Celebrating Black History Month
Poems, articles, and podcasts that explore African American history and culture.
Harlem
Langston Hughes
On Liberty and Slavery
George Moses Horton
Lift Every Voice and Sing
James Weldon Johnson
Praise Song for the Day
Elizabeth Alexander
I, Too
Langston Hughes
Frederick Douglass
Robert Hayden
Caged Bird
Maya Angelou
- Margaret Walker
From the magazine:
For My People
Riot
Gwendolyn Brooks
Narrative: Ali
Elizabeth Alexander
Canary
Rita Dove
Booker T. and W.E.B.
Dudley Randall
Georgia Dusk
Jean Toomer
In Memoriam: Martin Luther King, Jr.
June Jordan
Malcolm X, February 1965
E. Ethelbert Miller
American History
Michael S. Harper
- Yusef Komunyakaa
From the magazine:
The African Burial Ground
A Negro Love Song
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Middle Passage
Robert Hayden
from The Lost Letters of Frederick Douglass
Evie Shockley
- Terrance Hayes
From the magazine:
Ode to Big Trend
waiting on the mayflower
Evie Shockley
Nina's Blues
Cornelius Eady
1977: Poem for Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer
June Jordan
Race
Elizabeth Alexander
- Amiri Baraka
From the magazine:
History as Process
Ballad of Birmingham
Dudley Randall
- Claudia Rankine
From the magazine:
Citizen: “You are in the dark, in the car...”
From the Unwritten Letters of Joseph Freeman
Camille T. Dungy
- Krista Franklin
From the magazine:
Manifesto, or Ars Poetica #2
Green-Thumb Boy
Marilyn Nelson
The Laws of Motion
Nikki Giovanni
Billie Holiday
E. Ethelbert Miller
- Afaa Michael Weaver
From the magazine:
American Income
The Slave Auction
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
Miz Rosa Rides the Bus
Angela Jackson
The Gospel of Barbecue
Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
Eddie Priest’s Barbershop & Notary
Kevin Young
A Black Man Talks of Reaping
Arna Bontemps
Runagate Runagate
Robert Hayden
Black Boys Play the Classics
Toi Derricotte
- Jamila Woods
From the magazine:
Ode to Herb Kent
- Danez Smith
From the magazine:
alternate names for black boys
Sorrow Home
Margaret Walker
Dr. Booker T. Washington to the National Negro Business League
Joseph Seamon Cotter Sr.
faithless
Quraysh Ali Lansana
Enlightenment
Natasha Trethewey
Harlem Shadows
Claude McKay
- Rickey Laurentiis
From the magazine:
Southern Gothic
Ghana Calls
W. E. B. Du Bois
Dancing with Strom
Nikky Finney
Afterimages
Audre Lorde
[up from slobbery]
Harryette Mullen
Robeson at Rutgers
Elizabeth Alexander
The Fifth Fact
Sarah Browning
Rwanda: Where Tears Have No Power
Haki R. Madhubuti
The Great Pax Whitie
Nikki Giovanni
Citizen: “Some years there exists a wanting to escape...”
Claudia Rankine
Poem for My Father
Quincy Troupe
Take Me Out to the Go-Go
Thomas Sayers Ellis
Slave Sale: New Orleans
Charles Reznikoff
- Gwendolyn Brooks
From the magazine:
We Real Cool
200 Years of Afro-American Poetry
Langston Hughes
The Black Poet as Canon-Maker
Elizabeth Alexander
The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain
Langston Hughes
“Finding a Window”
Kimberly Reyes
Lights and Shadows
Delaney Hall
Soldier: A Poet’s Childhood
June Jordan
- Nate Marshall
From the magazine:
Blueprint for BreakBeat Writing
Beware the Dog
Abigail Deutsch
Langston Hughes and the Broadway Blues
Franklin Bruno
Jazz as Communication
Langston Hughes
- Nikky Finney
From the magazine:
Playing by Ear, Praying for Rain: The Poetry of James Baldwin
She Could Tell You Stories
Hilary Holladay
- Haki R. Madhubuti
From the magazine:
The Roads Taken
Life Upon These Shores
Lavelle Porter
Way Out of Africa
Charles Mudede
- Quraysh Ali Lansana
From the magazine:
Art, Artifice, and Artifact
Music in the Blood
Elias Rodriques
With A Little Help from Dr. Angelou
The Editors
Experience, Experiment
Patricia Spears Jones
Square Toes and Icy Arms
Catherine Barnett
Verse Journalism: The Poet as Witness
Quraysh Ali Lansana
Maya Angelou: Selections
The Editors
Gwendolyn Brooks: Selections
Sarah Alcaide-Escue
Elizabeth Alexander: “Race”
Stephanie Burt
Nikky Finney: “The Afterbirth, 1931”
Kwame Dawes
Gwendolyn Brooks: “kitchenette building”
Hannah Brooks-Motl
Robert Hayden: “Those Winter Sundays”
David Biespiel