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Young black writers look back to find their future
By Jenna Milly
ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Sitting attentively in the front row of English 460, aspiring writer Charles Edgar Hampton, 21, arranges his pen case and a 2-inch thick copy of Norton's Anthology of African American Literature. Hampton and 15 other students, the majority of them undergraduate English majors, straighten up when professor Alma Vinyard enters the classroom at Clark Atlanta University, a historically black campus whose roots date back to the end of the Civil War. Hampton and most of his classmates have a similar professional ambition: "I want to be a writer," he says. Vinyard's commanding presence tells the students her program involves much more than a mild-mannered discussion on 20th-century literature. She focuses on African-American works from the Harlem Renaissance up through modern times. "We are trying to connect the past history of African-Americans with what is relevant to us today," Vinyard says. This sentiment rings true for what are two equally important missions for Vinyard: discussing influential African-American writers and their effects on society and encouraging student participation in a myriad of activities in the Atlanta black writers' community. Acting in the presentVinyard, who has been teaching at the university for 12 years, begins class by reminding students of an upcoming theatrical presentation called "Black Voices." She also invites volunteers to be part of a panel discussion on Harlem Renaissance writer James Weldon Johnson for a scholarship gala.
An active campus, the university, which offered bachelor's and master's degrees to roughly 4,800 students last year, was ranked by Black Enterprise magazine as one of the top 10 institutions for African-Americans in 2001. Extracurricular activities are important in Vinyard's class. She keeps students alerted to local book signings and looks ahead to April, when Clark Atlanta's annual writers' workshop gives students the opportunity to win a scholarship based on creative writing submissions. With several writing competitions available around Atlanta and at the university, Hampton, who graduates in May, will be busy preparing for graduate school and refining his prose. "I like writers who deal with political issues, poetry and historical fiction," he says. His literary inspirations, he says, include Clive Cussler, Dean Koontz and Michael Crichton. But he also finds inspiration in the writers he studies in Vinyard's class. Embracing their heritageAfter talk of current events dies down, the students open their books to a 1912 story, "The Autobiography of an Ex-colored Man," written by Johnson, the Harlem Renaissance great who was a student at Atlanta University. (Clark Atlanta University was created in the late 1980s from the consolidation of Atlanta University and Clark College, both of which were founded in the 1860s.) The students come to terms with the author's tale of a black man who abandons his heritage to live in a white world, yet they disagree with embracing this sentiment in today's society.
Jennifer Wagnac, 23, says she objects to the idea of covering up a person's heritage. "It tells you your foundation," Wagnac says. "If you don't know where you're from, then you don't know where you're going, or you don't know where you're at." Citing her multicultural background with ancestors from Haiti and Cuba, she says she feels more open-minded and aware because she knows her roots. Fellow student Candice Perkins, 19, also cites the positive influence of learning about her heritage. "A lot of African-Americans now really don't know or have that hold on how valuable their past is," Perkins says. "There are so many people walking around saying, 'I'm just a black person.' But you have all these feelings and various cultures, religions and dialects inside of you. I find it sad that not everyone can have the luxury of knowing," she says. Vinyard smiles proudly at her class as the students discuss and relate the themes of Weldon Johnson's literature with life in the 21st century. "Weldon fell somewhere in the middle of his stance on African-American progress," she says. Last week's discussion had centered on the differences in the ideologies of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois, author of "The Souls of Black Folks," published 100 years ago while Du Bois was on the faculty of Atlanta University. "Though very different in philosophy," Vinyard said. "Du Bois and Booker T. Washington had one goal for black people." Both scholars were strong supporters of progress and social change, but they differed on how blacks should move forward in American society. Planting seeds for new generation
Through her class, Vinyard is helping to lay new ground for the next generation of young writers. "If nothing else, we don't have to stick to what's in the textbook," Vinyard says. "That's what someone else has written. "We can write our own stories and have out own philosophies, our own feelings about who we are, what we are and where we see ourselves going." The students nod their heads, and nearly every hand shoots up in response to the next question: "How do you feel after you read about your heritage?" "It makes me proud to go to here when I read what black authors of the past wrote," Hampton says. "Very proud."
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