William Edward Burghardt Du Bois entered the world on February 23, 1868, in the small, rolling hills of Great Barrington, Massachusetts—a town where the air carried the crisp scent of New England pines and the quiet rhythms of rural life. Born into a family of mixed African, Dutch, and French Huguenot heritage, he was the son of Alfred Du Bois, a restless barber and laborer of Haitian descent who soon vanished from t…
“The power of the ballot we need in sheer self-defense,—else what shall save us from a second slavery?”
Neighbourhood:
African American Poets, American Poets, Harlem Renaissance, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing
James David Corrothers entered the world on July 2, 1869, in Cass County, Michigan, a place where the winds off Lake Michigan carried echoes of freedom from the Underground Railroad routes that had once snaked through its forests and fields. He left it far too soon, on February 12, 1917, in West Chester, Pennsylvania, felled by a stroke at the age of forty-seven while serving a Presbyterian congregation. In the brief…
Neighbourhood:
African American Poets, American Poets, Harlem Renaissance, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Despair, Sorrow, Anger