William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was an American sociologist, socialist, historian, and Pan-Africanist civil rights activist.
Nellallitea "Nella" Larsen was an American novelist. Working as a nurse and a librarian, she published two novels, Quicksand (1928) and Passing (1929), and a few short stories. Though her literary output was scant, she earned recognition by her contemporaries.
"Sleeping Beauty", also titled in English as The Sleeping Beauty in the Woods, is a fairy tale about a princess cursed by an evil fairy to sleep for a hundred years before being awakened by a handsome prince. A good fairy, knowing the princess would be frightened if alone when she wakes, uses her wand to put every living person and animal in the palace and forest asleep, to awaken when the princess does.
Charles Waddell Chesnutt was an American author, essayist, political activist and lawyer, best known for his novels and short stories exploring complex issues of racial and social identity in the post-Civil War South. Two of his books were adapted as silent films in 1926 and 1927 by the African-American director and producer Oscar Micheaux. Following the Civil Rights Movement during the 20th century, interest in the works of Chesnutt was revived. Several of his books were published in new editions, and he received formal recognition. A commemorative stamp was printed in 2008.
The Pan-African Congress (PAC) was a series of eight meetings which took place on the back of the Pan-African Conference held in London in 1900. The Pan-African Congress gained a reputation as a peacemaker for decolonization in Africa and in the West Indies. It made a significant advance for the Pan-African cause. One of the group's major demands was to end colonial rule and racial discrimination. It stood against imperialism and it demanded human rights and equality of economic opportunity. The manifesto given by the Pan-African Congress included the political and economic demands of the Congress for a new world context of international cooperation and the need to address the issues facing Africa as a result of European colonization of most of the continent.
Black No More: Being an Account of the Strange and Wonderful Workings of Science in the Land of the Free, A.D. 1933-1940 is a 1931 Harlem Renaissance satire on American race relations by George S. Schuyler. In the novel, Schuyler targets both the Ku Klux Klan and NAACP in condemning the ways in which race functions as both an obsession and a commodity in early twentieth-century America. The central premise of the novel is that an African American scientist invents a process that can transform Black people into white people. Those who have internalized white racism, those who are tired of inferior opportunities socially and economically, and those who simply want to expand their sexual horizons, undergo the procedure. As the country "whitens", the economic importance of racial segregation in the South as a means of maintaining elite white economic and social status becomes increasingly apparent, as the South relies on Black labor through sharecropping.
Countee Cullen was an American poet, novelist, children's writer, and playwright, particularly well known during the Harlem Renaissance.
The Crisis is the official magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). It was founded in 1910 by W. E. B. Du Bois (editor), Oswald Garrison Villard, J. Max Barber, Charles Edward Russell, Kelly Miller, William Stanley Braithwaite, and Mary Dunlop Maclean. The Crisis has been in continuous print since 1910, and it is the oldest Black-oriented magazine in the world. Today, The Crisis is "a quarterly journal of civil rights, history, politics and culture and seeks to educate and challenge its readers about issues that continue to plague African Americans and other communities of color."
Jessie Redmon Fauset was an editor, poet, essayist, novelist, and educator. Her literary work helped sculpt African-American literature in the 1920s as she focused on portraying a true image of African-American life and history. Her black fictional characters were working professionals which was an inconceivable concept to American society during this time Her story lines related to themes of racial discrimination, "passing", and feminism.
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.
The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches is a 1903 work of American literature by W. E. B. Du Bois. It is a seminal work in the history of sociology and a cornerstone of African-American literature.
Joel Augustus Rogers was a Jamaican-American author, journalist, and amateur historian who focused on the history of Africa; as well as the African diaspora. After settling in the United States in 1906, he lived in Chicago and then New York City. He became interested in the history of African Americans in the United States. His research spanned the academic fields of history, sociology and anthropology. He challenged prevailing ideas about scientific racism and the social construction of race, demonstrated the connections between civilizations, and traced achievements of ethnic Africans, including some with mixed European ancestry. He was one of the earliest popularizers of African and African-American history in the 20th century. His book World's Great Men of Color was recognized by John Henrik Clarke as being his greatest achievement.
Black science fiction or black speculative fiction is an umbrella term that covers a variety of activities within the science fiction, fantasy, and horror genres where people of the African diaspora take part or are depicted. Some of its defining characteristics include a critique of the social structures leading to black oppression paired with an investment in social change. Black science fiction is "fed by technology but not led by it." This means that black science fiction often explores with human engagement with technology instead of technology as an innate good.
The term color line was originally used as a reference to the racial segregation that existed in the United States after the abolition of slavery. An article by Frederick Douglass that was titled "The Color Line" was published in the North American Review in 1881. The phrase gained fame after W. E. B. Du Bois' repeated use of it in his 1903 book The Souls of Black Folk.
Black existentialism or Africana critical theory is a school of thought that "critiques domination and affirms the empowerment of Black people in the world". Although it shares a word with existentialism and that philosophy's concerns with existence and meaning in life, Black existentialism is "is predicated on the liberation of all Black people in the world from oppression". Black existentialism may also be seen as method, which allows one to read works by African-American writers such as W. E. B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, and Ralph Ellison in an existentialist frame. As well as the work of Civil Rights Activists such as Malcolm X and Cornel West. Lewis Gordon argues that Black existentialism is not only existential philosophy produced by Black philosophers but is also thought that addresses the intersection of problems of existence in black contexts.
Dusk of Dawn: An Essay Toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept is a 1940 autobiographical text by W. E. B. Du Bois that examines his life and family history in the context of contemporaneous developments in race relations.
Theodore Lothrop Stoddard was an American historian, journalist, political scientist and white supremacist. Stoddard wrote several books which advocated eugenics, white supremacy, Nordicism, and scientific racism, including The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy (1920). He advocated a racial hierarchy which he believed needed to be preserved through anti-miscegenation laws. Stoddard's books were once widely read both inside and outside the United States.
The First Universal Races Congress met in 1911 for four days at the University of London as an early effort at anti-racism. Speakers from a number of countries discussed race relations and how to improve them. The congress, with 2,100 attendees, was organised by prominent humanists of that era; it was conceived of a result of comments in 1906 by Felix Adler and primarily executed by Gustav Spiller, a leader in the British Ethical Union. Philip Stanhope was president of the congress, and William Pember Reeves chaired its executive committee.
The Exhibit of American Negroes was a sociological display within the Palace of Social Economy at the 1900 World's Fair in Paris. The exhibit was a joint effort between Daniel Murray, the Assistant Librarian of Congress, Thomas J. Calloway, a lawyer and the primary organizer of the exhibit, and W. E. B. Du Bois. The goal of the exhibition was to demonstrate progress and commemorate the lives of African Americans at the turn of the century.
Racial uplift is a term within the African American community that motivates educated blacks to be responsible in the lifting of their race. This concept traced back to the late 1800s, introduced by black elites, such as W. E. B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, and African American musicians like Florence Price, who were significant contributors. During the beginnings of racial uplift, hymns and negro spirituals played a vital role in shaping the spiritual culture of African Americans. Although these musical selections are mainly prevalent inside the black church, contemporary gospel music has been utilized for the liberation and uplift of the oppressed black race. Aside from music, African American leaders have used concepts such as Du Bois's double consciousness that describe the idea of blackness and the complexities of identity in the various lens in which the black race envisions themselves in American society.
