African American Poetry: A Digital Anthology

Full Text Collection: Books Published by African American Poets, 1870-1928

Editor's Note: The following are mostly plain text versions of books of poetry we have digitized or processed from out-of-copyright sources. It's a very long list -- and many likely be of use mainly to specialist researchers (for more introductory approaches, try our Author Pages, Areas of Interest/Topics and Themes, or our "Reader and Guide to Poetry by African American Women"). Some editions derived from OCR pages images may need further processing & correcting. 

Versions of these full text collections can also be downloaded as plain text (.txt) files from our Corpus of African American Literature Google Drive folder.

If you know of texts that could be included here, please feel free to contact us. Also, if you have ideas about how to make this collection more useful or accessible, please write us a note using this contact form. --Amardeep Singh

1870-1889

1870: Frances E.W. Harper, Moses: A Story of the Nile
1871: Frances E.W. Harper, Poems
1873: Islay Walden, Walden's Miscellaneous Poems.
1873: Adah Isaacs Menken*, Infelicia (Editor's note: There is some debate about the ancestry of Adah Isaacs Menken. Her parents may have been mixed-race Louisiana creoles. Also, neither Schomburg nor Porter have her on their checklists. See her Wikipedia entry)
1877: Albery A Whitman, Not a Man, Yet a Man
1881: Henry McNeal Turner, The Conflict for Civil Rights: a Poem
1890: Josephine Heard, Morning Glories

1891-1900

1891: Frances E.W. Harper, Sketches of Southern Life
1893: Paul Laurence Dunbar, Oak and Ivy 
1893: H. Cordelia Ray, Sonnets
1894: Gertrude Mossell (Mrs. N.F. Mossell), The Work of the Afro-American Woman
1895: Paul Laurence Dunbar, Majors and Minors. Reviewed by William Dean Howells 
1895: Frances E.W. Harper, Atlanta Offering: Poems
1895, Eloise A Bibb, Poems
1895: George Marion McClellan, Poems
1895: Daniel Webster Davis, Idle Moments: Containing Emancipation and Other Poems
1895: James Edwin Campbell, Echoes--From the Cabin and Elsewhere
1896: Frances E.W. Harper, Poems
1896: Paul Laurence Dunbar, Lyrics of Lowly Life (preface by William Dean Howells)
1897: Mary Weston Fordham, Magnolia Leaves (Preface by Booker T. Washington)
1897: Frank B. Coffin, Coffin's Poems wtih Ajax' Ordeals
1898: Joseph S. Cotter, Sr., Links of Friendship
1899: Olivia Ward Bush-Banks, Original Poems 
1899: Aaron Belford Thompson, Morning Songs
1900: Priscilla Jane Thompson, Ethiope Lays 
1900: James T. Franklin, Jessamine Poems
1900: James Ephraim McGirt, Avenging the Maine, A Drunken A.B., and Other Poems

1901-1910

1901: James Madison Bell, Poetical Works 
1901: Albery A Whitman, An Idyl of the South 
1901: Frances E.W. Harper, Idylls of the Bible
1901: Richard E.S. Toomey, Thoughts for True Americans
1901: Aaron Belford Thompson, Echoes of Spring
1902: Paul Laurence Dunbar, Lyrics of Love and Laughter
1902: Katherine D. Tillman, Recitations
1904: Paul Laurence Dunbar, Lyrics of the Hearthside
1904: William Stanley Braithwaite, Lyrics of Love and Life
1904: H.T. Johnson, Wings of Ebony
1904 Charles R. Dinkins, Lyrics of Love
1905: Paul Laurence Dunbar, Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow
1905: Benjamin Griffith Brawley, The Problem And Other Poems
1905: Timothy Thomas Fortune, Dreams of Life: Miscellaneous Poems 
1905: Robert E. Ford, Brown Chapel, a story in Verse
1906: Julius C. Wright, Poetic Diamonds
1907: Lucian B. Watkins, Voices of Solitude 
1907: Lizelia A. J. Moorer, Prejudice Unveiled, and Other Poems
1907: Elliott Blaine Henderson, The Soliloquy of Satan: and Other Poems
1907: Charlotte E. Linden, Scraps of Time
1907: Priscilla Jane Thompson, Gleanings of Quiet Hours
1908: William Stanley Braithwaite, House of Falling Leaves
1908: Clara Ann Thompson, Songs from the Wayside 
1908: Charles Frederick White, Plea of the Negro Soldier: and a Hundred Other Poems
1908: Elliott Blaine Henderson, Dis Dat, an' Tutter: Poems
1909: Walter Everette Hawkins, Chords and Discords
1909: Joseph S. Cotter, Sr. A White Song and a Black One
1909: Elliott Blaine Henderson, Humble Folks
1909: Effie Waller Smith, Rosemary and Pansies
1910: Maggie Pogue Johnson, Virginia Dreams
1910: H. Cordelia Ray, Poems 
1910: Christina Moody, A Tiny Spark

1911-1920

1911: Carrie Williams Clifford, Race Rhymes
1911: Edward Smyth Jones, The Sylvan Cabin
1912: Claude McKay, Constab Ballads (London / Kingston)
1912: Claude McKay, Songs of Jamaica (London / Kingston) 
1912: S.A. Beadle, Lyrics of the Under World
1913: Fenton Johnson, A Little Dreaming 
1914: Olivia Ward Bush-Banks, Driftwood 
1914: Maruice N. Corbett, The Harp of Ethiopia
1914: Leon Laviaux, The Ebon Muse (translated into English)
1914: Wellington Adams, Lyrics of an Humble Birth
1915: Fenton Johnson, Visions of the Dusk 
1915: Adolphus Johnson, The Silver Chord-Poems
1915: Myra Viola Wilds, Thoughts of Idle Hours
1916: George Marion McClellan, The Path of Dreams
1917: James Weldon Johnson, Fifty Years and other Poems
1917: Raymond Garfield Dandridge, Penciled Poems 
1918: Georgia Douglas Johnson, The Heart of a Woman (with a preface by William Stanley Braithwaite)
1918: Waverley Turner Carmichael, From the Heart of a Folk
1918: Joseph S. Cotter, Jr. The Band of Gideon: And Other Lyrics
1918: Roscoe Jamison, Negro Soldiers and Other Poems
1918: Theodore Henry Shackelford, My Country, and Other Poems
1919: Walter E. Seward Negroes Call to the Colors and Solders Camp-Life--Poems
1919 Chester Westfield, The Experiences of Company L, 368th Infantry
1919 Joshua Henry Jones, Jr. The Heart of the World
1919: Peters Sisters, War Poems
1919: John Wesley Holloway, From the Desert
1920: Sarah Lee Brown Fleming, Clouds and Sunshine 
1920: Raymond Garfield Dandridge, The Poet and Other Poems
1920: Claude McKay, Spring in New Hampshire (published in the UK only)
1920: Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Ed. The Dunbar Speaker and Entertainer (with a preface by Leslie Pinckney Hill)
1920: Carrie Law Morgan Figgs, Poetic Pearls


1921-1930

1921 Leslie Pinckney Hill, The Wings of Oppression 
1921 William C. Blades, Negro Poems, Plantation Pieces, Camp Meeting Songs, Etc. 
1921 Joshua Henry Jones, Jr. Poems of the Four Seas
1921: Carrie Law Morgan Figgs, Nuggets of Gold 
1922: Claude McKay's Harlem Shadows
1922: James Weldon Johnson's Book of American Negro Poetry (Anthology)
1922: Georgia Douglas Johnson, Bronze
1922: Carrie Williams Clifford, The Widening Light
1922: Paul Laurence Dunbar, Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar
1922: J. Pauline Smith, Exceeding Riches and Other Verse
1923: Robert Kerlin's Negro Poets and their Poems  (Anthology + criticism)
1924: Newman Ivey White, Ed. An Anthology of Verse by American Negroes (Anthology)
1925: Alain Locke's edited collection The New Negro: an Interpretation (Anthology) 
1925: Countee Cullen, Color
1925: Sarah Collins Fernandis, Poems
1926: Langston Hughes, The Weary Blues
1926: Fire!! A Quarterly Devoted to the Younger Negro Artists
1927: Langston Hughes, Fine Clothes to the Jew
1927: Countee Cullen's Edited Collection, Caroling Dusk: An Anthology of Verse by Negro Poets
1927: James Weldon Johnson, God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse
1927: Countee Cullen, Copper Sun
1927: Countee Cullen, Ballad of the Brown Girl
1927: Ebony and Topaz: A Collectanea
1928: Georgia Douglas Johnson, An Autumn Love Cycle