February is Black History Month. Black History was first celebrated in 1926 during a week in February that encompassed the birthdays of both Abraham Lincoln (February 12) and Frederick Douglass (February 14). "The celebration was expanded to a month in 1976, the nation's bicentennial. President Gerald R. Ford urged Americans to “seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history.” That year, fifty years after the first celebration, the association held the first Black History Month. By this time, the entire nation had come to recognize the importance of Black history in the drama of the American story. Since then each American president has issued Black History Month proclamations. And the association—now the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH)—continues to promote the study of Black history all year."
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(This LibGuide is by no means an exhaustive list of resources, but we do endeavor to keep this list of materials updated.)
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Author Alice Walker had been an acclaimed poet, short story writer, and novelist since the late 1960s, long before her Pulitzer Prize-winning 1982 book The Color Purple and its 1985 film adaptation stirred emotions for its brutal portrayal of domestic violence. Prior to and since that novel captured attention and created controversy for its negative portrayal of the main African American male character, Walker has not skirted complex and painful topics. Her earliest volume of poetry was written in the immediate aftermath of an abortion, and her second novel, Meridian, was a tale spun about the heart of the civil rights movement.
Fantasy-novel writer N. K. Jemisin became the first Black writer to ever to win the coveted Hugo Award for Best Novel. In 2017 and 2018, two more installments in her acclaimed "Broken Earth" series also won Hugo honors, making Jemisin the first author ever achieve that triple feat in the seven-decade-plus history of the World Science Fiction Society prize. The initial win ranked her alongside previous honorees like Philip K. Dick, Robert A. Heinlein, and Ursula K. Le Guin, but Jemisin is often compared to one of the trailblazing African American women in science fiction and fantasy literature, Octavia Butler. In 2020, she was awarded the MacArthur Foundation genius grant.
Zora Neale Hurston managed to avoid many of the restraints placed upon women, blacks, and specifically black artists by American society during the first half of the twentieth century. And she did so with a vengeance by becoming the most published black female author in her time and arguably the most important collector of African-American folklore ever. Hurston was a complex artist whose persona ranged from charming and outrageous to fragile and inconsistent, but she always remained a driven and brilliant talent. A formerly unpublished one of Hurston's works, Barracoon, was released in 2018. A new collection of her work, Hitting A Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick, is set for release in 2020.
From the late 1890s through the 1940s, W. E. B. Du Bois was one of the leading black intellectuals and the foremost champion of equal rights for blacks in the United States. At a time when many black Americans sought to improve their status by adapting to the ideals of white society and tolerating discrimination and segregation, Du Bois was a tireless proponent of unconditional equal and civil rights for all blacks. As a social scientist, he was also a pioneer in documenting historical and social truths about blacks in the United States. In eloquent and forceful writings in a variety of genres, he was the first to write of a distinct black consciousness, which he described as the peculiar "two-ness" of being both a black and an American.
One of the most talented and prolific writers to emerge from the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, Langston Hughes enjoyed a long and successful career as a poet and author of short stories, novels, magazine and newspaper articles, plays, and numerous other works. His respect for the lives of "plain Black people" resonated throughout everything he produced, as did his gentle, folksy humor and compassion tinged with sorrow. Early in his career, he endured criticism from those who felt he betrayed his race by portraying the less attractive aspects of Black-American life; later, he was rejected by a younger and more militant generation of Black-American writers for his reluctance to display bitterness or take a strong political stand in his writings. Through it all, Hughes remained true to his own vision of a world where most people were basically good and the future still offered hope that all races would one day live together in harmony and understanding.
The American civil rights movement had many eloquent spokesmen, but few were better known than James Baldwin. A Black, queer novelist and essayist of considerable renown, Baldwin found readers of every race and nationality, though his message reflected bitter disappointment in his native land and its white majority. Throughout his distinguished career Baldwin called himself a "disturber of the peace"--one who revealed uncomfortable truths to a society mired in complacency. As early as 1960 he was recognized as an articulate speaker and passionate writer on racial matters, and at his death in 1987 he was lauded as one of the most respected voices--of any race--in modern American letters.
A leading contemporary American poet and the first black writer to be honored with a Pulitzer Prize, Gwendolyn Brooks was acclaimed for her technically accomplished and powerful portraits of black urban life. Throughout a career that spanned six decades and included both poetry and fiction, the prolific Brooks was noted for her carefully wrought and insightful portraits of everyday black life, in which she illuminated racism, poverty, interracial prejudice, and personal alienation. Brooks was also known as one of the most wide-ranging of contemporary black poets; while her earlier work was marked by social realism contained in masterful poetic form, technique, and language, her later efforts displayed a more open, free-verse style and were increasingly direct in exploring themes like social protest, revolution, and black nationalism.
Phillis Wheatley's status as a slave has hampered a thorough consideration of her work. While many modern readers--accustomed to placing emphasis upon writers' personal reactions to their subjects--agree that there has been a revolution in poetic taste since the eighteenth century, these same readers are often quick to assume that Phillis Wheatley had little to offer her readers even in her own day. They cite her poetic restraint as evidence of her detachment from the issue of slavery and conclude she should have used her talent to protest prevailing racial attitudes.
Select the individual's name to view works about them that are available in the Hay Library or online. Select the individual's picture to view their biography information.
Oprah Winfrey, a billionaire businesswoman, is one of the most affluent and powerful people in the United States. Deemed the undisputed "Queen of Talk" since the mid-1980s, she was the first Black woman to host a nationally syndicated weekday talk show. Winfrey became the third woman to own her own studio when she started Harpo Studios in 1988. Her company, Harpo Productions Inc., has grown to include divisions for production, film, radio, print, online, and philanthropy.
Sojourner Truth was a Black abolitionist and women’s rights activist. She was enslaved but escaped to her freedom. She then spent her life working for the rights of other enslaved people and women. Although the U.S. Treasury Department announced in 2016 that Truth would appear on the updated 2020 $10 bill, the Donald Trump administration put all money redesigns on hold before the change could be made. Following Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election, President Joe Biden said the redesign was back on track. An important event in Truth’s life was brought to light in January of 2022: Researchers discovered the legal documents related to her fight to free her son in 1828.
In becoming the first black person, as well as the first woman, to ever seek a major political party's nomination for the U.S. presidency, former New York congresswoman Shirley Chisholm demonstrated that aspirations for the nation's executive office need not be the exclusive domain of white males. Chisholm's unsuccessful 1972 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination--largely viewed as more symbolic than practical--was intended to both break ground and prove a point. "I ran because someone had to do it first," she stated in The Good Fight, her candid recounting of the campaign. "In this country everybody is supposed to be able to run for President, but that's never been really true. I ran because most people think the country is not ready for a black candidate, not ready for a woman candidate." By staying in the race all the way to the Democratic National Convention, Chisholm hoped to set an example for other nontraditional presidential candidates. "The next time a woman runs, or a black, a Jew or anyone from a group that the country is 'not ready' to elect to its highest office, I believe he or she will be taken seriously from the start. The door is not open yet, but it is ajar."
Bayard Rustin never stood directly in the media spotlight that shone upon other Black activists, but his contributions as a strategist and tactician place him among the most influential of twentieth-century civil rights leaders. In a career spanning more than five decades, Rustin worked on behalf of equal rights with a variety of organizations--including the Communist party, labor unions, and pacifist groups--and exercised a leading role in the creation of two significant civil rights organizations: the Congress of Racial Equality and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Rustin was particularly instrumental in the development of the nonviolent protest movement that evolved from the Montgomery bus boycott associated with Martin Luther King, Jr.
During the 1960s and 1970s, Alvin Ailey shaped modern dance into a popular art form. In 1969, he founded the American Dance Center, a dance school that teaches a variety of techniques. Five years later he founded the Alvin Ailey Repertory Ensemble, a junior dance company. But mainly through the auspices of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater established in 1959, Ailey greatly impacted the dance world. Known for its "vibrant artistry and repertory, and for Ailey's motivating humanist vision," his company drew enthusiastic responses from audiences, while touring the world.
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