African American Poetry (1870-1928): A Digital Anthology

Full Text Collection: Books Published by African American Poets, 1870-1927

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 obviously a very long list, and will likely be of most use to specialist researchers (for a more introductory approach, try our Author Pages or Areas of Interest/Topics and Themes). Some editions derived from OCR pages images may need further processing & correcting.

If you know of texts that should be included here, please feel free to contact us. Also, if you have ideas about how to make this collection more useful or accessible, we are always open to collaboration. -Amardeep Singh

1870-1900 

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. See her Wikipedia entry)
1877: Alberry A Whitman, Not a Man, Yet a Man
1890: Josephine Heard, Morning Glories
1893: Paul Laurence Dunbar, Oak and Ivy (self-published in Ohio)
1895: Paul Laurence Dunbar, Majors and Minors. Reviewed by William Dean Howells 
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)
1898: Joseph S. Cotter, Sr., Links of Friendship
1899: Olivia Ward Bush-Banks, Original Poems (1899)

1900-1910

1900: Priscilla Jane Thompson, Ethiope Lays (self-published in Ohio)
1901: James Madison Bell, Poetical Works 
1902: Paul Laurence Dunbar, Lyrics of Love and Laughter
1904: Paul Laurence Dunbar, Lyrics of the Hearthside
1904: William Stanley Braithwaite, Lyrics of Love and Life
1904: H.T. Johnson, Wings of Ebony
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 
1907: Lucian B. Watkins, Voices of Solitude 
1907: Elliott Blaine Henderson, The Soliloquy of Satan: and Other Poems
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
1910: Maggie Pogue Johnson, Virginia Dreams
1910: H. Cordelia Ray, Poems 

1911-1920

1911: Carrie Williams Clifford, Race Rhymes
1913: Fenton Johnson, A Little Dreaming 
1914: Olivia Ward Bush-Banks, Driftwood 
1915: Fenton Johnson, Visions of the Dusk 
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
1920: Sarah Lee Brown Fleming, Clouds and Sunshine 
1920: Raymond Garfield Dandridge, 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)


1921-1930

1921 Leslie Pinckney Hill, The Wings of Oppression 
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
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
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 (coming in 2024)
 

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