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…
“The Negro has been driven under all the burdens of oppression, both material and spiritual, to the brink of desperation, but he has always been saved by his philosophy of life.”
Neighbourhood:
African American Poets, American Poets, Harlem Renaissance, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Sorrow, Tenderness
Joshua Henry Jones Jr. was born in 1876 in the sun-baked fields of Orangeburg, South Carolina, a place still echoing with the fragile hopes of Reconstruction. He died on December 14, 1955, in Boston, Massachusetts, at the age of seventy-nine, his life a remarkable arc that carried him from the segregated South to the bustling intellectual and political circles of New England. A poet, novelist, composer, journalist, a…
Neighbourhood:
African American Poets, American Poets, Harlem Renaissance, Nature Poets, Poet-Musicians, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Longing, Peace
