United States History

This marks the beginning of our second Essay Assignment of the semester. Essay Assignment 2 is based on documents 21.5 through 21.9 in chapter 21 of our textbook, Exploring American Histories. NOTE: it will help you to have read pages 698-700 AND 703-705 of chapter 21, as well. These documents (and pages) explore the social and cultural phenomenon called the “New Negro” movement of the 1910s-1920s. This movement was often associated with the Harlem section of New York City. this was a majority African American section of the city and it became very famous for an “explosion” of scholarly and artistic works that explored the experiences of African Americans. You’ll note that most of the documents for this Essay Assignment are artistic in nature, poems and an illustration. So, be prepared, you’ll have to read carefully, look carefully, and think carefully about what you’re reading and looking at.

Here are the ground rules for this Essay Assignment:

1. DO NOT use any additional sources for this essay unless you clear those sources with me first.

2. DO NOT collaborate with others on this essay. Essays are individual work.

3. DO NOT put any kind of heading on your essay.

4. DO NOT put any kind of title on your essay.

5. your essay MUST be written using PAST TENSE verbs only — unless the quoted material you are using in your essay happens to use present tense verbs. In cases like that, of course, you must use the verb tense that the writer of the quoted material used.

6. your essay MUST begin with a good, thoughtful introductory paragraph that a) provides some background information and context so that the reader understands the time period that you are dealing with and some of the realities of that time period and b) ends with a strong and clear thesis statement that makes it very clear to the reader what major ideas you’ll explore in the body paragraphs of the essay. (The writing prompts below will help you do what’s called for in Part B. Your thesis statement should simply be the last 1-2 sentences of your introductory paragraph. In that 1-2 sentences, give me a heads up about the things that you’ll explore in the body paragraphs of your essay.)

7. each body paragraph of your essay MUST begin with a clear topic sentence that lets me know what the paragraph will focus on. (Again. use the writing prompts to help you develop your topic sentences.)

8. your essay MUST demonstrate very careful reading, consideration, and understanding of the assigned documents and relevant pages in our textbook. Your writing needs to make it very clear that you have read ALL of the documents and ALL of the pages carefully AND understood what you’ve read AND thought about what you’ve read. DO NOT assume that your reader has read what you have read or knows anything at all about the assignment. Assume that your reader is COMPLETELY IGNORANT of these things. Explain everything VERY fully, clearly, and carefully, so that even the completely ignorant reader of your essay understands what you have written and, therefore, understands the material you have read.

You are expected to use ALL of the assigned documents and pages in the essay;

9. your essay MUST respond very carefully and very fully to the writing prompts/questions for the assignment (see below);

Those prompts/questions tell you what the body paragraphs of your essay should focus on.

The body of your essay should include AT LEAST one paragraph for each of the writing prompts/questions.

10. your essay MUST support your general statements and opinions with plenty of specific examples, details, and information from the assigned documents and pages. Support what you write VERY FULLY, please.

Please include frequent quotations from the documents in your essay. This is a good way to support your general statements;

11. your essay MUST provide frequent parenthetical citations that indicate the sources of the material that you use in your essay. Here are a couple of examples:

(Exploring American Histories, page 698);

(Document 21.7, page 714);

These parenthetical citations should be found in the body paragraphs of your essay. You need to include frequent citations like these because all of the information in your essay is taken from assigned sources, and you MUST cite those sources frequently;

12. DO NOT include any kind of works cited page or bibliography with your essay;

13. your essay MUST also provide parenthetical citations — as explained above — for EACH quotation that you include;

14. your essay MUST be NO SHORTER than 65 complete sentences in length, but it may certainly be longer than that;

15. your essay MUST consist of multiple paragraphs: one paragraph for the introduction, at least one paragraph for your response to each writing prompt/question, and one paragraph for the conclusion;

16. your essay MUST abide by all of the normal rules of formal writing, including spelling, grammar, punctuation, word usage, and explanation;

17. your essay MUST end with a good, thoughtful conclusion.

Please write a formal essay in which you respond fully, carefully, and accurately — following ALL of the guidelines explained above — to these writing prompts/questions:

* Two important themes of both the New Negro movement and the Harlam Renaissance were 1) African American pride and 2) African American resistance against the many obstacles that had traditionally been placed in their way.

* Dig into each of the following and explore how each reflected these two themses AND what each had to say about the “New Negro” of the 1910s and 1920s —

– Marcus Garvey and his Univeral Negro Improvement Association;

– A. Philip Randolph’s and Chandler Owen’s essay “The New Negro — What Is He?”;

– Claude McKay’s poen “If We Must Die”;

– Langston Hughes’s poem, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”;

– Aaron Douglass’s illustration “The New Negro.”

* NOTE: you may organize your essay in whatever way seems best to you. For instance, you may organize it to explore each of the two themes by exploring and explaining the ways that each assigned document addresses those thems OR you may organize it to explore each of the assigned documents by exploring and explaining the ways that each assigned document addresses the two themes.