On Writing Assigned at Howard University, 1919-31

From: "Lost Voices of the Harlem Renaissance: Writing Assigned at Howard University, 1919-31" by Scott Zaluda. College Composition and Communication, Vol. 50, No. 2 (Dec., 1998), pp. 232-257

OMG.  This article is amazing.  The section on the way Alain Lock taught writing is worth my subscription to this journal in this year alone.  And how many of my students struggle in just the way talked about here, today?

Based upon what the teachers of these former students assigned them to write and what those teachers identified as their goals as educators, we may presume that these students and their peers in Howard's classrooms may have felt at times inspired, at times daunted by their formidable tasks: 

• to express their humanity while hewing to rigorous standards of expression; 

• to master the knowledge of disciplines while rewriting it; 

• to emancipate the nation while preparing themselves for careers that were usually restricted to a secondary level of the national economy.