(NOTE: Each section begins with an Introduction and concludes with Topics for Research.)
Introduction.
THE COLONIAL PERIOD 1746-1800.
Olaudah Equiano (1745-1797).
Excerpt from The Interesting Narrative of The Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself.
Phyllis Wheatley (1753-1784).
On Being Brought from Africa to America. On Imagination. To S. M., a Young African Painter, on Seeing His Works. To His Excellency General Washington. Letter to Samson Occom.
Lucy Terry Prince (1730-1821).
Bars Fight, August 28, 1746.
Jupiter Hammon (1711-1806).
An Evening Thought: Salvation by Christ with Penitential Cries.
George Moses Horton (1797-1883).
The Lover's Farewell. On Liberty and Slavery.
Benjamin Banneker (1731-1806).
Letter to Thomas Jefferson.
THE ANTE-BELLUM PERIOD 1800-1865.
David Walker (1785-1830).
From Appeal in Four Articles, Together with a Preamble, to the Coloured Citizens of the World.
Harriet Jacobs (1813-1897).
From Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself.
William Wells Brown (1814-1884).
The Escape; or, A Leap For Freedom.
Harriet E. Wilson (1807-1870).
From Our Nig: Or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black, in a Two-Story White House, North: Showing that Slavery's Shadows Fall Even There.
Frances E. W. Harper (1825-1911).
From Iola Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted. The Two Offers. The Slave Mother. Ethiopia.
Charlotte L. Forten Grimke (1837-1914).
From The Journals of Charlotte Forten Grimke.
Frederick Douglass (1818-1895).
From The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself.
Sojourner Truth (1797-1883).
Address to the Ohio Women's Rights Convention.
THE RECONSTRUCTION PERIOD 1865-1900.
Elizabeth Keckley (1824? -1907).
From Behind the Scenes, or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House.
Charles Chesnutt (1858-1932).
The Goophered Grapevine. Po' Sandy.
Pauline E. Hopkins (1859-1930).
From Hagar's Daughter: A Story of Southern Caste Prejudice.
Anna Julia Cooper (1859-1964).
From A Voice From The South: By A Black Woman of The South.
Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906).
Sympathy. We Wear the Mask. Frederick Douglass. When Malindy Sings. The Colored Soldiers.
THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE PERIOD 1900-1940.
W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963).
From The Souls of Black Folk.
Booker T. Washington (1856-1915).
From Up From Slavery.
James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938).
O Black and Unknown Bards. The Creation. From The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man. From Black Manhattan.
Angelina Weld Grimke (1880-1958).
Rachel.
Anne Spencer (1882-1975).
Dunbar. The Wife-Woman.
Claude McKay (1889-1948).
If We Must Die. The Tropics in New York. America. Spring in New Hampshire.
Jessie Redman Fauset (1882-1961).
Double Trouble. The Sleeper Wakes. From Comedy: American Style.
Dorothy West (1907-1998).
The Typewriter.
Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960).
Their Eyes Were Watching God. How It Feels To Be Colored Me.
Jean Toomer (1894-1967).
From Cane.
Alice Ruth Moore Dunbar-Nelson (1875-1935).
I Sit and Sew. Violets.
Nella Larsen (1891-1964).
From Quicksand.
Alain Locke (1886-1954).
From The New Negro.
Wallace Thurman (1902-1934).
From The Blacker The Berry.
Langston Hughes (1902-1967).
Mother to Son. Harlem [2]. I, Too. Dream Boogie: Variation. Theme for English B.
Countee Cullen (1903-1946).
Incident. Heritage. Yet Do I Marvel. To John Keats, Poet. At Spring Time.
Sterling Brown (1901-1989).
Odyssey of Big Boy. Old Lem. Memphis Blues.
Marita Bonner (1898-1971).
The Purple Flower.
Arna Bontemps (1902-1973).
A Black Man Talks of Reaping. Close Your Eyes!
THE PROTEST MOVEMENT 1940-1959.
Margaret Walker Alexander (1915-1998)
For My People. Ex-Slave. Lineage.
Ann Petry (b. 1908).
From The Street.
Richard Wright (1908-1960).
From Native Son. The Man Who Lived Underground. From Black Boy. The Man Who Was Almost a Man.
Ralph Ellison (1914-1994).
From Invisible Man.
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-).
The Mother. The Rites for Cousin Vit. What Shall I Give My Children? The Sundays of Satin-Legs Smith.
James Baldwin (1924-1987).
From Go Tell It On The Mountain.
Robert Hayden (1913-1982).
Middle Passage. The Ballad of Nat Turner. The Diver.
Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965).
A Raisin in the Sun.
BLACK AESTHETICS MOVEMENT 1960-1969.
Amiri Baraka (1934-).
Black Bourgeoisie. Poem for Half White College Students. The Pressures. Return of the Native.
Malcolm X (1925-1965).
From The Autobiography of Malcolm X.
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968).
Letter from Birmingham Jail.
Sonia Sanchez (b. 1934).
Poem at Thirty. Summer Words of a Sistuh Addict.
Nikki Giovanni (b. 1943).
nikki-rosa. Beautiful Black Men.
Alice Childress (1920-1994).
Wine in the Wilderness.
Eldridge Cleaver (b. 1935).
From Soul on Ice.
Haki R. Madhubuti (b. 1942).
Possibilities: Remembering Malcolm X. Poet: What Ever Happened to Luther?
NEOREALISM MOVEMENT 1970-PRESENT.
Ernest Gaines (b. 1933).
From The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. The Sky is Gray.
Maya Angelou (b. 1928).
From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
Audre Lorde (1934-1992).
Coal. Black Mother Woman.
Alice Walker (b. 1944).
To Hell With Dying. Strong Horse Tea. From The Color Purple.
Toni Cade Bambara (1939-1995).
The Lesson.
Charles Johnson (b. 1948).
From Middle Passage.
Gloria Naylor (b. 1950).
From Linden Hills.
John Edgar Wideman (b. 1941).
From Damballah.
August Wilson (b. 1945).
The Piano Lesson.
Ishmael Reed (b. 1938).
I am a Cowboy in the Boat of Ra. Oakland Blues.
June Jordan (b. 1936).
Independence Day in the U.S.A. Song of the Law Abiding Citizen. Relativity.
Michael S. Harper (b. 1938).
American History. Black Study. Village Blues.
Michelle Cliff (b. 1946).
From Abeng.
Octavia Butler (b. 1947).
From Kindred.
Rita Dove (b. 1952).
Gospel. Obedience. Variation on Pain.
Walter Mosley (b. 1952).
From Devil in a Blue Dress.
Randall Kenan (b. 1963).
Clarence and the Dead (And What Do They Tell You, Clarence? And the Dead Speak to Clarence).
Yusef Komunyakaa (b. 1947).
The Deck. Rhythm Method. 'You and I Are Disappearing'.
AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERARY CRITICISM.
Langston Hughes (1902-1967).
The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain.
Benjamin Brawley (1882-1939).
The Negro in American Fiction.
Richard Wright (1908-1960).
Blueprint for Negro Writing.
Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960).
What White Publishers Won't Print.
Addison Gayle, Jr. (1932-1991).
The Function of Black Literature at the Present Time.
Amiri Baraka (1934-).
The Revolutionary Theatre.
Larry Neal (1937-1981).
The Black Arts Movement.
Alice Walker (1944-).
In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens.
Barbara Smith (b. 1946).
Toward a Black Feminist Criticism.
Robert Stepto (b. 1945).
From From Behind the Veil: A Study of Afro-American Narrative.
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (b. 1950).
From Loose Cannons: Notes on the Culture Wars.
Toni Morrison (b. 1931).
From Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination.
Cornel West (b. 1953).
The Dilemma of the Black Intellectual.
Hazel Carby (b. 1948).
From Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro-American Woman Novelist.
Gayl Jones (b. 1949).
From Liberating Voices: Oral Tradition in African American Literature.
Writing About African American Literature.
Timeline.
Source List.
Index.
