Ralph Ellison was an American writer, literary critic, and scholar best known for his novel Invisible Man, which won the National Book Award in 1953.
Richard Nathaniel Wright was an American author of novels, short stories, poems, and non-fiction. Much of his literature concerns racial themes, especially related to the plight of African Americans during the late 19th to mid 20th centuries suffering discrimination and violence. His best known works include the novella collection Uncle Tom's Children (1938), the novel Native Son (1940), and the memoir Black Boy (1945). Literary critics believe his work helped change race relations in the United States in the mid-20th century.
Native Son (1940) is a novel written by the American author Richard Wright. It tells the story of 20-year-old Bigger Thomas, a black youth living in utter poverty in a poor area on Chicago's South Side in the 1930s. Thomas accidentally kills a white woman at a time when racism is at its peak and he pays the price for it.
James Arthur Baldwin was an American writer and civil rights activist who garnered acclaim for his essays, novels, plays, and poems. His 1953 novel Go Tell It on the Mountain has been ranked among the best English-language novels. His 1955 essay collection Notes of a Native Son helped establish his reputation as a voice for human equality. Baldwin was a well-known public figure and orator, especially during the civil rights movement in the United States.
Invisible Man is Ralph Ellison's first novel, the only one published during his lifetime. It was published by Random House in 1952, and addresses many of the social and intellectual issues faced by African Americans in the early 20th century, including black nationalism, the relationship between black identity and Marxism, and the reformist racial policies of Booker T. Washington, as well as issues of individuality and personal identity.
Go Tell It on the Mountain is a 1953 semi-autobiographical novel by James Baldwin. It tells the story of John Grimes, an intelligent teenager in 1930s Harlem, and his relationship with his family and his church. The novel also reveals the back stories of John's mother, his biological father, and his violent, fanatically religious stepfather, Gabriel Grimes. The novel focuses on the role of the Pentecostal Church in the lives of African Americans, both as a negative source of repression and moral hypocrisy and a positive source of inspiration and community. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Go Tell It on the Mountain 39th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Time magazine included the novel on its list of the 100 best English-language novels released from 1923 to 2005.
The Black Arts Movement (BAM) was an African American-led art movement that was active during the 1960s and 1970s. Through activism and art, BAM created new cultural institutions and conveyed a message of black pride. The movement expanded from the incredible accomplishments of artists of the Harlem Renaissance.
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.
Another Country is a 1962 novel by James Baldwin. The novel is primarily set in Greenwich Village, Harlem, and France in the late 1950s. It portrayed many themes that were taboo at the time of its release, including bisexuality, interracial couples, and extramarital affairs.
The Abyssinian Baptist Church is a Baptist megachurch located at 132 West 138th Street between Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard and Lenox Avenue in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It is affiliated with the National Baptist Convention, USA and American Baptist Churches USA.
The Fire Next Time is a 1963 non-fiction book by James Baldwin, containing two essays: "My Dungeon Shook: Letter to my Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation" and "Down at the Cross: Letter from a Region of My Mind".
Mat Johnson is an American fiction writer who works in both prose and the comics format. In 2007, he was named the first USA James Baldwin Fellow by United States Artists.
The Price of the Ticket is an anthology collecting nonfiction essays by James Baldwin. Spanning the years 1948 to 1985, the essays offer Baldwin's reflections on race in America.
"Stranger in the Village" is an essay by African-American novelist James Baldwin about his experiences in Leukerbad, Switzerland, after he nearly suffered a breakdown. The essay was originally published in Harper's Magazine, October 1953, and later in his 1955 collection, Notes of a Native Son.
Carmen Jones is a 1954 American musical film featuring an African American cast starring Harry Belafonte, Dorothy Dandridge, and Pearl Bailey and produced and directed by Otto Preminger. The screenplay by Harry Kleiner is based on the lyrics and book by Oscar Hammerstein II, from the 1943 stage musical of the same name, set to the music of Georges Bizet's 1875 opera Carmen. The opera was an adaptation of the 1845 Prosper Mérimée novella Carmen by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy.
Going to Meet the Man, published in 1965, is a collection of eight short stories by American writer James Baldwin. The book, dedicated "for Beauford Delaney", covers many topics related to anti-Black racism in American society, as well as African-American–Jewish relations, childhood, the creative process, criminal justice, drug addiction, family relationships, jazz, lynching, sexuality, and white supremacy.
A race riot took place in Harlem, New York City, on August 1 and 2 of 1943, after a white police officer, James Collins, shot and wounded Robert Bandy, an African American soldier; and rumors circulated that the soldier had been killed. The riot was chiefly directed by Black residents against white-owned property in Harlem. It was one of five riots in the nation that year related to Black and white tensions during World War II. The others took place in Detroit; Beaumont, Texas; Mobile, Alabama; and Los Angeles.
Roderick Ferguson is Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and American Studies at Yale University. He was previously professor of African American and Gender and Women's Studies in the African American Studies Department at the University of Illinois, Chicago. His scholarship includes work on African-American literature, queer theory and queer studies, classical and contemporary social theory, African-American intellectual history, sociology of race and ethnic relations, and black cultural theory. Among his contributions to queer theory, Ferguson is credited with coining the term Queer of Color Critique, which he defines as "...interrogat[ion] of social formations as the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and class, with particular interest in how those formations correspond with and diverge from nationalist ideals and practices. Queer of color analysis is a heterogeneous enterprise made up of women of color feminism, materialist analysis, poststructuralist theory, and queer critique." Ferguson is also known for his critique of the modern university and the corporatization of higher education.
"Negroes Are Anti-Semitic Because They're Anti-White" was a landmark 1967 essay written by American writer James Baldwin that first appeared in the Sunday magazine edition of The New York Times, describing the tensions that existed in African American–Jewish relation.
James Baldwin (1924–1987) was born in and lived his entire childhood and adolescence in Harlem, New York. He expatriated and lived most of his adult life in France, though he traveled frequently and had extended stays in other countries. He lived in Paris for nine years and in Saint-Paul-de-Vence for 17 years. France and his other stays abroad provided him with a vantage point for observing his own American culture, which was the main subject of his work.
