Maya Angelou is a poet and prize-winning memoirist. She is the author of the critically acclaimed I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
1928-
James Baldwin was an essayist, playwright and novelist regarded as a highly insightful, iconic writer with works like The Fire Next Time and Another Country.
1924-1987
Imamu Amiri Baraka is an African-American poet and scholar. He has served as professor emeritus of Africana Studies at the State Unversity of New York at Stony Brook.
1934-
1902-1981
1941-2006
Gwendolyn Brooks was a postwar poet best known as the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize, for her 1949 book Annie Allen.
1917-2000
1814-1884
1947-2006
Charles Chesnutt was a trailblazing short-story author and novelist who presented African-American life in works like The Conjure Woman and The Colonel's Dream.
1858-1932
1903-1946
African American poet Rita Dove is the youngest person and the first African American to be appointed Consultant in Poetry at the Library of Congress.
1952-
W.E.B. Du Bois was one of the most important African-American activists during the first half of the 20th century. He co-founded the NAACP and supported Pan-Africanism.
1868-1963
African-American author Paul Laurence Dunbar is best known for his verse and short stories, many of which are written in black dialect.
1872-1906
Ralph Ellison was a 20th century African-American writer and scholar best known for his renowned, award-winning novel Invisible Man.
1914-1994
1745-1797
Jessie Fauset was a teacher and writer who worked as editor for The Crisis magazine, and penned the novels Comedy: American Style and Plum Bun.
1882-1961
1933-
The poems of Nikki Giovanni helped to define the African American voice of the 1960s, '70s and beyond. She was also a major force in the Black Arts movement.
1943-
Alex Haley was an American writer whose works of historical fiction and reportage depicted the struggles of African Americans.
1921-1992
Playwright and activist Lorraine Hansberry wrote A Raisin in the Sun and was the first black playwright and the youngest American to win a New York Critics’ Circle award.
1930-1965
Robert Hayden was an African-American poet and professor who is best known as the author of poems, including “Those Winter Sundays” and “The Middle Passage.”
1913-1980
1952-
Langston Hughes was an American poet, novelist, and playwright whose African-American themes made him a primary contributor to the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s.
1902-1967
Anthropologist and novelist Zora Neale Hurston was a fixture of the Harlem Renaissance before writing her masterwork, Their Eyes Were Watching God.
1891-1960
James Weldon Johnson was an African-American writer, politician, educator and lawyer. He was also an early civil rights activist and leader of the NAACP.
1871-1938
Robert C. Maynard was a journalist and publisher best known for being the first African American to own and publish a major daily newspaper (Tribune).
1937-1993
Claude McKay was a Jamaican-born poet and novelist whose Home to Harlem (1928) was the most popular novel written by an American black to that time.
1890-1948
Best-selling African-American novelist Terry McMillan wrote Waiting to Exhale and How Stella Got her Groove Back. Both became films starring Angela Bassett.
1951-
Toni Morrison is a Nobel Prize- and Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist. Among her best known novels are The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon and Beloved.
1931-
1952-
1902-1934
Poet, novelist and short-story writer Jean Toomer was a major figure during the Harlem Renaissance. He is best known for his first book, Cane.
1894-1967
Alice Walker is a Pulitzer Prize-winning, African-American novelist and poet most famous for authoring The Color Purple.
1944-
Dorothy West is a writer remembered for her sharp observations of varied issues within the African American community.
1907-1998
In the late 18th century, slave poet Phillis Wheatley impressed everyone she met, proving to the world that the color of one's skin does not indicate one's intellect.
1753-1784
Playwright August Wilson won two Pulitzer Prizes for his plays Fences (1987) and The Piano Lesson (1990).
1945-2005
Harriet E. Wilson is best known as the first African-American female novelist.
1825-1900
Pioneering African-American writer Richard Wright is best known for the classic texts Black Boy and Native Son.
1908-1960