"The Harlem Renaissance"

In the informational text adapted from "The 1920s" by Kathleen Drowne and Patrick Huber, the Harlem Renaissance is described through its historical context, literature, music, and art. Jazz up your vocabulary with this list.

Here are all the word lists to support the reading of Grade 11 Unit 5's texts from SpringBoard's Common Core ELA series: The Harlem Renaissance, The New Negro, To Usward, Lift Every Voice and Sing, On 'From the Dark Tower' , How It Feels to Be Colored Me, Sweat, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Mother to Son, critical reviews
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. unprecedented
    novel; having no earlier occurrence
    The flood of African-American newcomers heightened competition with white workers for jobs, housing, and public facilities, and set off an unprecedented surge of race riots in northern and Midwestern cities.
  2. turbulent
    characterized by unrest or disorder or insubordination
    Although the 1920s saw a tremendous flowering of African-American arts, particularly in Harlem and other northern cities, the decade overall was one of tense, turbulent, and sometimes violent relations between black and white Americans.
  3. currency
    general acceptance or use
    Although the phrase "New Negro" dates to the late nineteenth century, it was not until the 1920s that this label gained currency as a description for middle-class African Americans who advocated a new sense of militancy and racial pride.
  4. agency
    the state of being in action or exerting power
    Above all, "New Negroes" attempted to assert their own agency and participate fully in American culture, while resisting white America's attempts to cast them as a "problem" that somehow needed to be solved.
  5. onset
    the beginning or early stages
    The Harlem Renaissance, sometimes called the Negro Renaissance or the New Negro Movement, describes the period roughly between the end of World War I and the onset of the Great Depression, during which African Americans produced a vast number of literary, musical, and artistic works.
  6. consciousness
    an alert cognitive state in which you are aware of yourself
    The artists associated with the Harlem Renaissance attempted to promote racial consciousness and black pride by creating new images of African Americans and by celebrating their blues and folklore traditions, in order ultimately to destroy old racist stereotypes.
  7. optimistic
    hopeful that the best will happen in the future
    The works they created were, for the most part, confident, positive, and optimistic about the future of black America.
  8. advent
    arrival that has been awaited
    With the advent of National Prohibition, Harlem nightclubs and cabarets, located above 125th Street in Manhattan, began to attract wealthy white partygoers and tourists who wanted to drink, dance, and hear "exotic" African-American music.
  9. swanky
    impressively fashionable and elegant
    These swanky nightclubs and cabarets employed hundreds of African-American jazz musicians during the late 1920s, including bandleader Edward "Duke" Ellington.
  10. pinnacle
    the highest level or degree attainable
    By far the greatest jazz musician of the 1920s was Louis Armstrong, a New Orleans-born cornetist and trumpeter whose inventive solos and technical brilliance marked the pinnacle of hot jazz.
  11. prominence
    the state of being widely known or eminent
    Another influential form of African-American music that rose to prominence during the 1920s was the blues.
  12. ostentatious
    intended to attract notice and impress others
    One of the most influential vaudeville blues singers of the 1920s was Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, a flamboyant dresser who flaunted expensive beaded gowns, a necklace made of $20 gold pieces, and ostentatious diamond earrings and rings.
  13. scrutiny
    the act of examining something closely, as for mistakes
    After her story appeared in newspapers, many editorials and letters followed, and while she never did receive the scholarship, she did other black artists a great service by focusing public scrutiny on the problem.
  14. dignified
    formal or stately in bearing or appearance
    Douglas was a student of the German artist Winold Reiss, who painted African Americans neither as crude stereotypes nor as white people with dark complexions, but rather as dignified, unique individuals.
  15. elaborate
    marked by complexity and richness of detail
    His May 1927 cover for the Urban League's magazine Opportunity, for example, depicts the proud profile of a long-neck Magbetu woman with an elaborate African hairstyle.
Created on Mon Nov 17 04:14:17 EST 2014 (updated Mon Nov 17 09:20:46 EST 2014)

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