[Last Updated 2/19/2006]
Maya Angelou (Poet, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings)
James Baldwin (Writer, Go Tell it On the Mountain,The Fire Next Time )
Octavia Butler (Writer, Kindred
Paul Laurence Dunbar (Writer/Poet, Sport of the Gods)
Ralph Ellison (Writer, Invisible Man)
Rudolph Fisher (Writer/Doctor/Musician, Harlem Renaissance -- The City of Refuge)
Nikki Giovanni (Poet, Black Arts Movement)
Alex Haley (Writer, Autobiography of Malcolm X andRoots)
Lorraine Hansberry (Playwright/Social Activist, Raisin in the Sun)
Langston Hughes (Poet, Harlem Renaissance)
Zora Neale Hurston (Writer, Anthropologist, Folklorist, Their Eyes Were Watching God
Charles Johnson (Storywriter, Middle Passage)
James Weldon Johnson (Harlem Renaissance, Author of The Autobiography of the Ex-Coloured Man and Lift Every Voice and Sing)
Edward P. Jones (Writer, The Known World)
Nella Larson (Writer, Quicksand, Passing
Claude McKay (Writer/Poet, Home to Harlem
Haki Madhubuti (Poet/Essayist/Editor, Black Arts Movement)
Toni Morrison (Writer/Professor, Beloved, The Bluest Eye
Walter Mosley (Writer, Mystery Novels)
Ann Petry (Writer/Nurse, The Street)
George Schuyler (Writer/Journalist/Social Activist, Black No More)
Ntozake Shange (Writer, For Colored Girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf)
Anna Deavere Smith (Playwright, Fires in the Mirror)
Alice Walker (Writer, The Color Purple)
Magaret Walker (Writer, Jubilee)
Phyllis Wheatley (Poet, First Black Poet in America)
August Wilson (Playwright, Fences)
Richard Wright (Writer, Native Son)