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From slave songs to poetry, from the Harlem Renaissance to Motown, Hyattsville Middle School students experienced highlights of black artistic achievements on Tuesday.

Students in the school's Creative and Performing Arts Department portrayed 200 years of black history through artistic performances during the school's Black History Month assembly.

CPA Department coordinator Tracey Cutler said the department's teachers came up with the idea of portraying an historical timeline through the arts for this year's assembly.

"It reinforces a lot of what's being taught inside of the classrooms," Cutler said. "It all ties together."

Students in the department's drama, band, orchestra, dance, creative writing, visual arts and media arts programs all contributed to presenting the timeline.

They recited Langston Hughes poems, sang "Amazing Grace," created African masks and made a video of students and teachers reciting lines from one of President Barack Obama's speeches.

All of the presentations were preceded by seventh-grader Cristeen Anyanwu of Beltsville describing their historical significance.

Anyanwu also recited one of her own poems at the end of the assembly about her pride to be black.

"I wanted to show I love this skin I'm in and I'm proud of it," she said. "We're kids and like to play around, but once we get to perform and express ourselves through the arts, it's very fun and very inspiring."

Trumpet soloist Jacob Miller played "Get Ready" by The Temptations during the assembly. He said members of the CPA department's band, the Jazz Hawks, practiced after school and on Saturday to prepare for the performance, which got many teachers to sway along to the beat.

"African-American history does play a huge part in American history and it's good for kids our age to be aware of it," Miller said.

Eighth-grader Nsikan Akpan of Hyattsville acted in an excerpt from Lorraine Hansberry's "A Raisin in the Sun," the first Broadway play written by a black woman and with a black director. Akpan said she hoped students learned through her performance the struggles black people faced for future generations.

Rather than present their own plays or songs, the majority of the performances were centered on highly acclaimed and renowned art with historical significance. Cutler said he the show was like "planting seeds in young minds."

"They can do a lot more than we think they can," he said. "If we keep feeding them, they'll take it in, they'll soak it in."

E-mail Elahe Izadi at eizadi@gazette.net.