Gwendolyn B. Bennett: The Harlem Renaissance Writer and Painter
Gwendolyn B. Bennett was an African-American poet, essayist, short-story writer, and artist. Although she never published her own volume of poetry, she was one of...
Category : Black Poet
Sterling Allen Brown: Harlem Renaissance Poet
“I wanted to understand my people. I wanted to understand what it meant to be a [Black]. What the qualities of life were. With their...
Langston Hughes: Poet Laureate of the Black Race
I dream a world… where wretchedness will hang its head, and joy like a pearl, attends the needs of all mankind. Of such I dream,...
Phillis Wheatley: The first published African-American female poet
Phillis Wheatley was the first published African-American female poet. She was born in West Africa around 1753, before she was kidnapped and sold into the...
Gil Scott-Heron: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
Gil Scott-Heron was the African American poet, novelist, musician, and songwriter known primarily for his work as a spoken-word performer in the 1970s and 1980s....
João da Cruz e Sousa: The “Black Swan”
Poet João da Cruz e Sousa, (November 24, 1861-March 19, 1898) was the leading figure of the Symbolist movement in Brazil. Called the Cisne Negro...
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper: The Mother of African American journalism
Frances E.W. Harper was a leading African-American poet and writer. She was also an ardent activist in the abolitionist and women’s rights movements. Harper had...
Claude McKay: Radical Poet
Claude McKay was a Jamaican-American poet best known for his radical sonnet “If We Must Die,” the most militant poem of the Harlem Renaissance. Mckay,...
Honourable Mrs. Louise Bennett-Coverley ‘Miss Lou’ – Mother of Jamaican culture
Louise Simone Bennett-Coverley or “Miss Lou” was a Jamaican poet, folklorist, writer, activist, radio and television personality and educator. Writing and performing her poems in...
Quincy Troupe: California’s First Official Poet Laureate
Quincy Thomas Troupe, Jr. is an awarding-winning African-American author of ten volumes of poetry, three children’s books, and six non-fiction works. Troupe was California’s first...