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Black Beauty

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Poems by African American writers celebrating Blackness, specifically in connection with aesthetics and desire. This was an important theme of the Harlem Renaissance, and many poems in this Anthology with this tag were published in the 1920s.

However, a small number of poets were engaged with this issue much earlier; two examples from our collection include William Stanley Braithwaite and Aaron Belford Thompson. Both wrote poems to celebrate the beauty, specifically, of African American women in an era where images of Black beauty in popular culture were largely absent. 

Contents of this tag:

  1. Angelina Weld Grimke, "The Black Finger" (1923)
  2. B. Harrison Peyton, "Lo, the Dusk-Born Daughter!" (1916)
  3. Gwendolyn B. Bennett, "To a Dark Girl" (1927)
  4. Mae V. Cowdery, "Lamps" (1927)
  5. Countee Cullen, "To a Brown Boy" (1923)
  6. Chapter 4a: Reinventing Blackness in the Harlem Renaissance, 1920-1928
  7. Leon Laviaux, "The Ebon Muse" (Full Text; translated 1914)
  8. Waring Cuney, "No Images" (1927)
  9. Anita Scott Coleman, "Black Baby" (1929)
  10. Edward S. Silvera , "Song to a Dark Girl" (1927)
  11. George Marion McClellan, "The Colore Bane" (1895)
  12. Aaron Belford Thompson, "Our Girls" (1899)
  13. Omah Neal, "The Colored Girl" (1908)
  14. Aaron Belford Thompson, "The Song Bird" (1899)
  15. Langston Hughes, "Song (Lovely, Dark, and Lonely One...)" (1925)
  16. Aaron Belford Thompson, "The Lock of Hair" (1899)
  17. Blanche Taylor Dickinson, "Revelation" (1927)
  18. William Stanley Braithwaite, "In My Lady's Praise" (1903)
  19. Edythe Mae Gordon, "Tribute" (1929)
  20. Gladys May Casely-Hayford, Biographical Note in "Caroling Dusk" (1927)