Adrienne Kennedy
(1931–),playwright of African-American heritage whose works exhibit the conflict between her inheritances—black father, light mother—especially in Funnyhouse of a Negro (1962), in which the main ...
African Americans
A citizen or resident of the United States whose ancestry can be traced to Africa. A term intended to avoid the pejorative associations of words such as “negro” and “black.” An estimated 10 to 12 ...
Alex Haley
(1921–),born in Ithaca, N.Y., after service with the coast guard (1939–59), in which he was a journalist, became the aid or ghost writer of The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965). Then, intrigued by a ...
Amiri Baraka
(1934– )African American playwright, poet, and activist born in Newark, New Jersey, as Everett LeRoi Jones. Throughout his career he has used his writing as an extended polemic against American ...
Arafat
Mountain located outside of Mecca, on whose plain pilgrims gather on the ninth day of Dhu al-Hijjah. There they pray continously from just after noon until shortly after sunset. Many believe that ...
Askia M. Touré
(b. 1938), poet, community activist, lecturer, and educator.Askia M. Touré, in his multifaceted roles as poet, community activist, lecturer, and educator, is recognized as one of the original ...
Betty Shabazz
(b. 28 May 1936; d. 23 June 1997),widow of Malcolm X and educator. Born Betty Jean Sanders in Detroit, Michigan, Shabazz was raised there in a middle-class family by ...
Billie Holiday
1915–1959)Black US jazz singer, often described as the greatest true jazz singer of all time.Born in Baltimore, she was called ‘Billie’ after a film star. Her father, Clarence Holiday (1900–37), ...
Black Muslim Movement
An Islamic organization in the USA. It was founded in 1930 and led by Elijah Muhammad from 1934 until his death in 1975. The Movement expanded greatly in the 1950s when Malcolm X became one of its ...
Black Muslims
Members of an African American nationalist religious movement. It was founded in Detroit in the 1930s by Wallace D. Fard (sometimes Ford, later known as Wali Farad). He was known ...
Black Nationalism
An important ideology in African American history, black nationalism is grounded in the belief that efforts to operate within a political system deemed racist and unresponsive to black needs are ...
Black Panthers
The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (later simply the Black Panther Party) was born in Oakland, California, on 15 October 1966, and was a radical anti-oppression organization that became ...
Black Power
Originating as a movement in the 1960s, it was developed into a coherent ideology by Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton in their book Black Power (1969). It called upon African Americans to take ...
Bradley, David
(b. 1950), author and professor of creative writing.Born and raised in Bedford, Pennsylvania, David Bradley's horizon was shaped by a rural world near the soft-coal region of western Pennsylvania and ...
Civil Rights Movement
A grouping devoted to political and social reform in Northern Ireland, led by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association. NICRA was founded in Belfast early in 1967 by a group ...
Committee of African Organizations
The most prominent African organization in Britain during the 1960s. The Committee of African Organizations (CAO) was established in London in March 1958 as a result of the desire of ...
Congress of Racial Equality
The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), one of the most important national organizations of the post-World War II African American freedom movements, was founded by an interracial group of pacifists ...
Don't Cry, Scream
Published in 1969 by Haki R. Madhubuti's Third World Press, Don’t Cry, Scream is his third collection of poetry and begins with an introduction by Gwendolyn Brooks. Brooks addresses the most ...
Edward Wilmot Blyden
Ever the peripatetic intellectual, teacher, journalist, philosopher, and diplomat, Edward Wilmot Blyden (1832–1912) managed to be both a powerful exponent of the uniqueness of the Negro-African ...
Eldridge Cleaver
(1935–98)African American essayist and political activist born in Arkansas. He became a member of the Black Panther Party and his book of essays Soul on Ice (1967) became a ...
