Black History Month: Honoring Black Authors, Then and Now
Every February invites us to pause and honor the storytellers whose words have shaped not only Black history, but American history itself. Black authors have long carried the dual burden and blessing of truth-telling—documenting joy, exposing injustice, preserving memory, and imagining futures that once seemed impossible. Their work is not a sidebar to literature; it is literature. Then: The Voices Who Carved the Path From the earliest narratives of enslavement to the Harlem Renaissance and beyond, Black writers have used the written word as both refuge and resistance. Frederick Douglass showed the world that literacy is liberation. Harriet Jacobs revealed the intimate, gendered realities of bondage. Zora Neale Hurston captured the beauty and complexity of Black Southern life with unmatched ear and eye. James Baldwin insisted that America confront its own reflection. Toni Morrison gave us language for the interior lives of Black women—language that still reverberates...