African American Poetry: A Digital Anthology

Other Poets: full text collections

This page links to collections by African American poets who are less well-known today, or to collections by well-known figures not primarily known for their poetry. 

Some figures had complex heritage; Ada Isaacs Menken, for instance, was of mixed Jewish and African American heritage. 

While the whole books will perhaps mainly be of interest to readers with a deep interest in this period in African American poetry, many of the poets stick to certain themes, including occasional poetry, dedications to luminaries such as Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and Paul Laurence Dunbar, and commemorations of the end of the Civil War and Emancipation. 

As of January 2022, several of these files need additional proofreading and formatting. Many derive from scanned images that have only been imperfectly rendered into plain text via OCR software. 

This page has paths:

  1. Welcome: African American Poetry--a Digital Anthology Amardeep Singh
  2. African American Poetry: a Digital Anthology (1870-1926) Amardeep Singh

Contents of this path:

  1. Ada Isaacs Menken, "Infelicia" (Full Text) (1873)
  2. Josephine Heard, "Morning Glories" (Full Text) (1890)
  3. Eloise A. Bibb, "Poems" (Full text) (1895)
  4. Daniel Webster Davis, "Idle Moments: Containing Emancipation and Other Poems "(Full Text) (1895)
  5. Mary Weston Fordham, "Magnolia Leaves," (Full Text) (1897) (Preface by Booker T. Washington)
  6. William Stanley Braithwaite, "Lyrics of Love and Life" (Full Text) (1904)
  7. Lucian B. Watkins, "Voices of Solitude" (Full Text) (1903/1907)
  8. William Stanley Braithwaite, "House of Falling Leaves" (Full Text) (1908)
  9. Clara Ann Thompson, "Songs from the Wayside" (Full Text) (1908)
  10. Charles Frederick White, "Plea of the Negro Soldier: and a Hundred Other Poems" (Full Text) (1908)
  11. Maggie Pogue Johnson, "Virginia Dreams" (Full text) (1910)
  12. H. Cordelia Ray, "Poems" (Full text) (1910)
  13. Fenton Johnson, "A Little Dreaming" (Full Text) (1913)
  14. Fenton Johnson, "Visions of the Dusk" (Full text) (1915)
  15. Waverley Turner Carmichael, "From the Heart of a Folk" (Full Text) (1918)
  16. Sarah Lee Brown Fleming, "Clouds and Sunshine" (Full Text) (1920)
  17. Leslie Pinckney Hill, "Wings of Oppression" (Full Text) (1921)