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Black History

Artists & Writers

Maya Angelou

Writer, dancer, African-American activist. Born Marguerite Johnson on April 4, 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri.

James Baldwin

Writer. Born August 2, 1924 in Harlem, New York.

Jean-Michel Basquiat

American artist. Born in Brooklyn, New York, on December 22, 1960. With a Haitian-American father and a Puerto Rican mother, Basquiat's diverse cultural heritage was one of his many sources of inspiration.

Ed Bradley

Television, radio journalist. Born Edward R. Bradley on January 22, 1941, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Gwendolyn Brooks

Poet. Born June 7, 1917 in Topeka, Kansas. Brooks graduated from Chicago's Wilson Junior College (1936) and was publicity director for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (1930s).

Rita Dove

Poet. Born Rita Frances Dove on August 28, 1952 in Akron, Ohio.

W. E. B. Du Bois

American sociologist, the most important black protest leader in the United States during the first half of the 20th century.

Paul Laurence Dunbar

Poet and writer. Born June 27, 1872 in Dayton, Ohio.

Ralph Ellison

Writer. Born March 1, 1913 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. He studied music at Tuskegee Institute before moving to New York City to study sculpture.

Alex Haley

Journalist and writer. Born Alexander Murray Palmer Haley on August 11, 1921, in Ithaca, New York. Haley grew up in Henning, Tennessee, and studied at Elizabeth City Teachers College (North Carolina, 1937).

Lorraine Hansberry

Playwright, director, writer. Born Lorraine Vivian Hansberry on May 19, 1930, in Chicago, Illinois.

Langston Hughes

Poet, writer, playwright.Born February 1, 1902 in Joplin, Missouri.

Zora Hurston

Writer, anthropologist, folklorist. Born January 7, 1891 in Notasulga, Alabama.

James Weldon Johnson

Poet, diplomat, and anthologist of black culture.

Jacob Lawrence

American painter whose works portray scenes of black life and history with vivid, stylized realism.

Robert C(lyve) Maynard

Journalist and publisher. Born in New York City. The son of immigrants from Barbados, Maynard decided early he wanted to be a writer.

Toni Morrison

Considered one of the best contemporary novelists, she graduated from Howard University in 1953 and continued her education at Cornell University where she received a master of fine arts degree in 1955.

Walter Mosley

Author. Born on January 12, 1952, in Los Angeles, California. Mosley is considered one of today's leading novelists, especially in the genre of mysteries.

Augusta Savage

Artist, activist, educator. Born Augusta Christine Fells on February 29, 1892, in Green Cove Springs, Florida.

Alice Walker

Novelist, poet, feminist. Born Alice Malsenior Walker on February 9, 1944, in Eatonton, Georgia.

Dorothy West

Writer, editor. Born on June 2, 1907, in Boston, Massachusetts.

Phillis Wheatley

Poet. Born c. 1760 possibly in Senegal, Africa. Wheatley was sold in slavery to the John Wheatley family of Boston, Massachusetts in 1761. The family educated her, even teaching her Latin and Greek, and by the age of 13 she was composing poems so sophisticated that many people charged she could not have written them.

August Wilson

The son of a German immigrant baker and an African American cleaning woman, he encountered racial hostility as the only black student at Central Catholic High School in Pennsylvania.

Richard Wright

Writer, poet. Born Richard Nathaniel Wright on September 4, 1908 near Natchez, Mississippi.

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