African American literature is the body of literature produced in the United States by writers of African descent. It begins with the works of such late 18th-century writers as Phillis Wheatley. Before the high point of enslaved people narratives, African-American literature was dominated by autobiographical spiritual narratives. The genre known as slave narratives in the 19th century were accounts by people who had generally escaped from slavery, about their journeys to freedom and ways they claimed their lives. The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s was a great period of flowering in literature and the arts, influenced both by writers who came North in the Great Migration and those who were immigrants from Jamaica and other Caribbean islands.

The collection includes works by such prominent masters of American literature as Frederick Douglass, Nella Larsen, Charles W. Chesnutt , Paul Laurence Dunbar, Phillis Wheatley, Langston Hughes, Booker T. Washington , W. E. B. Du Bois and many others.

Novels and short stories

Frederick Douglass

THE HEROIC SLAVE

Nella Larsen

QUICKSAND

PASSING

THE WRONG MAN

FREEDOM

SANCTUARY

Alice Dunbar-Nelson

A CARNIVAL JANGLE

VIOLETS

THE WOMAN

TEN MINUTES' MUSING

TITEE

Charles W. Chesnutt

THE GOOPHERED GRAPEVINE

PO' SANDY

SIS' BECKY'S PICKANINNY

THE DOLL

THE WIFE OF HIS YOUTH

Paul Laurence Dunbar

THE SCAPEGOAT

Jean Toomer

BECKY

Poetry

Phillis Wheatley

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE WILLIAM, EARL OF DARTMOUTH

ON VIRTUE

AN HYMN TO THE MORNING

AN HYMN TO THE EVENING

Frances E. W. Harper

BURY ME IN A FREE LAND

SONGS FOR THE PEOPLE

MY MOTHER'S KISS

A GRAIN OF SAND

OUR HERO

THE SPARROW'S FALL

James Weldon Johnson

SENCE YOU WENT AWAY

Paul Laurence Dunbar

THE LESSON

SYMPATHY

WE WEAR THE MASK

Claude McKay

AFTER THE WINTER

IF WE MUST DIE

THE TROPICS IN NEW YORK

Countee Cullen

FOR PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR

INCIDENT

LANGSTON HUGHES

THE WEARY BLUES

JAZZONIA

NEGRO DANCERS

THE CAT AND THE SAXOPHONE (2 A. M.)

YOUNG SINGER

CABARET

TO MIDNIGHT NAN AT LEROY'S

TO A LITTLE LOVER-LASS, DEAD

HARLEM NIGHT CLUB

NUDE YOUNG DANCER

YOUNG PROSTITUTE

TO A BLACK DANCER IN "THE LITTLE SAVOY"

SONG FOR A BANJO DANCE

BLUES FANTASY

LENOX AVENUE: MIDNIGHT

Non-fiction

Frederick Douglass

NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Harriet Jacobs

INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

Booker T. Washington

UP FROM SLAVERY

William Still

UNDERGROUND RAILROAD

Henry Box Brown

James Hambleton Christian

Theophilus Collins

Seth Concklin

William and Ellen Craft

Abram Galloway and Richard Eden

Charles Gilbert

Samuel Green

Jamie Griffin

Harry Grimes

James Hamlet and Others

John Henry Hill

Ann Maria Jackson and Her Seven Children

Jane Johnson

Matilda Mahoney

Mary Frances Melvin

Aunt Hannah Moore

Alfred S. Thornton

Essays

W. E. B. Du Bois

THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLK

Charles W. Chesnutt

THE DISFRANCHISEMENT OF THE NEGRO

Paul Laurence Dunbar

REPRESENTATIVE AMERICAN NEGROES