Leslie Pinckney Hill entered the world on May 14, 1880, in Lynchburg, Virginia, the son of Samuel H. Hill, a man who had known the brutal chains of enslavement, and Sarah E. Hill. In the shadow of the post-Reconstruction South, where the promises of freedom still clashed with the realities of Jim Crow oppression, young Leslie’s early years were steeped in the rhythms of a family striving for dignity and self-determin…
“Therefore nothing is more important to the development of any people than the content of those printed pages on which they form their youthful minds.”
Neighbourhood:
African American Poets, American Poets, Harlem Renaissance, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Sorrow, Tenderness
Otto Leland Bohanan, born around 1895 in Washington, D.C., and dead in New York City on December 6, 1932, belonged to the first generation of African American artists whose work helped prepare the ground for the Harlem Renaissance. He was a poet, composer, baritone, teacher, and cultivated public intellectual, a figure whose gifts moved easily among literature, music, education, and fraternity life. His surviving rep…
Neighbourhood:
African American Poets, American Poets, Harlem Renaissance, Nature Poets, Poet-Musicians, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Joy, Longing, Wonder
