The Great Poems by African American Writers

African American literature is the body of literature produced in the United States by writers of African descent. It begins with the works of such late 18th-century writers as Phillis Wheatley. Before the high point of enslaved people narratives, African-American literature was dominated by autobiographical spiritual narratives. The genre known as slave narratives in the 19th century were accounts by people who had generally escaped from slavery, about their journeys to freedom and ways they claimed their lives. The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s was a great period of flowering in literature and the arts, influenced both by writers who came North in the Great Migration and those who were immigrants from Jamaica and other Caribbean islands. Phillis WheatleyTo the Right Honourable William, Earl of DartmouthOn VirtueAn Hymn To the MorningAn Hymn To the Evening Frances E. W. HarperBury Me in a Free LandSongs for the PeopleMy Mother's KissA Grain of SandOur HeroThe Sparrow's Fall James Weldon JohnsonSence You Went Away Paul Laurence DunbarThe LessonSympathyWe Wear the Mask Claude McKayAfter the WinterIf We Must DieThe Tropics in New York Countee CullenFor Paul Laurence DunbarIncidentLangston HughesThe Weary BluesJazzoniaNegro DancersThe Cat And The Saxophone (2 A. M.)Young SingerCabaretTo Midnight Nan At Leroy'STo A Little Lover-Lass, DeadHarlem Night ClubNude Young DancerYoung ProstituteTo A Black Dancer In "The Little Savoy"Song For A Banjo DanceBlues FantasyLenox Avenue: Midnight