Finding Langston

The following materials bring books to life and support both individual and group literature study. Use these resources to draw real-world connections, plan interdisciplinary lessons, inspire unique research projects, create enrichment activities, and support differentiated instruction.

• Harlem Stomp! by Laban Carrick Hill

This book for middle-grade and young-adult readers includes poetry, prose, paintings, photographs, newspaper “clippings,” playbills, and background information about the Harlem Renaissance.

•  Shimmy Shimmy Shimmy Like My Sister Kate, by Nikki Giovanni

This anthology of African American poetry includes works by Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Countee Cullen, and Paul Lawrence Dunbar. Commentary explores the poets’ contributions to the African American cultural explosion of the early 20th century.

• The Great Migration: An American Story, by Jacob Lawrence

This book contains images from Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series, a collection of 60 paintings that chronicle the mass exodus of African Americans from the rural South to the northern cities in the 1940s. The migration is mirrored in Finding Langston.

• Past Present with Lesa Cline-Ransome

In this Kidlit TV interview with Lesa Cline-Ransome, she reveals her research methods and notes that stories of the Great Migration inspired her writing.

•  Homework Hotline: The Harlem Renaissance

In this short video, teacher Rakia Hardaway traces the Harlem Renaissance from its roots in the Great Migration.