J’AI DEUX AMOURS:

AFRICAN AMERICANS IN PARIS

Questions

 

1.       “Harlem of Paris” was the nickname given to what section of Paris?

 

2.       Who initiated Black History Week?

 

3.       Josephine Baker served as a spy during World War II.  For what country did she perform this service, and what honor did she receive?

 

4.       What Chester Himes novel was made into a 1970 movie starring Godfrey Cambridge and Raymond St. Jacques as the lead characters?

 

5.       Bessie Coleman was the first African American woman to fly an airplane.  What did she do to raise the money to travel to France for flying lessons?

 

6.       James Reese Europe was a member of the 15 Infantry (Colored) of the New York National Guard.  This regiment fought with the 16th "Le Gallais" Division of the Fourth French Army, which gave the 15th a nickname.  What was it?

 

7.       What award did Lois Mailou Jones win in 1941?

 

8.       In her book, Bricktop, Ada Smith recounts meeting a future member of the Harlem Renaissance when he was working as a busboy at Le Grand Duc in Paris.  Who was he?

 

9.       What term did the French use to describe jazz played in clubs during the 1920s?

 

KC 2/2003

Answers

 

  1. During the 1920s, Montmartre had a large African American community, thus earning the title “Harlem of Paris.”

 

  1. Black History Week was the brainchild of Carter G. Woodson.  First celebrated on February 12, 1926, it was expanded to a month long celebration during the Bicentennial in 1976.

 

  1. Josephine Baker spied for France during the war.  As a result of her service, France awarded her the Rosette de la Resistance and made her a chevalier of the Legion of Honor.

 

  1. Ossie Davis helped to adapt, as well as direct, Himes’ Cotton Comes to Harlem, which was published in 1965.

 

  1. Bessie Coleman’s applications to American aviation schools were rejected.  In order to earn the money to go to France, she worked as a manicurist and the manager of a chili parlor.

 

  1. The men of the Harlem Hellfighters earned 170 French Croix de Guerres for bravery.  They served 191 days in combat, longer that any other U.S. unit.

 

  1. The Corcoran Gallery of Art’s Robert Woods Bliss Prize for Landscape.  Since the competition was not open to African Americans, Lois Mailou Jones had a white friend submit it for her.

 

  1. Langston Hughes traveled traveled abroad by freighter in 1923to the Senegal, Nigeria, the Cameroons, Belgium Congo, Angola, and Guinea in Africa, and later to Italy and France, Russia and Spain.

 

  1. “Le Jazz Hot.”