Marcus Garvey at His Desk
1924
View this photograph of Marcus Garvey, the founder and leader of the Universal Negro Improvement Association.
“West India Emancipation”
1857
Read Frederick Douglass’s first use of the phrase “If there is no struggle there is no progress.”
The Question of Naming in The Liberator
1831
Explore responses to questions of Black identity and nomenclature in the famed abolitionist newspaper.
“Why We Should Have a Paper”
1837
Read the founding manifesto of The Colored American newspaper.
Solomon Northup Remembers the New Orleans Slave Market
1853
Read an excerpt from Northup’s autobiographical account, Twelve Years a Slave.
“Lift Every Voice and Sing”
1900
Read the lyrics composed by James Weldon Johnson for what has become known as the Black National Anthem.
“We Wear the Mask”
1895
Read Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poem, which poses a “mask” similar to Du Bois’s “veil.”
“On Being Brought from Africa to America”
1773
Read Phillis Wheatley’s poem on slavery and Christianity.
“If We Must Die”
1919
Read Claude McKay’s defiant poem, in response to violence against African Americans following World War I.
“The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain”
1926
Read Langston Hughes's essay on the limits placed on Black poets and writers during this period.
“Leonard Parkinson, a Captain of the Maroons”
1769
View a depiction of a maroon community leader.
“Heritage” by Countee Cullen
1925
Take a deep dive into Countee Cullen’s vision of Africa through this poem.
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