Pre-test

Harlem Renaissance and Jazz Age

1. True or False: The Harlem Renaissance and Jazz Age believed in
only the essentials.
a. True
b. False
2. DuBois helped inspire what event?
a. Legalizing interracial marriages
b. Civil Rights Movement
c. Giving blacks the right to vote
d. Creating laws against lynching
3. What
a.
b.
c.
d.

Harlem Renaissance poet wrote, I, Too, Sing America?

Zora Neale Hurston
Langston Hughes
Claude McKay
W.E.B. DuBois

For questions 4-7 please read the following poem:

From the Dark Tower, by Countee Cullen
We shall not always plant while others reap
The golden increment of bursting fruit,
Not always countenance, abject and mute
That lesser men should hold their brothers cheap;
Not everlastingly while others sleep
Shall we beguile their limbs with mellow flute,
Not always bend to some more subtle brute;
We were not made eternally to weep.
The night whose sable breast relieves the stark
White stars is no less lovely being dark,
And there are buds that cannot bloom at all
In light, but crumple, piteous, and fall;
So in the dark we hide the heart that bleeds,
And wait, and tend our agonizing seeds.
4. What does Cullen imply about the job situation during the 1920s
for blacks as compared to whites?
a. It is equal after a long, hard fight.
b. It is the closest to equal it is ever going to be.
c. It is unequal, but the situation is much improved from a
few years earlier.
d. It is unequal, but some day will change.
5. Which line is evidence of black pride at the time of the Harlem

Renaissance?
a. Not always countenance./That lesser men should hold
their brothers cheap
b. Not everlastingly.Shall we beguile their limbs with
mellow flute
c. The night whose sable breastis no less lovely being
dark
d. So in the dark we hide the heart that bleeds
6. List and label one figurative language device in the poem.
7. What
a.
b.
c.
d.

is the theme of the poem?

African Americans will not be oppressed forever.
Individuals like hiding in the dark for peace.
African Americans display their pain for everyone to see.
Nature with its bursting fruit is beautiful.

8. Define allusion.
9. Write and label your own figurative language device.