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A foundational literary aspect of Civil Rights for African Americans came in the form of autobiographical narratives written by fugitive slaves that aimed to humanize them and shine a light on the inherent cruelty within such a life. Some 6,000 former slaves from North America and the Caribbean wrote accounts of their lives, with about 150 of these published as separate books or pamphlets.

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The famous speech from Sojourner Truth, delivered in 1851, is a marvelous example of how various social movements continue to be inextricably linked to one another. Here, Truth's impassioned, powerful speech posits her blackness and her womanhood as integral to one another, and the result is a shakingly powerful speech that is as fundamental a document for the Civil Rights movement as it is a document for the Women's Liberation movement.

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'Uncle Tom's Cabin' (1852) and the Anti-Tom Backlash

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'Uncle Tom's Cabin' (1852) and the Anti-Tom Backlash

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Maybe the most seminal literary work in relation to the struggle of African American slaves pre-Abolition, Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel depicted slavery as a harsh and cruel evil, and set off furious discourse in defense or against it. The novel set off a genre of Southerners trying to suggest that relationships between slaves and their masters were friendly and not brutally oppressive; the most popular Anti-Tom is often considered 'Aunt Phyllis's Cabin' by Mary Henderson Eastman. As Abe Lincoln, on seeing Stowe, was rumored to have said, "So this is the little lady who started this great war," which many see as confirmation of literature as a tool of change.

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'My Bondage and My Freedom' by Frederick Douglas (1955)

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'My Bondage and My Freedom' by Frederick Douglas (1955)

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A brilliant autobiographical exploration of the desires of freedom by one of the greatest literary voices ever, Black or otherwise, this autobiography extends upon Douglas's earlier 'Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave,' meditating on slavery, race, freedom, faith, and literacy. Douglas's autobiographies might be the most famous of all slave narratives, and they're a fundamental text even today.

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Harriet Wilson's 'Our Nig: Sketches in the Life of a Free Black' (1859)

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Harriet Wilson's 'Our Nig: Sketches in the Life of a Free Black' (1859)

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This novel, the first published novel by an African American in America (though recently that's been contested), took an unconventional stance in wake of 'Uncle Tom's Cabin.' Instead of criticizing the South, Wilson turned to an indictment of the hypocritical nature of the Northern, "New England Ideal." Like in the South, Northerners thought of Blacks as "less than," and the Northern economy was still based on Black bodies, in the form of indentured servitude. The book wasn't popular (as most Northerners didn't like getting called out), but is absolutely a vital document in the history of Black literature.

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Yes, a fundamental document in looking at Civil Rights is of course, the document of Abe Lincoln's that freed the slaves. Delivered on the first day of 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation was essentially a war measure to neuter the labor force and lifeblood of the rebellious Confederate South, but what it symbolized was freedom for many African Americans. The Emancipation, followed by the Union eventually emerging triumphant in 1965, set forward a new path for African Americans in the USA, where the sweet hopes of freedom began to sour with Lincoln's eventual assassination. The dream of a new, equal era seemed within grasp as Reconstruction set forth, but sadly that wouldn't be the case.

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In the writings of the 'Atlanta' paper, Henry W. Grady advocated for a "New South" built from the ashes of the Confederacy during the Reconstruction era, where the South would reject the past models of plantation-based Antebellum-period success for a new, capitalist, pro-manufacturing framework to join with the Northern industrial workforce. Though this movement had supporters like Booker T. Washington, it still percieved Black people as second class citizens, even if it rejected using them as slave labor.

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Newspapers as Political Advancement Amidst Reconstruction

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Newspapers as Political Advancement Amidst Reconstruction

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Several newspapers targeted at Black folks popped up as Reconstruction continued onwards. Past your Freedom's Journals and your North Stars were papers like Philip Alexander Bell's the Elevator and the Pacific Appeal, aimed at Californian African-Americans after the Gold Rush had brought many to the West Coast. Many black people sought to assimilate into larger society and Northern blacks felt that it was their duty to educate Southern blacks on the mores of Victorian society; this line of thinking went along with the efforts to reform education and more with Reconstruction and the creation of the Freedmen's Bureau. Though the Freedmen's Bureau met its end in 1872, as did Reconstruction, these papers continued onwards, with the Pacific Appeal stopping the presses at 1880, and the Elevator eventually ending publication at the turn of the millenium.

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After the Civil War, in 1871, a group of singers from a HBCU, Fisk University, formed an acapella group to tour and raise funds for college. Originally, they played traditional spirituals, songs that had been sang by slaves as they worked the fields, while also including some work from Stephen Foster. The Jubilee Singers were one of the first black musicians to achieve popularity, touring on the Underground Railroad route to large crowds, one of the first groups to popularize the traditional spiritual. Their recording of "Swing Low Sweet Chariot" is forever preserved in the National Recording registry.

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Henry Ossawa Tanner's The Banjo Lesson (1893), a subversion of the common tropes of African-American music as minstrelsy, painted tenderly in muted hues with oil paint on canvas

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Harriet Powers' Bible Quilt (1898), one of the few remaining traditional appliqué style quilts that Powers' was so acclaimed for, deftly weaving together biblical tales in rich, vivid, beautiful detail. It is connected deeply to the religious spirit of resilience that characterized a great deal of the collective African-American psyche at the turn of the millenium, as the Plessy v. Ferguson ruling in 1896 had sentenced Black America to a life of Jim Crow.

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W.E.B. Du Bois on Booker T. Washington and 'The Souls of Black Folk' (1903)

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W.E.B. Du Bois on Booker T. Washington and 'The Souls of Black Folk' (1903)

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At the turn of the century, one of the most important black voices was William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, the first African-American man to ever earn a Doctorate, the leader of the Niagara movement that stood firmly against the ideas of Booker T. Washington's ideas on the submission of Black folk to white dominance (similarly floated in the aforementioned New South movement) in exchange for economic opportunities and basic education. Du Bois ardently believed in equal rights and equal representation for black voices. In his 1903 essay collection, Du Bois spoke of a "double consciousness" influenced by Ralph Waldo Emerson, a concept where black people must have two fields of vision at all times: consciousness of how they view themselves, as well as consciousness of how the world views them. Later, in 1909, Du Bois would help found the NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoples.

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The Jamaican Pan-African, Black nationalist activist Marcus Garvey wasn't a US Citizen, but his outspoken, fiery pro-black philosophy ensured that his influence was felt across the US. Garvey was of a more militant strain of activism, even working with the KKK in their shared goals of racial separatism, but his Back To Africa philosophies inspired an afrocentric, romantic view of the homeland. Garvey's essays were voiced in his UNIA's house organ, the Negro World newspaper, and they were marvelously inspiring documents of hope in the face of trying times for the black community. His influence is felt in the Pan-African and Rastafari movements, and he's hailed as a Jamaican idol today.

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The Harlem Rennaissance, spanning from 1918 to the mid-1930's, was maybe the most vital cultural era of the Civil Rights Movement, an explosion of black literature, artwork, and music that pulled from the collectivism of the African diaspora, all centered in the 1.4 square mile neighborhood of Harlem. It had long been a place for immigrants to settle, with people from African, the Carribean, and various French colonies all calling the neighborhood home. In response to the Jim Crow Laws tormenting African-Americans in the South, as well as the new desire for labor in the North as WW1 raged on, a Great Migration occurred, where African Americans fled the racist South for a North that billed itself as a place for opportunity. Many found their way to Harlem, where expansion of communities and new opportunities for industry planted the seeds for an artistic revolution in literature, art, and music.

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Now, the first name that usually comes to mind when talking about literary giants from Harlem is Langston Hughes, and for good reason. A vanguard poet whose style was inflected with the rhythm of jazz, Hughes wrote many poems for the NAACP newspaper, The Crisis, including the famous "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" (1920). His plainspoken poetry portrayed the exuberance of the black working class, and his work stands today as some of the most important to emerge from the Rennaissance. Elsewhere, there's Zora Neale Hurston, whose novel 'Their Eyes Were Watching God' (1937) is one of the finest books I've ever read, a liberating novel on the evolution of womanhood, exploring the male gaze in a remarkably poignant fashion. Other marvelous writers of this era include Claude McKay, Alain Locke, and Richard Bruce Nugent, whose open homosexuality felt welcome in the acceptance of Harlem's cultural atmosphere. These writers all contributed to the idea of the "New Negro," allowed to cultivate and thrive in an environment that kept the racist conventions of America at arms' length.

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The rich culture of the Harlem scene amidst the Renaissance cultivated a great deal of fantastic visual artists, some of whom include Aaron Douglas, James Van Der Zee, and Archibald John Motley Jr. Here are some assorted images below:

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Aaron Douglas's 'Aspiration' and 'Into Bondage' (1936) 

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Aaron Douglas's 'Aspiration' and 'Into Bondage' (1936) 

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Douglas's style was cubist, with vividly colorful murals representing the afrocentric struggle and triumph.

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James Van Der Zee's 'Evening Attire' (1922) & 'Wedding Party' (1923)

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James Van Der Zee's 'Evening Attire' (1922) & 'Wedding Party' (1923)

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Van Der Zee's photography had a flair for the Victorian and the Edwardian, utilizing architecture, backdrops, and costumes to frame his photography in the classic tableau-vivant style of the "living picture," infusing romantic, European styles with a radiant blackness.

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Archibald John Motley's 'Self Portrait' (1920) & 'Getting Religion' (1948)

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Archibald John Motley's 'Self Portrait' (1920) & 'Getting Religion' (1948)

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These two works of Motley, one painted on canvas in the midst of the Harlem Renaissance, and one that frames the exuberant post-WW2 America in a jarring black and white, are absolutely remarkable works from a brilliant visual artist.

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The Harlem Renaissance was in the midst of America's Jazz Age, where white-only Big Band halls, like the Cotton Club that Duke Ellington was a mainstay of, would invite white clubgoers to dance to explicitly black music played by some of the greatest musicians ever. Ragtime, with jaunty piano lines and delicate filigrees on the ivories, was popularized by artists like Scott Joplin, with hits like "Maple Leaf Rag" and "The Entertainer." Band leaders like Louis Armstrong were playing the compositions of Fats Waller and Jelly Roll Morton, and singers like Bessie Smith were exploring their bluesy ranges. The proximity of this new music to blackness was enormous; for the first time, these big bands, equipping horns and pianos (a symbol of wealth in the 1920's), felt closer than ever to a black populace that had long been held away from these things.

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After WW2, as with WW1, a second Great Migration occurred with African Americans moving from the South to the North in massive numbers. This migration produced a new sense of independence in the Black community and contributed to the vibrant Black urban culture seen during the Harlem Renaissance. The migration also empowered the growing Civil Rights Movement, which led art reflecting the African American struggle for equality to its' peak.

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Maybe the most prominent catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement to kick off in full force in order to get rid of Jim Crow laws and secure civil rights like voting for African Americans was the ruling laid down by the Warren Court in the infamous Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas case. With the NAACP counsel Thurgood Marshall arguing on behalf of Oliver Brown to desegregate schools in Kansas, the majority opinion, unanimously decreeing that segregation of students in public schools violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, because separate facilities are inherently unequal, set in motion one of the most important, if not the most important, movements in American history.

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The story of Emmett Till, a 14 year old black child who was lynched, maimed, beaten, and sunk in the Tallahatchie River for allegedly whistling at a white woman, is a deeply upsetting one. Even more so when the two men who murdered him, after a grand jury declined to indict them on charges of simply kidnapping, walked scot-free. This upsetting horror of institutional racism was encompassed by Mamie Till's decision to place Till's brutally mutilated body in an open casket so the world could see what they did to her son. The image of Till's disturbingly mangled corpse put a face to the absolute horror and evil of the Jim Crow South, emblazoned onto Jet Magazine and the Chicago Tribune for a watershed moment that looked into the horrors of what Jim Crow really was. (The image itself is deeply disturbing and I didn't want to put it on here, so here's the memorial tryptich from Sandra Hansen)

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Literature During the Civil Rights Era: Richard Wright's 'Native Son' (1940)

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Literature During the Civil Rights Era: Richard Wright's 'Native Son' (1940)

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As the Civil Rights movement grew through the 50's and 60's, it inspired a wave of talented writers dedicated to reflecting upon it. More and more Black authors were engaging with the movement, and what emerged was a rich literary culture as radical as the movement itself. A spearhead of this was Richard Wright, whose 1940 novel 'Native Son' is a jarring reflection of the helplessness of the Black plight, speaking to an endless cycle where conditioning leads to lashing out, where any attempt to express dissatisfaction with the system only ensures a lifetime stuck there.

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Literature During the Civil Rights Era: The Works of James Baldwin

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Literature During the Civil Rights Era: The Works of James Baldwin

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A man who considered Wright "the greatest Black writer in the world for me," James Baldwin was a formidable literary giant of his own, rendering his distinctly unique experience as a gay black man in the form of deeply personal, incredibly powerful stories and essays to cope with society's rejection of both those tenets of his. Baldwin's classics are numerous: 'Go Tell It On The Mountain' (1953), 'Another Country' (1962), and 'The Fire Next Time' (1963). Baldwin's influence is practically immeasurable, and his writing is as wildly powerful today as it was years ago.

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Literature During the Civil Rights Era: Other Writers

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Literature During the Civil Rights Era: Other Writers

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But Baldwin and Wright were far from the only influential writers of the movement. There's Ralph Ellison's brilliant 'Invisible Man', a meditation in form of bildungsroman (coming of age) on the intellectual tenets of blackness, the idea of the black identity, the black perception of self, the grandiose scheme of how black identity associates with the philosophies of everyone from Garvey's militant nationalism to Marx's working-class rhetoric. There's the poetry of Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni, and the Pulitzer-winning Gwendolyn Brooks, whose 1949 book of poetry 'Annie Allen' took home the award. And then, there's the brilliant, controversial playwriting of Amiri Baraka (a man whose music criticism I personally idolize), as well as Lorraine Hansberry's marvelous 'A Raisin in the Sun.' Oh, how could I forget? There's the writing of leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. himself, whose 1963 letter from the Birmingham Jail is a markedly powerful indictment of anti-Blackness and the way it permeates our system.

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Elsewhere, as writers were finding inspiration in the churn of events happening in the civil rights movement, so were artists. For example, the Highwaymen were a collective of Floridian self-taught artists using construction materials to create DIY art and selling it door by door out of the trunks of their vehicles. Elsewhere, multi-media artists like Romare Bearden were making collages that discussed the responsibility of the African-American artist in the civil rights movement. The New Deal had created a Works Progress Administration, and the Federal Project Number One initiative encouraged artists like Jacob Lawrence in large arts and media projects. Lawrence's 'Migration Series' (1941), a collection of murals on the Southern poverty left behind Great Migration, is a brilliant example of this, and the first panel of the series is shown below:

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Music During the Civil Rights Era: Protest Songs

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Music During the Civil Rights Era: Protest Songs

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The 50's and 60's were a fertile time for Black music, which was equally enlivened by the Civil Rights Movement. The protest songs were tremendous; just listen to Charles Mingus's raucous, clattering "Fables of Faubus," aimed at the titular Governor of Arkansas Orval Faubus for refusing to integrate schools after the ruling of Brown v. Board.
On John Coltrane's "Alabama," written in response to the Birmingham Church bombings that killed 4 little black girls, the rich, mournful tone of his saxophone conveys the rage and hurt of such a horror more poignantly than words ever could.
Elsewhere, there's the catharsis of "Freedom Day," from 'We Insist: Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite', where the grandiosity of Roach's percussion work meets the isolated, raw vocals of Abbey Lincoln for a song that feels unshackled and truly free.
Written after being rejected from a Louisiana motel, Sam Cooke penned "A Change Is Going To Come," a civil rights anthem that'd be sang long after he was shot dead in an LA motel two weeks before the song's release.
And then, there's Nina Simone's stunning "Mississippi Goddam," a song written in the wake of the 1964 murder of activist Medgar Evers. The moment where Simone sings "you don't have to live next to me/just give me my equality" is one of the most striking moments to ever be set to tape, right as the drums and Simone's piano crescendo into a tornado of unteemed fury. That line embodies the utter rage, exhaustion, frustration felt by so many black americans, and the way it just explodes out is remarkable.

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Mississippi Goddam (Live At Carnegie Hall, New York, 1964)

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The Civil Rights movement was officially ended by the Civil Rights Act of 1968, signed into law by Lyndon B. Johnson as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s death set off a Holy Week Uprising of anger. The Civil Rights Act of 1968 prohibited discrimination concerning the sale, rental, and financing of housing based on race, religion, and national origin. It also made it a federal crime to "by force or by the threat of force, injure, intimidate, or interfere with anyone...by reason of their race, color, religion, or national origin." Though it didn't end the injustices faced by African American people, many of which still continue today, the act was the end of a major battle for basic equality, a huge step in the right direction.

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Today, the fights for racial equality may not feel as overt as they did in the 40's, 50's, and 60's, but writers, artists, and musicians are still vital voices in the fight against injustices leveled at black people like police brutality, the prison-industrial complex, and rising levels of poverty in minority communities. With movements like Black Lives Matter still fighting to ensure that justice is found for innocent people who are killed by police brutality, there's been no shortage of literature, art, or music taking inspiration from the moment. Take for example, Angie Thomas's 2017 novel, 'The Hate u Give', written in response to the 2009 police shooting of Oscar Grant, an unarmed black man. There's the acclaimed art of one of the youngest MacArthur Genius Grant foundation winners ever, Kara Walker, which reckons with the ugly, deeply racist past of America while framing it to a current day that maybe hasn't changed all that much. And for music, look no further than Kendrick Lamar's 2015 opus, To Pimp A Butterfly, one of the greatest modern day hip-hop records, a magnificent aural collage of the concept of blackness, filled with segues into jazz and funk that feel terrifyingly anxious one second, and absolutely liberated the next. As the push for true racial equality and freedom continues, so does the art that finds inspiration in this collective movement. And to paraphrase Nina Simone: freedom will only come when there is no fear left to be found.

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