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50 Blackness writers whose impact went across the page

Throughout America's history, African American authors have represented a rich and various trunk of literature. They've contributed fiction and nonfiction, novels, short stories, essays, poesy, scholarly articles, academic writing, and everything in between. The narratives they've added to American storytelling have shifted perspectives and created new dialogues effectually race, civilization, politics, faith, and sociology. The stories they've told—both every bit creative writers and documentarians—have entertained, educated, and informed. In many cases, their work has gone as far as changing policies, practices, and cultural norms—not to mention shaping how the Black experience is viewed and understood in America.

In the United States, African American literature originated in the 19th century, mainly with slave narratives, many told from the perspective of escaped slaves such every bit Harriet Jacobs or Frederick Douglass. In the 1920s, as Black artists and intellectuals emerged following the Nifty Migration, the Harlem Renaissance produced prolific authors. Many of these early 20th-century works addressed issues like racism and segregation post-obit the Civil War and Reconstruction Era.

Past the middle of the century, Black authors played an important part in laying the foundation for political causes such as American civil rights and the Black Ability and Blackness nationalism motility. Many feminist authors emerged during this fourth dimension as well who put forwards ideas well-nigh the relationship between race, sex, and gender. Women similar Mary Ann Weathers and Audre Lorde had a profound outcome on how these subjects were viewed and discussed. Black feminist thinkers established the mode of analysis of intersectionality, laying an of import foundation for the modernistic feminist move.

Following the civil rights move, African American literature became incorporated into the mainstream as novelists like Alice Walker and Toni Morrison wrote bestsellers and began winning prestigious awards. Today, contemporary 21st-century writers similar Roxane Gay, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Colson Whitehead are integral figures in American literature and pop civilisation.

To celebrate some of the accomplishments of these smashing authors, Stacker put together a gallery featuring 50 Black writers who've had the biggest bear on on American life and culture across the page. Read on to acquire more than about these important luminaries.

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Toni Morrison

Amidst numerous accolades, Toni Morrison was the first Black woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993 and the kickoff Black woman to be an editor at Random House. She is most famous for her novel "Beloved," the story of an escaped enslaved woman who makes the painful decision to kill her daughter to forbid her re-enslavement. Slate columnist Laura Miller wrote of Morrison that she "reshaped the landscape of literature" with stories that "no other novelist, Blackness or white, attempted."

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Anna J. Cooper

Author and Black liberation activist Anna J. Cooper was born into slavery in the 1850s yet earned a doctorate in history from the University of Paris, becoming the fourth African American woman in history to go a doctorate. The early American scholar, who is sometimes referred to as "the mother of Black feminism," was the offset author to talk over concepts of feminist "intersectionality," though it wasn't called that at the time. The phrase was coined in 1989 by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw. Cooper's 1892 drove of essays is called "A Phonation from the South." Cooper was a "radical call for a version of racial uplift that centered Blackness women and girls," co-ordinate to Naomi Extra of Vice.

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James Baldwin

All-time known for his essays on race, course, and sexuality (although he as well wrote novels and plays), James Baldwin was a champion and leading vox of the American civil rights movement. As ane of the few openly gay Blackness activists of this era (along with Bayard Rustin), he fought for LGBTQ+ rights alongside the rights of African Americans. The historic writer penned his outset play earlier the age of eleven when his teacher directed it at his elementary school. His well-nigh famous works include "Notes of a Native Son" and "I Am Not Your Negro."

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Gwendolyn Brooks

The first African American to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Poesy (for her 1949 collection "Annie Allen"), Gwendolyn Brooks was a revered poet and author. The poems in her most famous and critically acclaimed volume detailed the life of a immature Black daughter in Chicago as she grows up and becomes a woman. She's been praised widely for her work: "Because her poems and fiction are and so captivating and faithful to the Black experience, consequently the human experience, Gwendolyn Brooks will go along to be read and be alive," wrote Angela Jackson for LitHub.

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Elizabeth Keckley

After working as a seamstress and personal dresser to President Abraham Lincoln'southward wife, start lady Mary Todd Lincoln, former enslaved woman Elizabeth Keckley wrote a memoir titled, "Behind the Scenes: Or, 30 Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House." The book detailed her time in the White House and was criticized past some for revealing private information about the Lincolns. In addition to her influence around the White House, the author founded an organization called the Contraband Relief Association that provided resources like food, apparel, and housing to freed slaves.

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Robert Abbott

The importance of Robert Abbott'due south contribution to African American political discourse can't be overstated. In addition to adding his own manufactures to the public chat, the early 20th-century journalist founded The Chicago Defender in 1905, a weekly Black newspaper that covered issues relevant to African Americans at the time. In his ain writing, he told captivating stories and encouraged Black people in the South to drift to the Northward. "Without Abbott, there would exist no 'Essence,' no 'Jet' (and its Beauty of the Calendar week), no 'Blackness Enterprise,'" Martenzie Johnson wrote for "The Undefeated."

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Richard Wright

Richard Wright, famous for his memoir "Black Boy" and the novel "Native Son," among others, is often ranked amongst the virtually influential Blackness writers of the 20th century. In addition to the enormous impact he had on Black American literature, he mentored other writers, amongst them James Baldwin. "I had identified myself with him long before we met," Baldwin said of Wright after his death. "In a sense by no means metaphysical, his example had helped me to survive. He was Blackness, he was young, he had come out of Mississippi and the Chicago slums, and he was a writer. He proved information technology could be washed—proved it to me, and gave me an arm against all the others who assured me it could not exist washed."

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Malcolm X

Often credited with kicking off the Black Power movement, Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little; however, he changed his proper noun in prison after joining the Nation of Islam, explaining that he rejected the surname handed down to him past the "white slavemaster." "The Autobiography of Malcolm X"—which he collaborated on with author Alex Haley—was "one of the virtually influential books in belatedly-20th-century American culture," according to cultural historian Howard Bruce Franklin. The song Muslim activist, who supported the separation of Blacks and whites (not to be confused with segregation), is sometimes assorted with Martin Luther King Jr., who advocated for full integration. Malcolm X was assassinated in 1965.

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Octavia Butler

Commonly considered the "foremost Black woman in sci-fi literature," Octavia Butler, the author of "Bloodchild" and other popular science fiction books, was the first sci-fi author to ever get a MacArthur Foundation fellowship. Her books contain radical visions of race and power. Her life's work had a huge impact—not but on her genre but in the way she encouraged and mentored young science-fiction writers of color. "Her legacy is larger than just herself or her individual work, more than anyone probably tin can imagine right now," writer Ayana Jamieson told NBC News.

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Toni Cade Bambara

On height of being a prolific contemporary writer (known for works such every bit "The Salt Eaters, "Gorilla, My Love," and "The Sea Birds Are Still Alive"), Toni Cade Bambara was celebrated for her social consciousness and commitment to making literature attainable. When her book "The Black Woman" came out, for example, she urged her publisher to keep the price affordable so that Black women from all sorts of economic backgrounds could read it. According to Shondaland writer Lyndsey Ellis, she "helped create the recipe for Black love and unity as we know it today."

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Ta-Nehisi Coates

Although he only published his first volume in 2008—and really but became widely known subsequently 2015's "Between the World and Me"—Ta-Nehisi Coates has swiftly become one of the about influential voices among mod African American writers. He gained a following during his years as a author for The Atlantic and has now written four books every bit well as the "Black Panther" comic book serial. His piece of work contributes significantly to the current conversation around reparations, systemic racism, and white supremacy.

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Frances Harper

Chosen the "mother of African American journalism," Frances Harper had a long career that began with a book of poetry and ended half a century later with the publication of her highly acclaimed novel, "Iola Leroy," in 1892. The abolitionist and suffragist, who was herself born free, took groovy risks to help escaped enslaved people navigate the Underground Railroad on their path to liberty. She's likewise known for refusing to give upward her seat on a segregated trolley car—100 years before Rosa Parks became famous for a similar protestation.

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James Weldon Johnson

In addition to authoring "The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Homo" and numerous poetry collections, James Weldon Johnson was an early on leader of the National Association for the Advocacy of Colored People (NAACP). The man rights activist worked as a U.Due south. consul under President Theodore Roosevelt and taught literature at the historically Black college Fisk University, extending his touch on on America far beyond the page.

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Ida B. Wells

Ida B. Wells was a journalist and activist who brought attention to the lynchings in the United States in the late 19th and early on 20th century. Among numerous pieces of investigative journalism, "Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases" exposed many of the cruel and inhuman practices taking place against African Americans at the time, drawing particular attention to the political and economic motivations backside them. The formerly enslaved woman, who was freed under the Emancipation Annunciation, co-owned the "Memphis Free Spoken communication and Headlight" newspaper and was 1 of the founders of the NAACP.

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Paul Laurence Dunbar

Born to previously enslaved parents, poet and playwright Paul Laurence Dunbar was known for his utilise of the "Negro dialect" in his writing. Among other accomplishments, he wrote the lyrics for 1903'due south "In Dahomey," the first all-Black Broadway musical. His friend, fellow author James Weldon Johnson, praised his writing. "He was the offset to rise to a acme from which he could take a perspective view of his own race," Johnson said. "He was the starting time to see objectively its humor, its superstitions, its brusque-comings; the first to experience sympathetically its heart-wounds, its yearnings, its aspirations, and to voice them all in a purely literary form."

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Langston Hughes

A star of the Harlem Renaissance (and then known every bit the "New Negro Motility"), Langston Hughes wrote critically acclaimed poems, novels, and plays, in addition to insightful weekly columns in The Chicago Defender. He was an early creator of jazz poetry and one of the offset Black authors able to successfully earn an income from his writing. "50 years after his expiry, Hughes' boggling lyricism resonates with power to people," wrote David C. Ward for Smithsonian Magazine.

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Ishmael Reed

A satirist, Ishmael Reed's writing has called attention to serious issues in American political culture via humor and parody. He's also written at least x novels and a number of poems, plays, and essays. In the 1960s, Reed co-founded the underground "East Village Other" and was a fellow member of the Umbra Writers Workshop, which helped launch the Black Arts Movement. His most famous writing is the 1972 novel "Mumbo Colossal."

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Maya Angelou

The author of seven autobiographies, forth with several books of poetry and essays, Maya Angelou'south work has had a profound upshot on the dialogue around race in America. She was inspired to write her almost famous book, "I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings," amid a deep depression post-obit the bump-off of Martin Luther King Jr. Fellow writer James Baldwin, who was a friend, helped her editor persuade her to write information technology: "Baldwin told [Robert Loomis] that in order to get Angelou to do annihilation, you have to tell her she can't practise it," wrote Bené Viera for Timeline. "The contrary psychology worked. She isolated herself in London and began writing." It was an instant bestseller that'south now taught in high schools and colleges.

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Rosa Parks

Although Rosa Parks is most famous for her function equally an activist during the Montgomery Bus Cold-shoulder, she likewise wrote an autobiography, also as a number of notes that were later published. In the latter, she discussed how fierce the pressure was for African Americans to autumn into line and not rock the boat, noting that it required a "major mental acrobatic feat" to survive during that era. "She refused to normalize the ability to function under American racism," wrote Jeanne Theoharis for The Washington Mail.

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Amiri Baraka

Amiri Baraka was an outspoken author, poet, and playwright who advocated for Black nationalism and Marxism. His impact spread beyond his writing as he launched Harlem's Blackness Arts Motility in the 1960s, several decades later the Harlem Renaissance. Although undoubtedly influential, he was also a controversial figure, particularly regarding his stance on homosexuality, which condemned the behavior.

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James Cone

James Cone has been called the nigh important theologian of his fourth dimension. His 1969 volume, "Blackness Theology and Black Power," aligned the philosophies of the Black Power move with the Black church building, arguing that Jesus' message was no unlike than the political movement with both advocating for the liberation of the oppressed. "Cone upended the theological institution with his vigorous joint of God'due south radical identification with Black people in the United States," wrote the Union Seminary. "His eloquent portrayal of Christ's Blackness shattered dominant white theological paradigms, and ignited a moving ridge of subsequent American liberation theologies."

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Lorraine Hansberry

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Alex Haley

Famous for his 1976 novel "Roots: The Saga of an American Family unit," Alex Haley is often credited for kickstarting a moving ridge of interest in genealogy and pride in African roots amongst Blackness people in America in the 1970s. This was as well partly responsible for the growing preference at the time of the term African American, according to novelist Charles Johnson. In add-on to "Roots," Haley as well authored "The Autobiography of Malcolm X," a seminal work in African American literature and political dialogue.

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Barack Obama

These days, Barack Obama is known get-go every bit the 44th president of the U.s.; however, he's a highly achieved author besides. "Dreams From My Father," which he published in 1995 before his first Senate campaign, was a widely acclaimed piece of nonfiction that Fourth dimension columnist Joe Klein hailed every bit "the best-written memoir ever produced by an American politician." In 2006, Obama'southward "The Brazenness of Hope" became #1 on The New York Times bestseller list. His follow-up, 2020'south "A Promised Land," focuses on his start term as president; information technology'due south the first of two planned books, the next of which will cover his 2d term.

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Mary Church Terrell

In addition to being an first-class writer, Mary Church Terrell was a leading suffragist and civil rights activist. Born in 1863 to freed enslaved people who afterward became part of the late 19th century's rising Black upper form, her parents "used their position to fight racial bigotry." She was a graduate of Oberlin College—one of the get-go African American women to receive a college degree, in fact—and worked as a journalist nether the pen name Euphemia Kirk. She wrote for The Washington Post, the Washington Evening Star, and the Chicago Defender, among others, and detailed her own experience with racism in her 1940 autobiography, "A Colored Woman in a White Globe."

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Frank Marshall Davis

Journalist, poet, and activist Frank Marshall Davis was part of a writer's group—along with other famous authors like Richard Wright and Margaret Walker—that later on came to exist known equally the Black Chicago Renaissance. In addition to writing about race and civilization, Davis covered jazz and music history. He was famous in his own right for his many literary accomplishments, though he's oft remembered today for his association with former President Barack Obama, who wrote about him in "Dreams from My Father."

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Roxane Gay

Roxane Gay is a modern writer and feminist who's had an enormous bear on on the literary earth and feminist thought in the last decade. Her 2014 collection of essays, "Bad Feminist," was a highly praised New York Times bestseller, and was followed by ii short story collections, a novel, and the memoir "Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Torso." Marisa Meltzer of Elle chosen Gay a "get-to phonation on the ever-roiling front line of gender, race, and politics, and, maybe almost of all, the embodiment of intersectionality."

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West.E.B. DuBois

West.East.B. DuBois, who's been chosen "one of the well-nigh influential thinkers and activists of the 19th and 20th centuries," was an author and civil rights activist who led the Niagara Movement, an equal rights system in the early 20th century, and was a founder of the NAACP. The writer, who was the offset African American to earn a doctoral degree from Harvard University, is best known for "Blackness Reconstruction in America," a groundbreaking historical narrative that reframed the Reconstruction Era and credited Black people with the "shaping of their own destiny."

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Michelle Obama

The former president isn't the only Obama who's written a bestselling and highly influential memoir. Former first lady Michelle Obama too made a huge bear on with "Becoming," an insightful and securely personal await back on her before years every bit well as her time at the White Business firm. In 2018, the volume broke records in 15 days, selling more than copies than any other volume published in the United States that yr. On summit of her accolades as an writer, Michelle Obama has impacted the American public by visiting homeless shelters, advocating for public health campaigns, and championing women'due south rights.

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William Wells Brown

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Sojourner Truth

Sojourner Truth was an abolitionist and women's rights activist known for her advancement work; nonetheless, she likewise made several notable contributions to the written word. Although she couldn't read and write herself, the escaped enslaved woman worked with her friend Olive Gilbert and fellow abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison on a memoir that resulted in 1850'south "The Narrative of Sojourner Truth: a Northern Slave." The book, combined with her powerful speech, "Ain't I A Adult female," both helped shape the dialogue around abolition at the time—and in 2014, Smithsonian Mag featured her on its 100 Most Significant Americans of All Time list.

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Booker T. Washington

In that location's no dubiety that Booker T. Washington—a former enslaved man and adviser to multiple presidents—had a huge impact on 19th- and early 20th-century politics, though some have argued as to whether his influence was positive. The African American community leader, who led Tuskegee Academy, wrote five books with a ghostwriter including "The Story of My Life and Work" and "Upwardly From Slavery." Washington was heavily criticized for failing to claiming Jim Crow segregation and encouraging Black people of the time to accept the status quo.

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Phillis Wheatley

Among many accomplishments, Phillis Wheatley was the outset African American to publish a volume of poems. The acclaimed poet was born in Westward Africa in 1753 and sold into slavery as a child. After her enslavers taught her to read and write, she wrote poems well-nigh the American Revolution that were afterwards used to support abolitionism. "Wheatley was non alive to run across her verse brand a consequential touch on the abolition of slavery," wrote Dillon Hartigan of Southern Methodist University. "Withal, years later the Great Enkindling was over and people understood its pregnant, Wheatley'due south poems were used to fight Southern views towards slavery."

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Claude McKay

Poet Claude McKay, a Jamaican immigrant and fundamental effigy in the Harlem Renaissance, is famous for his novel "Abode to Harlem," which won the Harmon Golden Award for Literature, and other works that influenced later poets like Langston Hughes, shaping how they would employ their voice. Today, McKay is regarded for having "paved the way for Blackness poets to discuss the weather and racism that they faced in their poems."

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Ntozake Shange

Black feminism owes a great deal to Ntozake Shange, a poet and playwright who dealt with topics of race, sexism, and Black power. She's best known for her 1976 play "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf," which won the prestigious Obie Honour. On top of writing accolades, Shange is responsible for creating the "choreopoem" and coining the term, which describes a operation art that blends music and dancing with words.

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Zora Neale Hurston

In addition to her powerful novels that take garnered myriad accolades, Zora Neale Hurston is remembered as a fundamental effigy in the Harlem Renaissance. The artistic and intellectual explosion of 1920s New York produced numerous famous voices of which Hurston is 1 of the best known. Her well-nigh famous novel, "Their Eyes Were Watching God," was written in 1937 just didn't attain literary fame until the 1970s amid the Blackness Arts Movement. In 2019, Hurston's novel appeared on BBC Arts' 100 About Influential Novels list.

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Bell Hooks

An early critic of mainstream feminism, Gloria Jean Watkins, known professionally by her stage name bell hooks, has argued, among many things, that racism and sexism are inextricably connected. She's the author of more 30 books and academic articles, among which "Ain't I a Woman?: Blackness Women and Feminism" and the memoir "Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood" are some of the most well-known.

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Martin Luther King Jr.

It'southward hard to overstate the enormous bear on that human rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. had on the American ceremonious rights movement. Notwithstanding, some people are less familiar with his writing. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who pioneered the not-violence move of the 1960s, was the author of a number of books including "Footstep Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story" and "Where Do We Get From Here: Chaos or Community?"—not to mention some of the near famous speeches in history.

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Harriet Jacobs

An escaped enslaved person and passionate abolitionist, Harriet Jacobs is best known for her poignant autobiography "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" which she first published in 1861 nether a pseudonym. The book was remarkable for many reasons, ane being that information technology was amongst the starting time to discuss the sexual harassment and abuse female slaves suffered. The New Bedford Historical Lodge called the book "the most of import slave narrative written past an African American woman."

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Colson Whitehead

Colson Whitehead is a highly acclaimed modern writer whose 2016 book, "The Underground Railroad," and 2019'due south "The Nickel Boys," earned him two Pulitzer Prize for Fiction awards. The Pulitzer committee called the sometime "a smart melding of realism and allegory that combines the violence of slavery and the drama of escape in a myth that speaks to contemporary America." Whitehead is the author of several other novels and ii nonfiction books also, many of which take likewise received widespread praise.

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Jessie Redmon Fauset

Jessie Redmon Fauset, an author-poet and integral figure in the Harlem Renaissance, was the literary editor of the NAACP magazine The Crisis, as well equally the editor of the children's magazine, The Brownies' Book. She published 4 novels and provided mentorship to well-respected poets such as Claude McKay and Langston Hughes. Numerous historians have called her work and impact on the race dialogue under-appreciated. "A look at Fauset's entire body of piece of work reveals a writer who is more engaged with modern questions of race, class, and gender than she has been given credit for," Professor Claire Oberon Garcia of Colorado College said of Fauset to The New Yorker.

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Oprah Winfrey

Oprah Winfrey's bear on on African Americans in the United States and others has been undeniable. She was the beginning Black multi-billionaire in North America and also the richest African American of the 20th century, and has been called i of the nearly influential women in the world more than one time. She's written multiple books, almost of them in the self-assistance genre, inspiring people of all races to live happier, healthier, and more fulfilled lives. She as well wrote "Journeying to Beloved," a collection of journal entries and thoughts about her function as Sethe in the 1998 adaptation of Toni Morrison's novel "Beloved."

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Ralph Ellison

Author of the groundbreaking novel "Invisible Man"—which dealt with issues of African American identity, Blackness nationalism, and Marxism—Ralph Ellison had a huge impact on American thinking and politics in the 1950s and beyond. According to many scholars, he brought a new type of Black character to the page. "Ellison's view was that the African-American civilization and sensibility was far from the downtrodden, unsophisticated picture show presented past writers, sociologists and politicians at the time, both black and white," wrote Anne Seidlitz for PBS. "He posited instead that Blacks had created their own traditions, rituals, and a history that formed a cohesive and complex culture that was the source of a total sense of identity."

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Angela Davis

The contributions that Angela Davis has fabricated over the years to American racial discourse have been immeasurable. The author and human being rights activist, who rose to fame in the late 1960s due to her activism and piece of work with the Black Panthers and the Communist Party, is ofttimes remembered for her association with a domestic terror attack in Marin Country, California, that killed four people (she was prosecuted for purchasing the firearms just later acquitted by an all-white jury). Her piece of work has contributed mightily to activism effectually racism and white supremacy, and she's written more than 10 books exploring problems similar feminism, women's rights, race, class, and social justice.

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Margaret Walker

An integral role of the Chicago Black Renaissance, Margaret Walker was a vibrant figure in the literary customs of the 1930s and '40s. Her 1942 poesy collection, "For My People," won the prestigious Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition and her 1966 historical novel nearly the American Ceremonious State of war, titled "Jubilee," was also highly acclaimed. After her death, fellow writer Amiri Baraka wrote of Walker: "She was one of the greatest writers of the linguistic communication. She was the grandest expression of the American poetic voice and the ultimate paradigm of the Afro-American classic literary tradition."

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Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass was an escaped enslaved human being, abolitionist, and suffragist whose writings had an enormous bear on on African American soapbox in the 19th century and across. He was taught to read by a white woman named Lucretia Auld who inherited him as an enslaved person from her father. He, in turn, taught other slaves to read before his escape in 1838. Douglass is the author of multiple autobiographies including the 1845 bestseller "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave" and 1855's "My Bondage and My Freedom." In the foreword to the latter, John Stauffer chosen Douglass "i of the nearly powerful voices to emerge from the American civil rights movement."

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Harriet Wilson

Harriet Wilson, who was born free in 1825 but became an indentured servant afterward being orphaned, was the first African American to publish a novel in the Us. She did then anonymously with a book called "Our Nig" and information technology wasn't until the 1980s that a scholar discovered her identity and credited her with the groundbreaking accomplishment. "Information technology turned the literary world on its end, as up to that point information technology had been widely accustomed that the first African American published novelist had been Frances Ellen Watkins Harper," wrote Carla Garner for BlackPast.org.

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Barbara Christian

In add-on to multiple full-length books, the prolific Barbara Christian, a professor of African American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley (and the university'southward first Black adult female to exist granted tenure), penned more than 100 manufactures. She wrote broadly near race and advocated for literature and academics to be more than attainable to women and people of colour. In a 2000 New York Times obituary, she was called a "leading critical presence in the growing debates over the relationship among race, class and gender."

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Alice Walker

Few contemporary African American authors accept accomplished the degree of praise and literary acclaim as Alice Walker, author of the 1982 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "The Color Purple." In addition to her copious accolades equally an author, Walker is a feminist and social activist who is responsible for coining the term "womanist." On meridian of her well-nigh famous novel, Walker wrote other works such as "The Third Life of Grange Copeland" and "Meridian.

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August Wilson

August Wilson was an esteemed playwright who won two Pulitzer Prizes for his series of x plays collectively titled "The Pittsburgh Wheel" (the awards went to "Fences" and "The Piano Lesson"). Each play was set in a different decade and describe dissimilar facets of 20th-century African American life. The Courier-Journal's Betty Baye, speaking to NPR, chosen Wilson a "miracle of creativity," noting that he was "a man and then unabashedly in dear with Black people and and so keenly insightful about the complexities of beingness an African American that he took upon himself the awesome challenge of writing x plays about the Black experience, ane for each decade of the 20th century."

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