She was surrounded by political activists and grew up during Reconstruction with a sense of hope about the possibilities of former slaves within the American society. Both parents died, along with an infant brother, during the 1878 yellow fever epidemic when Ida was 16 years old. At that young age, she assumed the responsibility of rearing her five surviving younger brothers and sisters.

She soon became a teacher in a rural Mississippi school order to earn money for the family. After two years, she moved to Memphis for a higher paying teaching job. Although she wrote for church newspapers about inequality in schools as well as many other areas of life, one day changed her life forever.

She was accustomed to riding the train in whatever seat she chose. In 1884, the Chesapeake, Ohio and Southwest Railroad forbade her from sitting in the ladies' coach, even though she had a ticket. She was forcibly removed by three men because she refused to move to the colored car. She subsequently decided to sue the railroad and also wrote an article about the experience. Read More

My color shrouds me in…" Wallace Thurman's The Blacker the Berry adopts this line from Countee Cullen, another Harlem Renaissance writer, as one of its two epigraphs. (The other is the well-known "Negro folk saying" that supplies the novel's title: "The blacker the berry / The sweeter the juice…") Through the life of his protagonist, Emma Lou, Thurman delves deep into the painful history of colorism, a term defined by Alice Walker to mean

"prejudicial or preferential treatment of same-race people based solely on their color." Emma Lou, Thurman writes, "was black, too black, there was no getting around it." Her skin color overdetermines her life circumstances and alienates her from lighter-skinned family members, including her grandmother, who takes pride in her "blue veins," and her mother, who wishes that Emma Lou had been born a boy because "black boys can make a go of it, but black girls…"

Campbell's mother, unable to find work in the segregated South that would support them all, returned to Philadelphia with her daughter, found a job, and moved in with her own mother in North Philadelphia. With Campbell's grandmother caring for her while her own mother was at work, she emerged as a diligent, straight-A student at Logan Elementary School and, later, Philadelphia High School for Girls.

Summers were spent in North Carolina with her father, whom she idolized, and the less structured, rural Southern way of life marked a distinct contrast to her life back in the city. "I used to write letters to my father and tell him serial stories to keep him writing back quickly," Campbell told one interviewer about her first forays into creative writing, according to the Philadelphia Daily News. Read More

Among her best known novels are The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, Beloved, Jazz, Love and A Mercy. Morrison has earned a plethora of book-world accolades and honorary degrees, also receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012.Morrison's first novel, The Bluest Eye, was published in 1970. She used as her literary first name "Toni," based on a nickname derived from St. Anthony after she'd joined the Catholic Church.

The book follows a young African-American girl, Pecola Breedlove, who believes her incredibly difficult life would be better if only she had blue eyes. The controversial book didn't sell well, with Morrison stating in a 1994 afterword that the reception to the work was parallel to how her main character was treated by the world: "dismissed, trivialized, misread."Read More

‟Zora's work will be felt for years in the works of many generations of writers."A major literary event: a newly published work from the author of the American classic Their Eyes Were Watching God, with a foreword from Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Alice Walker, brilliantly illuminates the

horror and injustices of slavery as it tells the true story of one of the last-known survivors of the Atlantic slave trade—abducted from Africa on the last "Black Cargo" ship to arrive in the United States. Read More

As a child, Toomer attended both all-white and all-black segregated schools, and from early on in his life he resisted being classified by race, preferring to call himself simply American. A descendent of both white and black heritage, his father left his family when he was only one year old, leaving Toomer to be raised by his mother and grandfather—Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback—who had been a Union soldier during the Civil War and later served as Acting Governor of Louisiana during Reconstruction.

After graduating from the highly regarded all-black Dunbar High School, Toomer began to travel extensively, attending colleges over the next few years in Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Chicago, and finally, New York, where he wrote and published many short stories, plays, and poems. Perhaps his best-known work during this time was his long lyrical poem, Blue Meridian, which pointedly captured his hopes and dreams for racial unity.Read More

In 1961 she went to Europe, studying acting and mime in Italy and in France. She received an M.A. in 1964 from City College of the City University of New York. She was a frequent lecturer and teacher at universities and a political activist who worked to raise black American consciousness and pride. In the 1970s she was active in both the black liberation and the women’s movements.

Bambara’s fiction, which is set in the rural South as well as the urban North, is written in black street dialect and presents sharply drawn characters whom she portrayed with affection. She published the short-story collections Gorilla, My Love (1972) and The Sea Birds Are Still Alive (1977), as well as the novels The Salt Eaters (1980) and If Blessing Comes (1987).

A graduate of Rutgers University, she earned a degree in American History and African Studies. She also attended the Cornell University Advanced Placement Study Program, and studied abroad in Europe at the University of Salamanca.A global student, Sister Souljah traveled throughout her college years to England, France, Spain, Portugal, Finland, and Russia.

Her academic accomplishments were reinforced with first hand experiences. She worked to build a medical center for families in Bindura, Zimbabwe. She worked with refugee children from Mozambique.A major participant in the international student anti-aparthied movement, Souljah helped to create a momentum, movement and fervor which liberated Nelson Mandela and brought about the divestment of millions of dollars from corporations doing business with apartheid South Africa.

Davis's mother was also active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), when it was dangerous to be openly associated with the organization because of its civil rights activities. As a teenager Davis moved to New York City with her mother, who was pursuing a Master's degree at New York University. While there she attended Elizabeth Irwin High School, a school considered leftist because a number of its teachers were blacklisted during the McCarthy era for their earlier alleged Communist activities.

In 1961 Davis enrolled in Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. While at Brandeis, Davis also studied abroad for a year in France and returned to the U.S. to complete her studies, joining Phi Beta Kappa and earning her B.A. (magna cum laude) in 1965. Even before her graduation, Davis, so moved by the deaths of the four girls killed in the bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in her hometown in 1963, that she decided to join the civil rights movement.Read More

I would read poems, and I would memorize them. People would say, well what do you think, Audre. What happened to you yesterday?And I would recite a poem and somewhere in that poem would be a line or a feeling I would be sharing. In other words, I literally communicated through poetry. And when I couldn't find the poems to express the things I was feeling, that's what started me writing poetry, and that was when I was twelve or thirteen."

Lorde earned her BA from Hunter College and MLS from Columbia University. She was a librarian in the New York public schools throughout the 1960s. She had two children with her husband, Edward Rollins, a white, gay man, before they divorced in 1970. In 1972, Lorde met her long-time partner, Frances Clayton.Read More

Ernest James Gaines was born on the River Lake Plantation near the small hamlet of Oscar, in Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana. His ancestors had lived on the same plantation since slavery, remaining after emancipation to work the land as sharecroppers. Gaines and his family lived in the houses, much expanded, that had once served as slave quarters.

His parents separated when he was eight; the strongest adult influence in his childhood was a great aunt, Augusteen Jefferson, crippled from birth, who crawled from the kitchen to the family's garden patch, growing and preparing food, and caring for him and for six of his brothers and sisters.Storytelling and oral tradition were a powerful part of African American life in the rural South, and young Ernest Gaines absorbed the stories of his family and neighbors, acquiring a sense of history and an ear for the rhythms of

During this time, he held odd jobs such as assistant cook, launderer, and busboy. He also travelled to Africa and Europe working as a seaman. In November 1924, he moved to Washington, D. C. Hughes's first book of poetry, The Weary Blues, (Knopf, 1926) was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1926. He finished his college education at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania three years later. In 1930 his first novel, Not Without Laughter, (Knopf, 1930) won the Harmon gold medal for literature.

Hughes, who claimed Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg, and Walt Whitman as his primary influences, is particularly known for his insightful, colorful portrayals of black life in America from the twenties through the sixties. He wrote novels, short stories and plays, as well as poetry, and is also known for his engagement with the world of jazz and the influence it had on his writing, as in his book-length poem Montage of a Dream Deferred (Holt, 1951).Read More

Gloria Naylor, a major 20th century writer of African American literature, was born on January 25, 1950 in New York City, New York to Roosevelt and Alberta Naylor. She was born just six weeks after her parents moved to the city from Robinsville, Mississippi, to escape the racially segregated South. It is that combination of her family's Southern roots and her on upbringing in the urban North that influenced her writing.

Naylor, an avid reader and writer in her teenage years, graduated with honors from Andrew Jackson High School in the Bronx, New York in 1968. She immediately went on a mission to North Carolina and Florida as required by her Jehovah's Witness faith. Returning to New York City in 1975, Naylor enrolled in Medgar Evers College where she studied nursing. Soon later transferred to Brooklyn College where she studied English.

Ralph Waldo Ellison was born on March 1, 1914, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and named after journalist and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson. Ellison's doting father, Lewis, who loved children and read books voraciously, worked as an ice and coal deliverer. He died from a work-related accident when Ellison was only three years old. His mother Ida then raised Ralph and younger brother Herbert by herself, working a variety of jobs to make ends meet.

In his future book of essays Shadow and Act, Ellison described himself and several of his friends growing up as young Renaissance Men, people who looked to culture and intellectualism as a source of identity. A budding instrumentalist, Ellison took up the cornet at the age of eight and years later, as a trumpeter, attended Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, where he studied music with his eye on becoming a symphony composer.In 1936 Ellison went to New York over the summer with the intent of earning enough money to pay for his college expenses, but ended up relocating.Read More

Her body of work gave her, according to critic George E. Kent, "a unique position in American letters. Not only has she combined a strong commitment to racial identity and equality with a mastery of poetic techniques, but she has also managed to bridge the gap between the academic poets of her generation in the 1940s and the young Black militant writers of the 1960s."

Brooks was born in Topeka, Kansas, but her family moved to Chicago when she was young. Her father was a janitor who had hoped to become a doctor; her mother was a schoolteacher and classically trained pianist. They were supportive of their daughter's passion for reading and writing. Brooks was 13 when her first published poem, "Eventide," appeared in American Childhood; by the time she was 17 she was publishing poems frequently in the Chicago Defender, a newspaper serving Chicago's African American population.Read More

Alexander Murray Palmer Haley, the oldest of three sons (George and Julius), was born to Simon and Bertha (Palmer) Haley on August 11, 1921, in Ithaca, New York. Six weeks after his birth, Simon and Bertha returned to Henning, Tennessee, and presented Will and Cynthia Palmer with their grandson, Alex Haley.

Alex and his mother remained with the Palmers, while Simon returned to Cornell University to complete his graduate studies in agriculture. After the death of Will Palmer in 1926, Simon Haley joined his wife and family in Henning and operated the Palmer business. During this time, Haley listened to his grandmother Cynthia tell vibrant stories about their family's ancestry. She spoke about "Kin-tay", one of his grandfathers tracing back seven generations, whom she said was sold into slavery with other Gambian Africans in "Naplis" (Annapolis, Maryland).

Hansberry wrote The Crystal Stair, a play about a struggling black family in Chicago, which was later renamed A Raisin in the Sun, a line from a Langston Hughes poem. The play opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on March 11, 1959, and was a great success, having a run of 530 performances. It was the first play produced on Broadway by an African-American woman, and Hansberry was the first black playwright and at 29.

A Raisin in the Sun is considered one of the hallmarks of the American stage and has continued to find new audiences throughout the decades, including Emmy-nominated television productions from both 1989 and 2008. The play has earned accolades from Broadway as well, winning Tony Awards in 2004 and 2014, including Best Revival of a Play.

In 1938, Wright published Uncle Tom's Children, a collection of four stories that marked a significant turning point in his career. The stories earned him a $500 prize from Story magazine and led to a 1939 Guggenheim Fellowship.More acclaim followed in 1940 with the publication of the novel Native Son, which told the story of 20-year-old African-American male Bigger Thomas.

The book brought Wright fame and freedom to write. It was a regular atop the bestseller lists and became the first book by an African-American writer to be selected by the Book-of-the-Month Club. A stage version (by Wright and Paul Green) followed in 1941, and Wright himself later played the title role in a film version made in Argentina.Read More

"Richard Wright school" of urban protest writing; and black feminists cite The Street as the first African-American novel in which motherhood is a major theme. In addition, black feminists commend Petry for showing through The Street 's main character, Lutie, that a lack of connection to self and community can result in one's downfall.

Ann Petry's birth date is not certain: earlier biographers place her birth on October 12, 1911, while later chroniclers state it as October 12, 1908. In any case, she was born in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, a predominantly white, rural community. Ann was the second daughter of Peter C. Lane, pharmacist, and Bertha James Lane, licensed chiropodist, barber, and entrepreneur.Read More

Born James William Johnson in Jacksonville, Florida, on June 17,1871; he changed his middle name to Weldon in 1913. James, was the son of a headwaiter and the first female black public school teacher in Florida, both of whom had roots in Nassau, Bahamas. He was the second of three children. Johnson's interests in reading and music were encouraged by his parents. Johnson earned an A.B. in 1894 from Atlanta University. He was brought up in a middle-class setting, and for a time shielded from poverty.

The summer before he graduated college, James attended the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois where he visited a celebration called "Colored People's Day" and heard Fred Born James William Johnson in Jacksonville, Florida, on June 17,1871; he changed his middle name to Weldon in 1913. James, was the son of a headwaiter and the first female black public school teacher in Florida, both of whom had roots in Nassau, Bahamas. He was the second of three children. Johnson's interests in reading and music were encouraged by his parents.

Shange's college years were difficult, however, and frustrated and hurt after separating from her first husband, she attempted suicide several times before focusing her rage against the limitations society imposes on black women. While earning a master's degree, she reaffirmed her personal strength based on a self-determined identity and took her African name, which means "she who comes with her own things" and she "who walks like a lion."

Since then she has sustained a triple career as an educator, a performer/director, and a writer whose work draws heavily on her experiences of being a black female in America.Shange is perhaps most famous for her play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf (1975). A unique blend of poetry, music, dance and drama called a "choreopoem," it "took the theatre world by storm" in 1975 noted Jacqueline Trescott in the Washington Post, as it "became an electrifying Broadway hit and provoked heated exchanges about the relationships between black men and women.Read More

and it was a Best Book of the Year for the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Newsday, GQ, Publishers Weekly, Esquire, and Buzzfeed. It's being translated into 40 languages. Read More

Billionaire media giant and philanthropist Oprah Winfrey is best known for hosting her own internationally popular talk show from 1986 to 2011. From there, she launched her own television network, OWN.Oprah Winfrey was born in the rural town of Kosciusko, Mississippi, on January 29, 1954. In 1976, Winfrey moved to Baltimore, where she hosted a hit television chat show, People Are Talking.

Afterward, she was recruited by a Chicago TV station to host her own morning show. She later became the host of her own, wildly popular program, The Oprah Winfrey Show, which aired for 25 seasons, from 1986 to 2011. That same year, Winfrey launched her own TV network, the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN).American television host, actress, producer, philanthropist and entrepreneur Oprah Gail Winfrey was born on January 29, 1954, in Kosciusko, Mississippi.

Regardless of the Little's efforts to elude the Legion, in 1929, their Lansing, Michigan home was burned to the ground. Two years later, Earl's body was found lying across the town's trolley tracks. Police ruled both incidents as accidents, but the Littles were certain that members of the Black Legion were responsible. Louise suffered emotional breakdown several years after the death of her husband and was committed to a mental institution, while her children were split up among various foster homes and orphanages.

Eventually, Malcolm and his long-time friend, Malcolm "Shorty" Jarvis, moved back to Boston. In 1946, they were arrested and convicted on burglary charges, and Malcolm was sentenced to 10 years in prison, although he was granted parole after serving seven years.Recalling his days in school, he used the time to further his education. Read More

Du Bois wrote extensively and was the best known spokesperson for African-American rights during the first half of the 20th century. He co-founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (N.A.A.C.P.) in 1909. Du Bois died in Ghana in 1963.William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, better known as W.E.B. Du Bois, was born on February 23, 1868, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

While growing up in a mostly European American town, W.E.B. Du Bois identified himself as "mulatto," but freely attended school with whites and was enthusiastically supported in his academic studies by his white teachers. In 1885, he moved to Nashville, Tennessee, to attend Fisk University. It was there that he first encountered Jim Crow laws. For the first time, he began analyzing the deep troubles of American racism.Read More

Harris was a huge commercial success and his writing positively affected the lives of many people who saw themselves on his written pages.Everette Lynn Harris was born June 20, 1955 in Flint, Michigan. He was raised in Little Rock, Arkansas by his mother Etta Mae Harris and his stepfather Ben Harris. He was the oldest, with three younger sisters. Life was difficult for Lynn and his mother, who were subject to physical abuse from Ben Harris.Although Lynn had early experiences that caused him to question his sexuality,

he knew that he needed to keep this part of himself hidden. Lynn retreated into his imagination and was an avid reader. After his parents divorced, his mother moved the family into a middle-class neighborhood, where Lynn became increasingly aware of class and skin color difference.He spent his high school years trying to gain acceptance from his white middle-class peers. Lynn ran for a seat on the student council and participated in a summer program for teenage boys with political aspirations. Read More