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.
The collection includes works by such prominent masters of American literature as Frederick Douglass, Nella Larsen, Charles W. Chesnutt , Paul Laurence Dunbar, Phillis Wheatley, Langston Hughes, Booker T. Washington , W. E. B. Du Bois and many others.
Novels and short stories
Frederick Douglass
THE HEROIC SLAVE
Nella Larsen
QUICKSAND
PASSING
THE WRONG MAN
FREEDOM
SANCTUARY
Alice Dunbar-Nelson
A CARNIVAL JANGLE
VIOLETS
THE WOMAN
TEN MINUTES' MUSING
TITEE
Charles W. Chesnutt
THE GOOPHERED GRAPEVINE
PO' SANDY
SIS' BECKY'S PICKANINNY
THE DOLL
THE WIFE OF HIS YOUTH
Paul Laurence Dunbar
THE SCAPEGOAT
Jean Toomer
BECKY
Poetry
Phillis Wheatley
TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE WILLIAM, EARL OF DARTMOUTH
ON VIRTUE
AN HYMN TO THE MORNING
AN HYMN TO THE EVENING
Frances E. W. Harper
BURY ME IN A FREE LAND
SONGS FOR THE PEOPLE
MY MOTHER'S KISS
A GRAIN OF SAND
OUR HERO
THE SPARROW'S FALL
James Weldon Johnson
SENCE YOU WENT AWAY
Paul Laurence Dunbar
THE LESSON
SYMPATHY
WE WEAR THE MASK
Claude McKay
AFTER THE WINTER
IF WE MUST DIE
THE TROPICS IN NEW YORK
Countee Cullen
FOR PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR
INCIDENT
LANGSTON HUGHES
THE WEARY BLUES
JAZZONIA
NEGRO DANCERS
THE CAT AND THE SAXOPHONE (2 A. M.)
YOUNG SINGER
CABARET
TO MIDNIGHT NAN AT LEROY'S
TO A LITTLE LOVER-LASS, DEAD
HARLEM NIGHT CLUB
NUDE YOUNG DANCER
YOUNG PROSTITUTE
TO A BLACK DANCER IN "THE LITTLE SAVOY"
SONG FOR A BANJO DANCE
BLUES FANTASY
LENOX AVENUE: MIDNIGHT
Non-fiction
Frederick Douglass
NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS
Harriet Jacobs
INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL
Booker T. Washington
UP FROM SLAVERY
William Still
UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
Henry Box Brown
James Hambleton Christian
Theophilus Collins
Seth Concklin
William and Ellen Craft
Abram Galloway and Richard Eden
Charles Gilbert
Samuel Green
Jamie Griffin
Harry Grimes
James Hamlet and Others
John Henry Hill
Ann Maria Jackson and Her Seven Children
Jane Johnson
Matilda Mahoney
Mary Frances Melvin
Aunt Hannah Moore
Alfred S. Thornton
Essays
W. E. B. Du Bois
THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLK
Charles W. Chesnutt
THE DISFRANCHISEMENT OF THE NEGRO
Paul Laurence Dunbar
REPRESENTATIVE AMERICAN NEGROES
