Phillis Wheatley Peters, also spelled Phyllis and Wheatly was an American author who is considered the first African-American author of a published book of poetry. Born in West Africa, she was kidnapped and subsequently sold into slavery at the age of seven or eight and transported to North America, where she was bought by the Wheatley family of Boston. After she learned to read and write, they encouraged her poetry when they saw her talent.
Eastern Michigan University, is a public research university in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Founded in 1849 as the Michigan State Normal School, it was the fourth normal school established in the United States and the first American normal school founded outside New England. In 1899, the Michigan State Normal School became the first normal school in the nation to offer a four-year curriculum and gained the name Michigan State Normal College. In 1959, the college became a university and gained its current name of Eastern Michigan University.
Maya Angelou was an American memoirist, poet, and civil rights activist. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning over 50 years. She received dozens of awards and more than 50 honorary degrees. Angelou's series of seven autobiographies focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), tells of her life up to the age of 17 and brought her international recognition and acclaim.
Countee Cullen was an American poet, novelist, children's writer, and playwright, particularly well known during the Harlem Renaissance.
Helene Johnson was an African-American poet during the Harlem Renaissance. She is remembered today for her poetry that captures both the challenges and the excitement of this era during her short-lived career.
African American literature is the body of literature produced in the United States by writers of African descent. It begins with the works of such late 18th-century writers as Phillis Wheatley. Before the high point of enslaved people narratives, African American literature was dominated by autobiographical spiritual narratives. The genre known as slave narratives in the 19th century were accounts by people who had generally escaped from slavery, about their journeys to freedom and ways they claimed their lives. The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s was a great period of flowering in literature and the arts, influenced both by writers who came North in the Great Migration and those who were immigrants from Jamaica and other Caribbean islands. African American writers have been recognized by the highest awards, including the Nobel Prize given to Toni Morrison in 1993. Among the themes and issues explored in this literature are the role of African Americans within the larger American society, African American culture, racism, slavery, and social equality. African-American writing has tended to incorporate oral forms, such as spirituals, sermons, gospel music, blues, or rap.
Naomi Long Madgett was an American poet and publisher. Originally a teacher, she later found fame with her award-winning poems and was also the founder and senior editor of Lotus Press, established in 1972, a publisher of poetry books by black poets. Known as "the godmother of African-American poetry", she was the Detroit poet laureate since 2001.
Lorna Gaye Goodison CD is a Jamaican poet, essayist and memoirist, a leading West Indian writer, whose career spans four decades. She is now Professor Emerita, English Language and Literature/Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan, previously serving as the Lemuel A. Johnson Professor of English and African and Afroamerican Studies. She was appointed Poet Laureate of Jamaica in 2017, serving in the role until 2020.
Georgia Blanche Douglas Camp Johnson, better known as Georgia Douglas Johnson, was a poet and playwright. She was one of the earliest female African-American playwrights, and an important figure of the Harlem Renaissance.
Sherley Anne Williams was an American poet, novelist, professor, vocalist, jazz poet, playwright and social critic. Many of her works tell stories about her life in the African-American community.
Barbara T. Christian was an American author and professor of African-American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Among several books, and over 100 published articles, Christian was most well known for the 1980 study Black Women Novelists: The Development of a Tradition.
Janet Kauffman is an American novelist, poet, and mixed media artist who has also been a civil rights, environmental, equal rights, peace, and social justice activist.
Elizabeth Alexander is an American poet, writer, and literary scholar who has served as the president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation since 2018.
Akasha Gloria Hull is an American poet, educator, writer, and critic whose work in African-American literature and as a Black feminist activist has helped shape Women's Studies. As one of the architects of Black Women's Studies, her scholarship and activism has increased the prestige, legitimacy, respect, and popularity of feminism and African-American studies.
Christine Hume is an American poet and essayist. Christine Hume is the author of three books of poetry, Musca Domestica (2000), Alaskaphrenia (2004), and Shot (2010) and two works of nonfiction, Saturation Project and Everything I Never Wanted to Know. Her chapbooks include Lullaby: Speculations on the First Active Sense, Ventifacts, Hum, Atalanta: an Anatomy, Question Like a Face, a collaboration with Jeff Clark and Red: A Different Shade for Each Person Reading the Story. She is faculty in the Creative Writing Program at Eastern Michigan University.
Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie (1971) is the first collection of poems by African-American writer and poet Maya Angelou. Many of the poems in Diiie were originally song lyrics, written during Angelou's career as a night club performer, and recorded on two albums before the publication of Angelou's first autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969). Angelou considered herself a poet and a playwright, but is best known for her seven autobiographies. Early in her writing career she began a practice of alternating the publication of an autobiography and a volume of poetry. Although her poetry collections have been best-sellers, they have not received serious critical attention and are more interesting when read aloud.
Ypsilanti, commonly shortened to Ypsi, is a city in Washtenaw County in the U.S. state of Michigan. As of the 2020 census, the city's population was 20,648. The city is bounded to the north by Superior Township and on the west, south, and east by Ypsilanti Township. It is home of Eastern Michigan University.
David Henderson is an American writer and poet. Henderson was a co-founder of the Black Arts Movement in the 1960s. He has been an active member of New York’s Lower East Side art community for more than 40 years. His work has appeared in many literary publications and anthologies, and he has published four volumes of his own poetry. He is most known for his highly acclaimed biography of rock guitarist, Jimi Hendrix, which he revised and expanded for a second edition which was published in 2009.
Melba Joyce Boyd is a significant figure in African-American poetry. She has authored 13 books and is a Distinguished University Professor and Chair of the Department of Africana Studies at Wayne State University.
Genevieve Walton (1857–1932) was an American librarian who was head librarian at Eastern Michigan University from 1892 to 1932. Walton was also a member of a variety of different library associations across Michigan.
