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Poetry by African American Women (1890-1930): A Reader and Guide

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The majority of the text of this Open-Access Reader was written by Amardeep Singh; some sections (labeled as such) were written by Sarah Thompson. Sarah Thompson also gave considerable input regarding the selection of poems and thematic organization. How to Cite.

General Introduction: 

Poetry by African American women was an important part of the landscape of American literature. Between the 1890s and the 1920s, a growing number of Black women started publishing poetry, especially in African American news magazines like The Crisis. A smaller number of authors published single-authored books of poetry, sometimes using local and regional publishing companies. Many of these poems dealt with social and political issues related to the broader civil rights movement, race and racism, religion, and events in the news. Others were more personal, dealing with questions over motherhood, love and loss, and gender roles. 

In this Reader, we’ve collected important poems from this time period, and gathered biographical information about the authors as well a sense of the historical context. Our aim is to make the poets and their poetry feel alive to a broad range of readers in the 21st century – not just academic specialists and historians. We believe these ideas and voices are still relevant to us now – from calls for racial justice and protests against discrimination and racialized violence, to queer and feminist themes. 

The Reader is aimed at introductory high school and college classrooms. It is designed to be read straight through, though readers can certainly skip to areas and authors of particular interest if they choose using the Chapters and Sections below  We’re breaking the collection into decades, with a Chapters for 1890-1899, 1900-1909, 1910-1919, and 1920-1928. In each case, we’ll have a brief general overview, introductions to the major authors, and notes attached where some historical context might be helpful to understand the poems in question. Some of the poets were well-known at the time (especially Frances E.W. Harper and Georgia Douglas Johnson); others were less well-known, so working with these poems might be seen as contributing to a project of recovery. 

Contents of this path:

  1. Chapter 1: 1890-1899. Introduction
  2. Chapter 1a: Poems of Racial Uplift, 1890-1899
  3. Chapter 1b: Revisiting American History via Poetry, 1890-1899
  4. Chapter 1c: Seasonal and Occasional Poetry and Poems about Poetry, 1890-1899
  5. Chapter 2: 1900-1909. Introduction
  6. Chapter 2a: The Long Legacy of Slavery (1900-1909)
  7. Chapter 2b: Love Poems, 1900-1909
  8. Chapter 3: 1910-1919. Introduction
  9. Chapter 3a: Social Justice in Sonnet Form, 1910-1919
  10. Chapter 3b: Intersectional Themes, 1910-1919
  11. Chapter 3c: Engaging World War I, 1910-1919
  12. Chapter 4: Introducing the Harlem Renaissance, 1920-1929
  13. Chapter 4a: Reinventing Blackness in the Harlem Renaissance, 1920-1928
  14. Chapter 4b: Harlem on Fire: Desire and Eroticism
  15. Chapter 4c: Black Motherhood in an Era of Systemic Racism, 1920-1929

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