Aim for inclusive coverage from all categories (for example, do not bypass drama or poetry in favor of novels only).
1.
Phillis Wheatley, complete poems
2.
Lemuel Haynes, “Liberty Further Extended: Or Free Thoughts on the Illegality of
Slave-Keeping”
3.
Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (selection in Heath)
4.
Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or
Gustavus Vassa, the African (1789)
5.
David Walker, Appeal (1829)
6.
Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845)
7.
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852)
8.
William Wells Brown, Clotel (1853)
9.
Frank Webb, The Garies and their Friends (1857)
10.
Harriet Wilson, Our Nig (1859)
11.
Martin Delany, Blake; or, the Huts of America
12.
Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861)
13.
Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)
14.
Frances Harper, Iola Leroy (1892)
15.
Anna Julia Cooper, A Voice from the South (1892)
16.
Mark Twain, Puddn’head Wilson (1894)
17.
Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Lyrics of a Lowly Life (1896) or Selected Poems (Penguin
Classics 2004)
18.
Charles Chesnutt, The Conjure Tales (1899)
19.
Sutton Griggs, Imperium in Imperio (1899)
20.
Hopkins, Pauline, Contending Forces (1900)
21.
Charles Chesnutt, The Marrow of Tradition (1901)
22.
Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery (1901)
23.
W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903)
24.
James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912/1927)
25.
Jean Toomer, Cane (1923)
26.
Alain Locke, The New Negro: Voices of the Harlem Renaissance (1925)
27.
George Schuyler, "The Negro Art Hokum" (1925)
28.
Countee Cullen, ed. Caroling Dusk: An Anthology of Verse by Black Poets (1927)
29.
Claude McKay, Home to Harlem (1928)
30.
Langston Hughes, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain”
31.
Nella Larsen, Quicksand (1928) and Passing (1929)
32.
Jesse Redmon Fauset Plum Bun (1929)
33.
George Schuyler, Black No More (1931)
34.
William Faulkner, Light in August (1932)
35.
William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom! (1936)
36.
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)
37.
Sterling Brown, "Negro Characters as Seen by White Authors" (1937)
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38.
Richard Wright, Native Son (1940)
39.
Richard Wright, "Blueprint for Negro Writing"
40.
Chester Himes, If He Hollers Let Him Go (1945)
41.
Ann Petry, The Street (1946)
42.
Dorothy West, The Living is Easy (1948)
43.
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952)
44.
James Baldwin, Go Tell It On the Mountain (1953)
45.
James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son (1955) or Nobody Knows My Name (1961) or The Fire Next Time (1963)
46.
Gwendolyn Brooks, Maud Martha (1953)
47.
Langston Hughes, Selected Poems (1959)
48.
Paule Marshall Brown Girl, Brownstones (1959)
49.
Lorraine Hansberry, “A Raisin in the Sun” (1959)
50.
James Baldwin, Another Country (1962)
51.
Gwendolyn Brooks, Selected Poems (1963)
52.
Ralph Ellison, Shadow and Act (1964) or The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison
(1995/2003)
53.
Amiri Baraka, “Dutchman” (1964)
54.
Amiri Baraka and Larry Neal, eds. Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American
Writing (selections)
55.
Nikki Giovanni, The Selected Poems of Nikki Giovanni: 1968-1995 (1996) or The
Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni: 1968-1998 (2007)
56.
Gayl Jones, Corregidora (1975)
57.
Ntozake Shange, “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the
Rainbow Is Enuf” (1975)
58.
Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon (1977)
59.
Octavia E. Butler, Kindred (1979)
60.
Alice Walker, The Color Purple (1982)
61.
Paule Marshall, Praisesong for the Widow (1983)
62.
John Edgar Wideman, Sent for You Yesterday (1983)
63.
Sonia Sanchez, I've Been a Woman: New and Selected Poems (1985)
64.
Shirley Anne Williams, Dessa Rose (1986)
65.
August Wilson, “Fences” (1985)
66.
George C. Wolfe, “The Colored Museum” (1986)
67.
Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987)
68.
Gloria Naylor, Mama Day (1988)
69.
August Wilson, “The Piano Lesson” (1989)
70.
John Edgar Wideman, Philadelphia Fire (1990)
71.
Charles Johnson, Middle Passage (1990)
72.
Anna Devere Smith, “Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992” (1994)
73.
Toni Morrison, Paradise (1998)
74.
Suzan-Lori Parks, “Topdog/Underdog” (2002)
75.
Edward Jones, The Known World (2003)
1.
W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction (1935)
2

2.
Frantz Fanon Black Skin, White Masks (1952)
3.
Winthrop Jordan, White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-
1812 (1968)
4.
George M. Frederickson, The Black Image in the White Mind: The Debate on Afro-
American Character and Destiny 1817-1914 (1971)
5.
David Levering Lewis, When Harlem Was in Vogue (1979)
6.
Reginald Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny (1981)
7.
Houston Baker, Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature (1984)
8.
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Figures in Black (1987)
9.
Hazel Carby, Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro-American
Woman Novelist (1989)
10.
Eric Foner, A Short History of Reconstruction (1990)
11.
Alan Nadel, Invisible Criticism (1991)
12.
David Roediger, Wages of Whiteness (1991; revised edition 2007)
13.
Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (1992)
14.
Claudia Tate, Domestic Allegories of Political Desire (1992)
15.
Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic (1993)
16.
Ann DuCille, The Coupling Convention: Sex, Text, and Tradition in Black Women’s
Fiction. (1993)
17.
Eric Sundquist, To Wake the Nations: Race in the Making of American Literature
(1993)
18.
Robyn Wiegman, American Anatomies: Theorizing Race and Gender (1995)
19.
Deborah McDowell The Changing Same (1995)
20.
Eric Lott, Love & Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class
(1995)
21.
Saidiya Hartman, Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in 19 th
-
Century America (1997)
22.
Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North
America (1998)
23.
Deborah Gray White, Ar’n’t I a Woman: Female Slaves in the Plantation South, 2 nd ed. (1999)
24.
Mia Bay, The White Image in the Black Mind: African-American Ideas about White
People, 1830-1925 (2000)
25.
David Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (2002)
26.
Hortense Spillers, Black, White, and in Color (2003)
27.
Marlon Ross, Manning the Race (2004)
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