Taking a Look at African American Poets

Booker T. Washington was a leader in the African American community from 1890 – 1915, a teacher, and an author. He was the very first principal and teacher at Tuskegee University, a historically black school. He also gave The Atlanta Address at the Cotton States and International Exposition where he disagreed with political and social equality with whites.

Booker T Washington was one of the best advocates in his time. Growing up in slavery and out coming the horrifying struggles of the 1870’s was a great effort. Born in the era were black people were like flies he found a determination to succeed and discovered many powers in life.

W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington were two very influential leaders in the black community during the late 19th century, early 20th century. However, they both had different views on improvement of social and economic standing for blacks. Booker T. Washington, an ex-slave, put into practice his educational ideas at Tuskegee, which opened in 1881. Washington stressed patience, manual training, and hard work. He believed that blacks should go to school, learn skills, and work their way up the ladder. Washington also urged blacks to accept racial discrimination for the time being, and once they worked their way up, they would gain the respect of whites and be fully accepted as citizens. W.E.B. Du Bois on the other hand, wanted a more

Booker T. Washington is a famous African American educator, author, civil rights activist, and philanthropist who is from Virginia (Wells). He is the man that promoted African American to rise above their status of trying to be equal with Caucasians by promoting education and economic self-determination. Washington’s life serves as an example of his philosophy or belief due to his experience of knowing where African Americans started after the Civil War, where they were headed, and resulted in changing their course to successful life.

Born a slave on a Virginia farm, Booker Taliaferro Washington (1856-1915) rose to become one of the most influential African-American intellectuals of the late 19th century. He was nine years old when the Civil War ended. He worked hard as a young child and at 16, he left home to attend Hampton Institute. One of the few black high schools in the South, it focused on industrial and agricultural training while maintaining an extremely structured curriculum that stressed discipline and high moral character. Washington thrived in that environment. He eventually went on to head a new school in Tuskegee, Alabama. The Tuskegee Institute was devoted to the training of black teachers, farmers, and skilled workers. Under his

Booker T. Washington rose up from slavery and illiteracy to become the foremost educator and leader of black Americans at the turn of the century. He was born on April 5, 1856 in Franklin County, Virginia. As a child he worked in the salt mines but always found time for education. Washington constantly dreamed of college but as an African American this dream was nearly impossible. His scrupulous working habits from the mines set him out for college at the Hampton Institute. He graduated in 1876 and became a teacher at a rural school. After 2 years of teaching, he went back to the Hampton Institute and was a “professor” here for 2 more years. His next challenge would be at a new all black college, Tuskegee Institute where he would become president. Under Washington's leadership (1881-1915), Tuskegee Institute became an important force in black education. Washington won a Harvard honorary degree in 1891.

These circumstances paved the way for new leaders to step up and take action. Washington, one of the dominant leaders in the black community at the time was a prominent educator and orator. Born into slavery in 1856 Virginia, where education was barely accessible he felt that a formalized education was the best way to improve his living standards. Washington was able to obtain a primary education, and subsequently entered Hampton Institute in the fall of 1872. Because of his experiences at Hampton, Washington went on to become an educator as well as an a strong supporter of industrial education. He ultimately founded the Tuskegee Normal and Agricultural Institute in Alabama, a teacher’s school for blacks with emphasis on agricultural and industrial

Booker Taliaferro Washington was the foremost black educators of the 19th and 20th centuries. He also had a major influence on southern race relations and was a dominant figure in black affairs from 1895 until his death in 1915.

Booker T. Washington was the most significant educator in the African American community. He also headed the Tuskegee Institution and founded a Bible College to improve education for pastors. His school incorporated Biblical principles into every aspect of education (Barton, (2004)).

The autobiography of Booker T. Washing titled Up From Slavery is a rich narrative of the man's life from slavery to one of the founders of the Tuskegee Institute. The book takes us through one of the most dynamic periods in this country's history, especially African Americans. I am very interested in the period following the Civil War and especially in the transformation of African Americans from slaves to freemen. Up From Slavery provides a great deal of information on this time period and helped me to better understand the transition. Up From Slavery provided a narrative on Washington's life, as well as his views on education and integration of African Americans. All though this book was

Def poetry is a form of poetry typically based on urban culture and themes, often with an expressed focus on the African American experience. This type of poetry illustrates the experiences and lifestyle of those who grow up in urban environments. For years it has been bubbling under the surface as an underground phenomenon, but now it is beginning to creep its way into the mainstream. Def poetry can take a number of different forms, depending on the poet, though it typically expresses personal opinions and life stories. This type of poetry is often associated with a series of performances called Def Poetry Jam, which developed out of Russell Simmons’ Def Comedy Jam series. Performances also include special appearances by well-known actors

The Contemporary Black Poetry Project featured three award winning African-American poets from Michigan: Toi Derricotte, Naomi Long Madgett, and Herbert Woodward Martin. The poets ranged in age from seventy-five to ninety-three. The Contemporary Black Poetry Project featured four public readings this fall. I attended the fourth reading which took place on October first in Harbor Springs, Michigan, at the Harbor Springs United Methodist Church. All of the poets’ pieces and performances were exquisite, however in this essay I will focus exclusively on Mr. Herbert Woodward Martin’s work. African American culture, music, and history greatly influence Mr. Martin’s poems.

African American literature transformed society for those who suffered from racial inequality. In the 1800’s, writers focused on enforcing antislavery for black Americans through poetry, short stories, and ballads. James M. Whitfield was one of those highly recognized individuals. Frederick Douglass, William Wells Brown, and his community honored him due to his accomplishments as a poet (Gates and Smith 422). Many believed that Whitfield would become the next Edgar Allan Poe or John Greenleaf Whittier, the leading white antislavery poet during that time, because his works were so successful (Gates and Smith 423). James M. Whitfield’s poem “America” expressed antislavery through the utilization of different genres, styles, and themes.

This chapter undertakes to explicate the way that distinction operates at a key moment in African American cultural history. Black art is the aesthetic and spiritual sister of the Black power. The Black arts and the Black power concept both relate to the African Americans for self-determination and nationhood. It has been widely held that the fundamental characteristic of Black arts poetry is its virulent antiwhite rhetoric. Houston Baker stated, the influential black critic J. Saunders Redding disparaged the Black Aesthetic as representative of a discourse of “hate”, a “native racism in reverse”. The personality of African-American culture is established in the authentic experience of the African-American individuals, including the Middle

Measuring where we are and where we want to be is a common aspect of everyone’s life. This particular article highpoints this concept as it applies to African American poetry. The article discusses notable contribution by African American artists in the field of poetry and the cultural circumstances surrounding their work. The questions of what makes up black identity were made even harder given the “cultural whiteness” surrounding the community at the time. Nonetheless, artists and poets continued to push through their disparities to establish the black identity movement in poetry. The article goes in to discuss works such as The Venus Hottentot (1990) and Body of Life (1996) and artists such as Toi Derricottee and Cornelius Eady serving as