As Black History Month winds to a close, I thought I'd focus my attention on some of the work I'm familiar with that's either by African American writers, or in some way has to do with civil rights.

Poet Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000) was born on June 7th in Topeka, Kansas. Brooks' family moved to Chicago when she was very young and she remained there for much of her life, later becoming a frequent contributor to local and regional publications and programs. She was chosen as the Illinois Poet Laureate in 1948 and was the first African-American writer to win a Pulitzer Prize.

"Hang yourself, poet, in your own words.
Otherwise, you are dead."

Amiri Baraka was born Everett LeRoy Jones on October 7, 1934 in Newark, New Jersey to Coyette ("Coyt") LeRoy Jones and Anna Lois Jones. He graduated from high school with honors in 1951 and began attending Rutgers University, only to transfer to Howard University in 1952. It was also in 1952 when he first changed his name, this time from LeRoy to the "frenchified" LeRoi. In 1954, he flunked out of Howard and joined the Air Force, where he attained the rank of sergeant before being discharged "undesirably" in 1957.

"It was a time for sitting on porches beside the road ... Mules and other brutes had occupied their skins ... the sun and the bossman were gone, so the sins felt powerful and human." This was the first generation of blacks born free, free from the bonds of slavery but not yet secure in their own civil rights. This was a time of segregated towns, schools, and public facilities. Zora Neale Hurston's 'Their Eyes Were Watching God' could not have occurred in our world of modern technology, political correctness, and civil rights for all human beings and whales too.

Writing about Zora Neale Hurston is a bit of a challenge. She began publishing her short stories in periodicals during the Harlem Renaissance, but didn't publish her major novels until the 1930's. Her age varied according to what she felt like saying at the time. She was bold and outspoken at a time when it wasn't considered proper, particularly for a woman, and even more so for an African-American woman.

Richard Wright's 'Native Son' is classic protest literature. It ranks alongside great works like 'Grapes of Wrath' by John Steinbeck. It is a book with an agenda, but it expresses a deep sympathy for humanity. It is Richard Wright's most celebrated work (though his autobiography 'Black Boy' has also won many readers) because of it's power and strength.

With the death of Booker T. Washington in 1915 came the rise of a new attitude in African-American art and culture. Racism in American had steadily grown worse, and compromise solutions were having little effect.

Born on February 6th, 1882, Anne Spencer had to witness the breakup of her parents at age 5, and attended an all white school until 1893. She was then transferred to a boarding school, where she began writing. After graduating at the top of her class she married Edward Spencer.

The poems of Claude McKay were brutal and direct. His poems echoed the spirit of Harlem and the spirit of racial tension throughout the United States. The amazing thing is that this Harlem Renaissance poet was traveling Europe during Harlem's most prolific and famed period.