bell hooks was born Gloria Jean Watkins on September 25, 1952. The town of Hopkinsville, Kentucky, where she and her five siblings grew up and went to school, was segregated, and her experiences in this community helped shape the commitment […]
Toni Morrison is among the most acclaimed African American authors in U.S. history. In 1993, she became the first African American woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. She also received a 1988 Pulitzer Prize for her novel […]
Author, civil rights activist, and women’s rights activist Alice Walker was born in Putnam County, Georgia in 1944. Born into a family of sharecroppers, she was the youngest of eight children. She grew up surrounded by oral tradition, hearing stories […]
Audre Lorde was a black writer, feminist, womanist, librarian, teacher, and civil rights activist, who described herself as a “lesbian, mother, warrior, poet.” Her poems and prose largely dealt with issues related to civil rights, feminism, and the exploration of […]
Ta-Nehisi Coates writes frankly about race in contemporary America, directly addressing timely issues from racial bias in urban policing to President Obama’s legacy as our nation’s first black president. The MacArthur Foundation, which granted Coates a Genius Grant in 2015, […]
“A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.” Writer, poet, and civil rights activist Maya Angelou had a powerful story to tell. She led an enormously influential life, using her 1969 I […]
Malcolm X was a strong voice for human rights activism and an African-American Muslim minister born in 1925 in Omaha, Nebraska. He laid the foundation for the Black Power movement of the 1960s and 70s. Unlike Martin Luther King Jr.’s […]
Nearly 50 years after Martin Luther King Jr.’s death, the nation still celebrates the impact he made fighting against black discrimination. For MLK Day on January 16th, over 1000 people showed up in Old Town Fort Collins to join in […]
Author Octavia Butler paved the way for African-American science fiction authors. Born in 1947 in Pasadena, California, Butler conquered obstacle after obstacle, from losing her father, living with dyslexia, and fighting stigmas against both women and African American writers. At […]
Although Zora Neale Hurston is most known for her novel Their Eyes Are Watching God, published in 1937, she authored numerous works of literature in the first half of the 20th century, including novels, short stories, plays, a collection of […]