunder in 1968.Upon earning a master's degree in library science at the University of Chicago in 1943, Arna began 21 years of distinguished service at Fisk University where he was professor and head librarian.The Broadway musical St.Louis Woman,based on his first novel,premiered in 1946,and he collaborated with Langston to publish The Poetry of the Negro in 1949.In the decade of the 1950s Arna wrote biographies aimed at young people.He teamed up again with Langston to co-edit The Book of Negro Folklore (1959).In the late 1960s he taught at the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle and Briefly was curator of the James Weldon Johnson Collection at the Beinecke Library at Yale University.His final book was the Harlem Renaissance Remembered (1972),Among his honors and awards were two Julius Rosenwald Fellowships and two Guggenheim Fellowships;The Jane Addams Children's Book Award in 1956 for The Story of the Negro (1948);and honorary doctorates from Morgan State University & Berea College.While a writer-in-residence at Fisk collecting his short fiction for publication,he died at his home in Nashville Tennessee.

"Palmer C.Hayden" "January 15,1890-February 18,1973)

Was an American Painter who depicted African American life.He painted in both oils and watercolors,and was a prolific artist of his era.Palmer

was originally called Peyton Cole Hedgeman.He was given the name Palmer Hayden by his commanding sergeant during World War I.Palmer grew up in the town Wildwater Virginia,and was a self-trained artist.He was one of the first in America to depict African subjects in his paintings.He began to draw as a small child,and was inspired to start drawing by his older brother.Palmer enjoyed drawing landscapes of the surrounding countryside.Palmer had a dream of becoming a fiddle player,and told art historian Harry Henderson that he regretted of his life not pursuing this dream.His family cold not afford a fiddle,and he was to timid to follow his dream.Midnight at the Crossroads is and oil painting that reffects his harsh conflict between and becoming a fiddle player.Palmer moved to Washington DC to find work when he reached adolescence.He became an errand boy and porter.Palmer started to draw fishing and sailboats,which he was around constantly,during his his workday.When he started to pursue an art career,he ran into his first encounter with racism.Palmer placed an ad in the local paper for an artist's assistant,but was rejected when he showed up for the interview because he was black.He later became a laborer for the Buffalo Bill Circus,then the Ringling Brothers Circus.Afterwards,he joined the army's black company a,24th infantry regiment,and was stationed in the Phillippines.Palmer later worked as a deliveryman at West Point Academy during World War I.He moved to Greenwhich Village after he was discharged to pursue a career in fine arts.While pursuing his slowly-growing art career,Palmer worked as a postal clerk,janitor,and a variety of other part-time jobs.In 1925 &1926,his work appeared at the Society of Inddependent Artists and his very first solow show was in April 1926 at the Civic Club.In 1937,Palmer created the Janitor Who Paints.Despite his artistic success and popularity in Europe,Palmer was still attacked by the press for his early life as a janitor who had little to no training:'...for years,Palmer,a negro has been cleaning houses and washing windows to make a living,during his spare time has gone back to his room at 29 Greenwich Avenue to dabble in oil colors and paint coast and rivers scenes that appealed to him.Yesterday he received the first prize in fine arts from the HarmonFoundation....he painted for the fun of it and not because he hoped to win any great appreciation of his efforts.As a young man,Palmer studied at the Cooper Union in New York City and also practiced independent studies at Boothbay Art Colony in Maine.When he was 36,he won $400 and a gold medal for his painting Schooners.He submitted five paintings to the Harmon Arts Foundation.A New York Times headlines reads,"Negro Worker Wins Harmon Prizes:Gold Medal & $400  Awarded to man who Washes Windows to Have Time to Paint."The Harmon Foundation and the commission on race relations of the federal council of churches,which was in charge of the foundation's awards program was making a rather dramatic statement by selecting Palmer's work for the award.The fact that such an award was given to a janitor with very little formal training emphasized how limited the opportunities were for a black at the time.Also,the award launched his career as an artist.Much of his influences came from the environment around him.Palmer enjoyed painting,and used his time in Paris for Over his next five years in Paris,Palmer was very productive,trying to capture elements of Parisian society.On his return to America,Palmer began working for the United States government.His body of work mostly consists of oil and watercolor paintings,also includes /pen/ink drawings.Most art historians agree that his most influential or well-known works would be the ones which reflect African-American folklore.One of the best examples of this is his series of paintings called John Henry.Some people denounced his works as stereotypical and demeaning.Palmer is best known for his African folklorist artwork,his love for land and seascapes is overpowering.Many of his landscape paintings carry a nostalgic/religious significance.Much of his work after Paris focused on the African-American experience.He tried to capture rural life as well as urban backgrounds in New York City.Many of these urban paintings were centered in Harlem.Palmer continued to make contributions until his death.

"Clarissa Scott Delaney 5-9-1901-1927

She was born in Tuskegee Alabama.Her father,Emmett J.Scott was secretary to Booker T.Washington,founder of Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University).After her early years in the south she was sent to New England where she educated at Bradford Academy.Clarissa then attended Wellesley College,where graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1923.She was an active college student.She was a member of Delta Sigma Theta,of the debating team,and of the Christian Association,and she played varsity field hockey.During Clarissa Wellesley years,she attended meetings,in Boston of the Literary Guild,where young African Americans gathered weekly to listen to featured speakers such as Claude McKay.This began her political and literary work,in an environment that helped shape her ideas on art and literature.As a woman of color,she identification with Harlem Renaissance.After College,Clarissa traveled through Europe.When Clarissa returned,she moved to Washington,D.C. where she taught at Dunbar High School.Clarissa continued to write and to publish in Opportunity.Like her colleagues among the Harlem writers,she wrote about Pan Africanism,superstition,and the mulatto,among other topics.She won a prize for one of poems entitled "Solace,"published in Opportunity,in 1925.That same year Clarissa also wrote a play,"Dixie to Broadway,"and the poem,"A Golden Afternoon in Germany."One year later she married a young lawyer,Hubert T.Delaney,in Washington,D.C.,and they moved to New York City.In New York,she worked as a social worker,with the National Urban League and Woman's City Club of New York.One project was to gather statistics for a "Study of Delinquent Neglected Negro Children."Clarissa died of Kidney disease,which was probably a reaction to the streptococcal infection she had had for six months.According to a Wellesley classmate,her family established a "YWCA Camp Clarissa Scott" in 1931 on the Chesapeake Bay.Because her life was cut so short,she only published four poems.

"Henry Wilmer "Mike"Bannarn"July 17,1910-September 20,1965)

Was an African American artist,best known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance period.He was born in wetumpka Hughes County Oklahoma.When he was still a child,the family moved to Minneapolis,Minnesota where discovered his talent for art.He studied at the Minneapolis School of Arts (now known as the Minneapolis College of Art and Design).He worked as a Works Progress Administration artist for the Federal Art Project and taught art at the Harlem Community Art Center in New York City.Where he was a noted contemporary,friend and partner of another famous African-American artist,Charles Aston,with whom he ran the Alston-Bannarn Harlem Art Workshop in Harlem/NYC,NY.He was intimately associated with the "Harlem Renassiance"of the 1930s being considered as one movement preeminent contributors.He is primarily known for his work in sculpture,he was equally skilled as a figurist and character artist in the various paint mediums,conte crayon,pastel,free form sketch,etc.In 1941 Henry returned to Minnesota and entered a piece of sculpture in the Minnesota State Fair sculpture competition,where he was awarded the first prize.The much-honored artist had won a painting prize at the fair a decade earlier as well,representing one of the earliest achievements by an African-American artist in that state's history.Henry died in Brooklyn.His works are represented in some of the most important collections in the US,such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art,the Smithsonian Institution Darthmouth College's Hood Museum of Art,Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts Minnesota Historical Society,Howard University Gallery of Art,and Clark Atlanta University Art Galleries.Very few works exist in private hands.

"Alain Leroy Locke"(September 13,1885-June 9,1954)

Was an American writer,philosopher,educator,and patron of the arts.In a popular

publication The Black 100,he ranks as the 36th most influential African-American ever,past or present.Distinguished as the first African-American Rhodes Scholar in 1907,Alain was the philosophical architect-the acknowledged "Dean"- of Harlem Renaissance,and a period of cultural efflorescence connected with the "New Negro"movement from 1919-1934.His importance as the ideological genius of the Harlem Renaissance is one of great historic moment,immortalized in the Harlem Number of The Survey Graphic 6.6 (March 1 1925),a special issue on race for which Alain subsequently recast as an anthology,The New Negro:An interpretation of Negro Life,published in December 1925.A landmark in black literature (later acclaimed as the "first national book"of African American),it was an instant success.Alain contributed five essays:the "foreword," "The New Negro," "Negro Youth Speaks," "The Negro Spirituals,"and "The Legacy of Ancestral Arts."On March 19,1968,the Rev.Martin Luther King,Jr.,proclaimed:"We're going to let our children know that the only philosophers that lived were not Plato and Aristotle,but W.E.B. Du Bois and Alain Locke came through the universe.Alain was born in Philadelphia,Pennsylvania to Pliny Ishmael Locke (1850-1892) and Mark Hawkins Locke.In 1902,he graduated from Central High School in Philadelphia,second in his class.He also attended Philadelphia School of Pedagogy.In 1907,Alain graduated from Harvard University with degrees in English and Philosophy.He was the first African-American Rhodes Scholar.Alain formed part of the Phi Beta Kappa Society.He was denied admission to several Oxford colleges because of his race before finally being admitted to Hertford College where he studied literature,philosophy,Greek and Latin,from 1907-1910,he attended the University of Berlin,where he studied philosophy.Alain received an assistant professorship in English at Howard University,in Washington D.C.While at Howard  he became a member of Phi Beta Sigma fraternity.Alain returned to Harvard in 1916 to work on doctoral dissertation,The Problem of Classification in the Theory of Value.In his thesis,he discusses the causes of opinions and social biases,and that these are not objectively true or false,and therefore not universal.He receive his PhD in philosophy in 1918.Alain returned to Howard as the chair of the department of philosophy,a position he held until his retirement in 1953.He promoted African-American artists,writers,and musicians,encouraging them to look to Africa as an inspiration for their works.Alain encouraged them to depict African and African-American subjects,and to draw on their history for subject material.He edited the March 1925 issue of the periodical Survey Graphic,a special on Harlem and the Harlem Renaissance,which helped educate white readers about its flourishing culture.Later that year,he expanded the issue into The New Negro,a collection of writings by African Americans,which would become one of his best known work.His philosophy of the New Negro was grounded in the concept of race building.Its most important component is overall awareness of the potential black equality;no would blacks allow themselves to adjust themselves or comply with unreasonable white requests.This idea was based on self-confidence and political awareness.In the past the laws regarding equality had been ignored without consequence,Alain's philosophical idea of The New Negro allowed from fair treatment.Because this an idea and not alaw,its power was held in the people.If they wanted this idea to flourish,they were the ones who would need to "enforce"it through their actions and overall points of view.He was said to have greatly influenced and encouraged Zora Neale Hurtson. Alain was not open about being gay,his sexuality contributed to his aesthetic sensibility.

"Charles Henry Alston"(November 28,1907-April 27,1977)

Was an African-American painter,sculptor,illustrator,muralist and teachers who lived and worked in Harlem.Charles was active in the Harlem Renaissance;he was the first African-American supervisor for the Works Progressive Administration's Federal Art Project.Known for his murals at the Harlem Hospital and the Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Building.In 1990 Alston's bust of Martin Luther King,Jr became the first image of an African-American displayed at the White House.Charles was born in Charlotte North Carolina to Rev.Primus Priss Alston and Anna Elizabeth Miller Alston,and was the youngest of five children Only three survived  past infancy:His sister Rousmaniere,and his brothers Wendell and Charles.His father was born into slavery in 1851 in Pittsboro,North Carolina;After the Civil War he graduated from St Augustine College and became a prominent minister and founder of St.Michael's Episcopal Church.He was described as a "race man"an African-American who dedicated his skills to the furtherance of the black race.Rev.Alston met his wife when she was a student at his school.Charles was nicknamed "Spinky"by his father,and kept the nickname as an adult.In 1910,when Charles was three,his father died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage.Locals described him admiration as the Booker T. Washington of Charlotte.In 1913 Anna married Harry Bearden.Through the marriage,the future artist Romare Bearden became Charles cousin.The two Bearden families lived across the street from each other,the friendship between Romare and Charles would last a lifetime.As a child Charles was inspired by his older brother Wendell's drawings of trains and cars,which the young artist copied.Charles also played with clay,creating a sculpture of North Carolina.As an adult he reflected on his memories of sculpting with clay as a child:"I'd get buckets of it and put through strainers and make things out of it.I think that's the first art experience i remember,making things.His mother was a gifted embroiderer and took up painting at the age of 75.His father was a gifted at drawing as well,wooing Charles mother with small sketches in the medians of letters he wrote.In 1915 the family moved to New York,as many African-American families during the Great Migration.Charles step-father,left before his wife and children to secure a job overseeing elevator operations and the newsstand staff at the Bretton Hotel in the Upper West Side.The family lived in Harlem and was considered Middle-Class.During the Great Depression,the people of Harlem suffered economically.The "stoic strength"seen within the community was later expressed in Charles' fine art.At Public School 179 in Manhattan,the boy's artistic abilities were recognized and he was asked to draw all of the school posters during his years there.He graduated from from Dewitt Clinton High School,where he was nominated for academic excellence and was art editor of the school's magazine,The Magpie.He was a member,of the Artista-National Honor Society and also studied drawing and anatomy at the Saturday School of the National Academy of Art.In high school he was given his first oil paints and learned his aunt Bessye Bearden's art saloon's which stars like Duke Ellington and Langston Hughes attended.After graduating in 1925,attended Columbia University,turning down a scholarship to the Yale School of Fine Arts.Charles also entered the fine arts program.During this time at Columbia he joined Alpha Phi Alpha,worked on the University's Columbia Daily Spectator and drew cartoons for the school's magazine Jester.He also hung out in Harlem Restaurants and Clubs,where his love for jazz would be be fostered.In 1929 he graduated and received a fellowship to study at Teachers College,where he obtained his Master's degree in 1931.For the years 1942-1943 Charles was stationed in the army at Fort Huachuca in Arizona.Upon returning to New York on April 8,1944,he married Dr.Myra Adele Logan,an intern at the Harlem Hospital.They met when he was working on a mural project at the hospital.Their home,including his studio,as on Edgecombe Avenue near Highbridge Park.They lived closed to family;at their frequent gatherings Charles enjoyed cooking and Myra played piano.During the 1940s he took occasional art classes studying under Alexander Kostellow.In January 1977 Myra died.Months later Charles died after a long bout with cancer.His memorial service was held at St.Martins Episcopal Church on May 21,1977 in New York City.While obtaining his master's degree,Charles was the boy's work director at the Utopia Children's House,started by James Lesene Wells.He also began teaching at the Harlem Arts Workshop,founded by Augusta Savage in the basement of what is now the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.Charles teaching style was influenced by the work of John Dewey,Arthur Wesley Dow,and Thomas Munro.During this period,he began to teach 10-year old Jacob Lawrence whom he strongly influenced.Charles was introduced to African Art by the poet Alain Locke.In the 1920s he joined Romare and other black artist who refused to exhibit in William E. Harmon Foundation shows,which featured all-black artists in their traveling exhibits.Charles and his friends though the exhibits were curated for a white audience,a form of segregation which the men protested.They did not want to be set aside but exhibit on the same level as art peers of every skin color.In 1938 the Rosewald Fund provided money for Charles to travel to the South,which was his first return since leaving as a child.His travel with Giles Hubert,an inspector for the Farm Security Administration,gave him access to certain situations and he photographed many aspects of rural life.These photographs serves as the basic for a series of genre portraits'depicting southern black life.In 1940 he completed Tobacco Farmer,the portrait of a young black farmer in white overalls and a blue shirt with a youthful yet serious look upon his face,sitting in front of the landscape and buildings he works on and in.The same year he received a second round of funding from the Reinwald Fund to travel South,and he spent extended time at Atlanta University.During the 1930s and early 1940's,Charles created illustrations for magazines such as Fortune,Mademoiselle,The New Yorker,Melody Maker and others.He also designed album covers for artists such as Duke Ellington and Coleman Hawkins.Charles also became staff artist at the Office of War information and Public Relations in 1940,creating drawings of notable African-Americans.These images were used in over 200 black newspapers across the country by the government to "foster goodwill with the citizenry.He left commerical work to focus on his own artwork.In 1950,he became the first African-American instructor at the Art Students League,where he remained until 1971.In 1950,his painting was exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and artwork was one of few purchased by the museum.He landed his first solo exhibited in 1953 at the John Heller Gallery,who represented artists such as Roy Lichtenstein.He exhibited there five times from 1953-1958.In 1956,he became the first African-American instructor at the Museum of Modern Art,where he taught for a year before going to BBelgium on behalf of MOMA and the State Department.Charles coordinated the children's community center at Expo 58.In 1958 he was awarded a grant from and was elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.In 1963,Charles co-founded Spiral with Romare Bearden and Hale Woodruff.Spiral served as collective of conversation and artistic exploration for a large group of artists who "addressed how black artists should relate to American society in a time of segregation."Artists arts supporters gathered for Spiral,such as Emma Amos,Perry Ferguson,and Merton Simpson.This group served as the 1960s version of 306,and Charles was described as an "intellectual activismts."In 1968,he spoke at Columbia about his activism and in the mid-1960s Spiral created an exhibition of black and white artworks.The exhibition was never officially sponsored by the group due to inner-group disagreement.In 1968 Charles received a presidential appointment from Lyndon Johnson to the National Council of Culture and the Arts.Mayor John Lindsay appointed him to the New York City Art Commission in 1969.Charles was made full professor at City College of New York in 1973 where he taught since 1968.In 1975 he was awarded the first Distinguished Alumni Award from Teachers College.The Art Student's League created a 21-year merit scholarship in 1977 under his name to commemorate each year of his tenure.

"May Miller"(January 26 1899-February 8 1995)

Was an African-American poet,playwright and educator.She became known as the most widely published female playwright of the Harlem Renaissance,with seven published volumes of poetry doing her career as a writer.She was born in Washington,D.C.,to Kelly and Anna May Miller,one of the Millers' five children.Kelly was born shortly, after the Emancipation Proclamation,was the first African-American student John Hopkins University,and later became one of the pioneers of sociology.May began writing poetry at an early age,buying a pair of earrings with her earnings.While attending Dunbar High School she studied under the writers Mary P. Burrill and Angelina Weld Grimke.She graduated from Howard University in 1920,where she won an award for her play Within the Shadows.May did graduate work in poetry and drama at American University and Columbia University,followed by twenty years teaching English and speech at Frederick Douglass High School,in Baltimore Maryland.May also lectured at Monmouth College,University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee,and Phillips Exeter Academy.May entry into the cultural scene of the Harlem Renaissance began with the publishing of her play The Bog Guide in 1925.Her claimed third place in the play category for Opportunity magazine's Literary Prize Contest in 1925.She sought her writing to portray black people with a level of respect and dignity that had absent in drama.Inspired by the work of the Chicago Imagists  and Archibald Macleish,May turned her writing towards poetry in the 1940s.

"Augusta Savage,"born Augusta Christine Fells.(February29,1892-March 26,1962)

Was an African-American sculptor associated with the Harlem Renaissance.She was also a teacher and her studio associated with the Harlem Renaissance.Augusta was

also a teacher and her studio was important to the careers of a rising generation of artists who who would become nationally known.She worked for equal rights for African Americans in the arts.Augusta was born in Green Cove Springs,Florida.She began making clay figures as a child,mostly small animals,but her father would beat her when he found her sculptures.This was because at that time,he believed her sculpture to be a sinful practice,based upon his interpretation of the "graven images"portion of the Bible.After the family moved to West Palm Beach,she sculpted a Virgin Mary figure,and,upon seeing it,her father changed her talent,and paid her one dollar a day to teach modeling during her senior year.This began a lifelong commitment to teaching as well as to art.In 1907,she married John Moore;they had a daughter,Irene.John died shortly after.Augusta moved back in with her parents,who raised Irene with her.Augusta continued to model clay,and applied a booth at the Palm Beach county fair,the initially apprehensive fair officials ended up awarding her $25 prize,and the sales of her art totaled 175 dollars;a significant sum at that time and place.That success encouraged her to apply to Cooper Union (art school) in New York City,where she was admitted in October,1921.During this time she married James Savage;they divorced after only a few months,she kept the name of Savage .Augusta excelled in her art classes at Cooper,and was accelerated through foundation classes.Her talent and ability so impressed the staff and faculty at Cooper,that she was awarded funds for room and board,tuition being already covered for all Cooper students.In 1923 Augusta applied for a summer art program sponsored by the French government;despite being more than qualified ,she was turned down by the international judging committee,soley because she was black.Augusta was deeply upset,and questioned the committee,beginning the first of many public fights for equal rights in her life.The incident got press coverage on both sides of the Atlantic,and eventually the sole supportive committee Member,sculptor Hermon Atkins MacNeil-who at one time had shared a studio with Henry Ossawa Tanner invited her to study him.She later cited him as one of her teachers.After completing studies her studies at Cooper Union,Augusta worked in Manhattan steam laundries to support herself and her family.Her father had been paralyzed by a stroke,and the family's home was destroyed by a hurricane.Her family from Florida moved into her small West 137 Street apartment.During this time she obtained her first commission,for a bust of W.E.B. Du Bois for the Harlem Library.Her outstanding sculpture brought more commissions,including  one for a bust of Marcus Garvey.In 1923,she married Robert Lincoln Poston,a protege of Marcus.Robert died aboard a ship returning from Liberia as part of a Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities delegation in 1924.In 1925 she won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Rome;the scholarship covered only tuition,and she was not able to raise money for travel and living expenses.Augusta was unable to attend.Knowledge of her talent and struggles become widespread in the African-American community;fund-raising parties were held in Harlem and Greenwhich Village and African-American women's groups and teachers from Florida A&M all sent her money for studies abroad.In 1929,with assistance as well from the Julius Rosenwald Fund,Augusta enrolled and attended the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere,a leading Paris art school.In Paris,she studied with the sculptor Charles Despiau.She exhibited and won awards in two Salons and one Exposition.Augusta toured France,Belgium,and Germany,researching sculpture in cathedrals and museums.Augusta returned to the United States in 1931,energized from her studies and achievements.The Great Depression had nearly stopped art sales.She pushed on, and in 1934 became the first African-American artist to be elected to the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors.Augusta then launched the Savage Studio of Arts and Crafts,located in a basement on West 143d Street in Harlem.She opened her studio to anyone who wanted to paint,draw,or sculpt.Her many young students would include the future nationally known artists Jacob Lawrence,Norman Lewis,and Gwendolyn Knight.Another student was the sociologist Kenneth B. Clark whose later research contributed to the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v.Broad of education that ruled school segregation unconstitutional.Her school evolved into the Harlem Community Art Center,1500 people of all ages and abilities participated in her workshops,learning from her multi-cultural staff,and showing work around NYC.Funds from the Works Progress Administration helped,but old struggles of discrimination were revied between Augusta and WPA officials who objected to her having a leadership role.Augusta received a commisson from the 1939 New York World's Fair;she created Lift Every Voice and Sing,inspired by the song by James Weldon and Rosamond Johnson.The 16-foot-tall plaster sculpture was the most popular and most photographed work at the fair,small mental souvenir copies were sold,and many postcards of the piece were purchased.Augusta did not have funds to have it cast in bronze,or to move it.Like other temporary installations,the sculpture was destroyed at the close of the fair.She opened two galleries,whose shows were well attended and well reviewed,but few sales resulted and the galleries closed.Deeply depressed by the financial struggle in the 1940s Augusta moved to a farm in Saugerties where she stayed until 1960.It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2001 as the Augusta Savage House and Studio.She worked on a mushroom farm,and made not little or no effort to talk about or create art.Her few neighbors said she she was always making something with her hands.Much of her work is in clay or plaster,as she could not often afford bronze.One of her most famous busts is titled Gamin,which is on permanement display at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington,D.C.and a life -sized version is in the Cleveland Museum of Art.Her style can be described as realistic,expressive,sensitive.Her art and influence within the art community is documented,the location of much of her work is unknown.Augusta died  of cancer after spending her last year with her daughter.

Ralph Waldo Ellison"(March 1,1914-April 16,1994)

Was an American novelist,literary critic,scholar,scholar and writer.He was born in Oklahoma

City,Oklahoma.Ralph is best known for his novel Invisible Man,which won the National Book Award in 1953.He also wrote Shadow and Act (1964),a collection of political,social and critical essays,and Going to the The Territory (1986).Ralph is named after Ralph Waldo Emerson.Born to Lewis Afred and Ida Millsap.Research by Lawrence Jackson,one his biographers,has established that he was born a year earlier than had been previously thought.Ralph had one brother named Herbert Millsap Ellison who was born in 1916.Lewis a small-business owner and a construction foreman,died when Ralph was three years old from stomach uclers he received from an ice-delivering accident.Many years later,Ralph would find out that his daddy hoped he would grow up to be a poet.In 1933,Ralph entered  Tuskegee University on a scholarship to study music.Tuskegee's music department was perhaps the most renowned department at the school,headed by the conductor William L.Dawson.Ralph also had the good fortune to come under the close tutelage of the piano instructor Hazel Harrison.While he studied music primarily in his classes,he spent increasing amounts of time in the library,reading up on modernist classics.He specifically cited reading T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land a a major awakening moment for him.After his third year,he moved to New York City the visual arts.He studied sculpture and photography.He made acquaintance with the artist Romare Bearden.Perhaps Ralph's most important contact would be with the author Richard Wright,with whom he would have a long and complicated relationship.After  he wrote a book review for Richard, he encouraged Ralph to pursue a career in writing,specifically fiction.The first published story written by Ralph was a short story entitled "Hymie's Bull", a story inspired by Ralph's hoboing on a train with his uncle to get to Tuskegee.From 1937 to 1944 he had over twenty books reviews as well as short stories and articles published in magazines such as New Challenge and New Masses Richard  was at time openly associated  with the Communist Party,and Ralph himself was publishing and editing for communist publications,as historian Carol Polsgrove has written,his affiliation was quieter."Both Richard and Ralph lost their faith in the Communist Party during World War2 when they felt the party had betrayed African American and replaced Marxist class politics for social reformism.In a letter a letter to Richard,August 18,1945,Ralph poured out his anger toward the party leaders:"If they want to play ball with the bourgeoisie they needn't think they can get away with it...Maybe we can't smash the atom,but we can,with a few chosen,well written words,smash all that crummy filth to hell."In the wake of of this disillusion,Ralph began writing Invisible Man,a novel that was,in part,his response to the party's betrayal.World War 2 was nearing its end when Ralph,reluctant to serve in the segregated army,chose merchant marine service over the draft.In 1946,he married his second wife,Fanny McConnell.She worked as a photographer to help sustain Ralph.From 1947 to 1951 he earned some money writing book reviews,but spent most of his time working on Invisible Man.Fanny also helped type Ralph's longhand text and assisted her husband in editing the typecast as it progressed.Published in 1952,explores the theme of man's search for his identity and place in society,as seem from the perspective of an unnamed black in New York City in the 1930s.In contrast to his contemporaries such as Richard Wright and James Baldwin,Ralph created characters that are dispassionate,educated,articulate and self-aware.Through the protagonist,he explores the contrasts between the Northern and Southern varieties of racism and their alienating effect.The narrator  is "invisible"in a figurative sense,in that "people refuse to see"him,and also experiences a kind of dissociation.The novel,with its treatment of taboo issues such as incest and the controversial subject of communism,won the National Book Award in 1953.The award was his ticket in to the American literary establishment.Disillusioned by his experience with the Communist Party,he used his new fame to speak out for literature as a moral instrument.In 1955,he went abroad to Europe to travel and lecture before setting for a time in Rome,Italy,where he wrote an essay that appeared in Bantam anthology called A New Southern Harvest in 1957.Robert Penn Warren was in Rome during the same time and the two writers became close friends.In 1958,Ralph returned to the United States to take position teaching American and Russian literature at Bard College an to begin a second novel,Juneteenth.During the 1950s he corresponded with his lifelong friend,the writer  Albert Murray.In their letters they commented on the development of their careers,the civil rights movement and other common interests including jazz.Much of this material was published in the collection Trading Twelves (2000).In 1964,Ralph published Shadow and Act,a collection of essays,and began to teach at Rutgers University and Yale University,while continuing to work on his novel.The following year,a survey of 200 prominent literary figures was released that proclaimed Invisible Man the most important novel since World War 2.In 1967,he experience a major house fire at his home in Planfield,Massachusetts,in which he claimed more than 300 pages of his second novel manuscript were lost.Ralph said in accepting his National Book Award for Invisible Man,that he felt he had made "an attempt at a major novel,"and despite the award,he was usatisfieldOrde des Arts et des Letters by France and became a permanent member of the faculty at New York University as the Albert Schweitzer Professor of Humanities,serving from 1970 to 1980.In 1975,Ralph was elected to The American-Academy of Arts and Letters and his hometown of Oklahoma City honored him with the dedication of the Ralph Waldo Ellison Library.Continuing to teach,he published mostly essays,and in 1984 he received the New York City Colleges'sLanston Hughes Medal.In 1985,he was awarded the National Medal of Arts.In 1986,his Going to the Territory was published.This a collection of seventeen essays that included insight into southern novelist William Faulkner and Ralph's friend Richard Wright,as well as the music of Duke Ellington and the contributions of African Americans to America's national identity.In 1992,Ralph was awarded a special achievement award from the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards.He was also an accomplished sculptor,musician,photographer,and college professor.He taught at Bard College,Rutgers University,the University of Chicago,and New York University.Ralph was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers.He died,of pancreatic cancer,and was buried at Trinity Church Cemtery in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City.He was survived by his wife,Fanny Ellison,who died on November 19,2005.

"Gwendolyn B. Bennett" (July 8,1902-May 30, 1981)

Was an African American writer who contributed to Opportunity,which chronicled cultural advancements in Harlem.Often over looked,she herself made considerable accomplishments in poetry and prose.She is perhaps best known for her short, story Wedding Day,which was published in the first issue of Fire!! She was born in Giddings,Texas to Josh and Mamie Bennett.Gwendolyn spent her early childhood in Wadsworth,Nevada on the Paiute Native American Reservation.Her parents taught in the Native American Service of Indian Affairs.In 1906 when she was four years old her family moved to 1454 T Street Northwest,Washington D.C.,so Joshua could study law and Mamie could train to be a a beautician.The move eventually led to her parents'divorce when Gwendolyn was seven years old.Mamie gained custody of Gwendolyn,however her father kidnapped  her and they lived in hiding,along with her stepmother, Marechal Neil,along the East Coast and Pennsylvania.Her  father eventually took them to New York where she attended Brooklyn's Girls High from 1918-1921.While attending Girl's High,she was awarded first place in a school wide art contest,and was the first African American to join the literary and drama societies.She wrote her high school play and was also featured as an actress.Gwendolyn also wrote both the class graduation speech and the words to the graduation song.After graduation in 1921 she began to take art classes at Columbia University and the Pratt Institute.In her undergraduate studies,Gwendolyn poem "Heritage"was published in Crisis in November, 1923 and also in December of the same year,her poem Heritage was included in Opportunity,a magazine published by the National Urban League.She graduated from both institutes in 1924 and in June of that  year ,started teaching design, watercolor and crafts at Howard University.A scholarship enabling her to study abroad in Paris,at Sorbonne,was awarded to Gwendolyn in December, 1924 she then continued her fine arts education at Academic Julian and Ecole du Pantheon in

"Lewis Grandison Alexander"(July 4,1900-1945)

Was an American poet,actor,playwright,and costume designer who lived in Washington D.C. and strong ties to the Harlem Renaissance period in New York.Lewis focused most of his time and creativity on poetry,and it is that he is best-known.Lewis was born in Washington D.C. As a child,he was educated in the Washington public school system.Little biographical is available on Alexander until,at the age of 17,he began writing poetry;he took special interest in Japanese forms haiku,hokku,and tanka.Lewis went on to Study at Howard University in Washington D.C. where he was an active member of the Howard Players,the school's theatre group.He later continued his studies at the University of Pennsylvania.Lewis expressed a special interest in Japanese forms and he is one of few African Americans poets to write in these styles."The Fire!! poems Langston Hughes, Helene Johnson,and Lewis deserve recognition as important modernist verse because they make key forms of modern poetry-free verse,imagism,and dramatic monologue- into racial critique.His notoriety as a poet can best be exemplified by his publication in many popular journals and magazines.Throughout his career,he was published regularly with other major Harlem Renaissance figures such as Langston Hughes,Gwendolyn Bennett, and Countee Cullen.Lewis wrote an article on the top of Japanese hokku that was published,along with two of his poems, in the December 1923 edition of The Crisis.He was published several times in Opportunity:Journal of Negro Life, a popular literary magazine associated with the Harlem Renaissance edited by Charles Spurgeon Johnson,from 1925 to 1929.The first of these appearances occurred in a trio of African-themed poems alongside poems by Langston Hughes and Claude McKay.Lewis most popularly anthologized work,a short poem entitled "Negro Woman"was published in Opportunity at least twice and appears in multiple anthologies in 1927,Lewis,along with many others poets (most notably Langston Hughes) and writers set out to create a literary quarterly expressing the Black experience in America.Unfortunately, Fire!! only produced one issue due to the burning of the magazine's headquarters.In this one issue,Lewis published two poems: "Little Cinderella",a poem often thought to be about a young,black prostitute,and another short verse entitled "Dream Song."Although Lewis did not live in Harlem,he was an active participant in the Harlem  Renaissance movement.His locations outside of Harlem helped spread the inventive new thinking that flourished at the time in New York.After writing extensively in Washington,Lewis moved around the country and joined whichever literary circle that existed in his new city.In Philadelphia,he was associated with a group of young writers who were commonly published in the small-time "Black Opals" literary magazine.In Boston he appeared in the "Saturday Evening Quill."Lewis was influential at the University of North Carolina where he served as honorary editor for special issues of The Carolina Magazine,the official literary publication of the students of the University,which featured black poets and writers.With his help(he selected works from Crisis and Opportunity writing and poetry contest),the magazine continued to publish Negro Poetry Numbers and Negro Play Numbers).The continued issues of Negro Poetry Numbers were dedicated to Lewis.Although he is best known for his work as a poet,Lewis was also a playwright,actor,and costume designer.After participating in the theatre while attending Howard University,Lewis joined the play writers circle of Washington D.C. there,he directed all the plays put on the Randall Community Center in Washington as well as all the plays put on by Ira Aldridge players. He studied and toured with The Ethiopian Art Theatre /players.During their 1923 tour,in which they opened for Broadway,Lewis appeared in Oscar Wilde's Salome and The Comedy of Errors.