Welcome to Our African American Literature Homeschool Language Arts Course

Course Outline for Our African American Literature Homeschool Language Arts Course

The seven units in this African American Literature homeschool language arts homeschool course explore themes of African American literature through printable weekly lessons with reading and journaling assignments.

• Introduction
• Unit One: Oral Traditions and Spirituals: This will be a chance for us to explore song lyrics. These types of songs were often sung by slaves as they worked the fields. We’ll also look at works by Joel Chandler Harris and Paul Laurence Dunbar.
• Unit Two: North American Slave Narratives: This will be the longest unit in our study because of the great importance of slave narratives as a genre and the impact these narratives had on the course of a nation. We’ll look at works by Hannah Valentine, John Boston, Spotswood Rice, William W. Brown, David Walker, John Day, Frederick Douglass, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Henry “Box” Brown, and Phillis Wheatley. 
• Unit Three: Reconstruction to New Negro Renaissance Movement, 1865-1919: The years after the Civil War extending to the first decade of the twentieth century were a period when the imperative of racial uplift sometimes conflicted with the artist’s desire to develop as an individual. We’ll look at works by Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois. 
• Unit Four: Harlem Renaissance: The Harlem Renaissance is the name given to the art period of the 1920s. This period not only included literature, but other works of art as well. We’ll look at works by Claude McKay, Zora Neale Hurston, Jean Toomer, and Langston Hughes.
• Unit Five: Modernism and the Civil Rights Era, 1940s-1960s: After World War II, African Americans who served their country came home to a world that still did not accept them as equal. The authors of this period struggled to make a place for themselves as Americans, seeking equality in all areas of life, yet not lose their cultural identity. We’ll look at works by Robert Hayden, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Gwendolyn Brooks.
• Unit Six: The Black Arts Movement, 1960-1975: Artists of the Black Arts movement, even while they criticized the aesthetic aims of the movement as a whole, were moved by continuing injustices to be politically active in their art. We’ll look at works by Etheridge Knight, Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni, and Alice Walker.
• Unit Seven: Contemporary: The struggles of communities to overcome drug epidemics, HIV, and continued racism are the focal point of many contemporary African American authors. In this unit, we’ll focus on a piece by Maya Angelou.