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African-American Book Publishers In The United States, 1960–80
While African-American book publishers have been active in the United States since the second decade of the 19th century, the 1960s and 1970s saw a proliferation of publishing activity, with the establishment of many new publishing houses, an increase in the number of titles published, and significant growth in the number of African-American bookstores. African-American commercial book publishers released a total of 154 titles in the period 1970–74, a dramatic rise from the previous high of 21 titles published during the five-year spans of 1935–39 and 1940–44. Institutional and religious publishers also increased their title output, rising from 51 titles in the years 1960–64 to 240 titles in 1970–74. Concomitantly, there was a widening in the scope of publishing objectives on the part of African-American book publishers, who began to release titles that not only advanced their particular ideologies but dealt with topics unrelated to Black Americana or Africana. Suc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
African-American
African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa. African Americans constitute the second largest ethno-racial group in the U.S. after White Americans. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of Africans enslaved in the United States. In 2023, an estimated 48.3 million people self-identified as Black, making up 14.4% of the country’s population. This marks a 33% increase since 2000, when there were 36.2 million Black people living in the U.S. African-American history began in the 16th century, with Africans being sold to European slave traders and transported across the Atlantic to the Western Hemisphere. They were sold as slaves to European colonists and put to work on plantations, particularly in the southern colonies. A few were able to achieve freedom through ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Racial Segregation
Racial segregation is the separation of people into race (human classification), racial or other Ethnicity, ethnic groups in daily life. Segregation can involve the spatial separation of the races, and mandatory use of different institutions, such as schools and hospitals by people of different races. Specifically, it may be applied to activities such as eating in restaurants, drinking from water fountains, using public toilets, attending schools, going to movie theaters, riding buses, renting or purchasing homes, renting hotel rooms, going to supermarkets, or attending places of worship. In addition, segregation often allows close contact between members of different racial or ethnic groups in social hierarchy, hierarchical situations, such as allowing a person of one race to work as a servant for a member of another race. Racial segregation has generally been outlawed worldwide. Segregation is defined by the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance as "the act by w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gwendolyn Brooks
Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks (June 7, 1917 – December 3, 2000) was an American poet, author, and teacher. Her work often dealt with the personal celebrations and struggles of ordinary people in her community. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry on May 1, 1950, for '' Annie Allen'', making her the first African American to receive a Pulitzer Prize. Throughout her prolific writing career, Brooks received many more honors. A lifelong resident of Chicago, she was appointed Poet Laureate of Illinois in 1968, a position she held until her death 32 years later. She was also named the U.S. Poet Laureate for the 1985–86 term. In 1976, she became the first African-American woman inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Early life Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks was born on June 7, 1917, in Topeka, Kansas, and was raised on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois. She was the first child of David Anderson Brooks and Keziah (Wims) Brooks. Her father, a janitor for a music ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prizes () are 23 annual awards given by Columbia University in New York City for achievements in the United States in "journalism, arts and letters". They were established in 1917 by the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made his fortune as a newspaper publisher. Prizes in 2024 were awarded in these categories, with three finalists named for each: Each winner receives a certificate and $15,000 in cash, except in the Public Service category, where a gold medal is awarded. History Newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer gave money in his will to Columbia University to launch a journalism school and establish the Pulitzer Prize. It allocated $250,000 to the prize and scholarships. He specified "four awards in journalism, four in letters and drama, one in education, and four traveling scholarships". Updated 2013 by Sig Gissler. After his death on October 29, 1911, the first Pulitzer Prizes were awarded June 4, 1917; they are now announced in May. The '' Chicago Trib ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nikki Giovanni
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni Jr. (June 7, 1943 – December 9, 2024) was an American poet, writer, commentator, activist and educator. One of the world's best-known African-American poets, her work includes poetry anthologies, poetry recordings, and nonfiction essays, and covers topics ranging from race and social issues to children's literature. She won numerous awards, including the Langston Hughes Medal and the NAACP Image Award. She was nominated for a 2004 Grammy Award for her poetry album, ''The Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection''. Additionally, she was named as one of Oprah Winfrey's 25 " Living Legends". Giovanni was a member of The Wintergreen Women Writers Collective. Giovanni gained initial fame in the late 1960s as one of the foremost authors of the Black Arts Movement. Influenced by the Civil Rights Movement and Black Power Movement of the period, her early work provides a strong, militant African-American perspective, leading one writer to dub her the "Poet ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Margaret Danner
Margaret Danner (1915–1984) (Margaret Esse Danner, Margaret Danner Cunningham) was an American poet, editor and cultural activist known for her poetic imagery and her celebration of African heritage and cultural forms. Early life and Chicago years Born in 1915, Margaret Esse Danner came of age in Chicago during the Great Migration. Sources place her birth in Pryorsburg, Kentucky, in 1915, although she adamantly claimed Chicago as her birthplace. In eighth grade, she won first prize in a school contest for "The Violin", a poem describing Stradivarius and Guarnerius violins. Danner's college education included courses at Loyola University, Northwestern University, YMCA College, and the newly founded Roosevelt College.“Guide to the Margaret Danner Papers 1940� ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Literature
American literature is literature written or produced in the United States of America and in the British colonies that preceded it. The American literary tradition is part of the broader tradition of English-language literature, but also includes literature produced in languages other than English. The American Revolutionary Period (1775–1783) is notable for the political writings of Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Paine, and Thomas Jefferson. An early novel is William Hill Brown's '' The Power of Sympathy'', published in 1791. The writer and critic John Neal in the early-to-mid-19th century helped to advance America toward a unique literature and culture, by criticizing his predecessors, such as Washington Irving, for imitating their British counterparts and by influencing writers such as Edgar Allan Poe, who took American poetry and short fiction in new directions. Ralph Waldo Emerson pioneered the influential Transcendentalism movement; Henry David T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Columbia University Press
Columbia University Press is a university press based in New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ..., and affiliated with Columbia University. Founded in 1893, it is currently directed by Jennifer Crewe (2014–present) and publishes titles in the humanities and sciences, including the fields of literary and cultural studies, history, social work, sociology, religion, film, and international studies. History Columbia University Press was founded in May 1893. In 1933, the first four volumes of the ''History of the State of New York'' were published. In the early 1940s, the Press' revenues rose, partially thanks to the ''Encyclopedia'' and the government's purchase of 12,500 copies for use by the military. Columbia University Press is notable for publishing r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Melba Boyd
Melba Joyce Boyd (born April 2, 1950) is an American writer, editor and academic, who is a significant figure in African-American poetry.Samuels, W. D. (2013). Encyclopedia of African-American Literature', Infobase, . She has authored 13 books and is a Distinguished University Professor and Chair of the Department of Africana Studies at Wayne State University. Background Born in Detroit, Michigan, Boyd completed bachelor's and master's degrees in English from Western Michigan University. During the 1970s and early 1980s, she taught English at Cass Technical High School in Detroit and at Wayne County Community College. She earned a Doctor of Arts degree in English from the University of Michigan in 1979. Boyd was a Fulbright Scholar in Germany from 1983 to 1984. She has held academic appointments at the University of Iowa, Ohio State University, the University of Michigan–Flint and Wayne State University. Boyd is a former editor at Broadside Press, which was once the best-known ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Detroit
Detroit ( , ) is the List of municipalities in Michigan, most populous city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is situated on the bank of the Detroit River across from Windsor, Ontario. It had a population of 639,111 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the List of United States cities by population, 26th-most populous city in the United States and the largest U.S. city on the Canada–United States border. The Metro Detroit area, home to 4.3 million people, is the second-largest in the Midwestern United States, Midwest after the Chicago metropolitan area and the 14th-largest in the United States. The county seat, seat of Wayne County, Michigan, Wayne County, Detroit is a significant cultural center known for its contributions to music, art, architecture and design, in addition to its historical automotive and industrial background. In 1701, Kingdom of France, Royal French explorers Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac and Alphonse de Tonty founded Fort Pontc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dudley Randall
Dudley Randall (January 14, 1914 – August 5, 2000) was an African-American poetry, poet and poetry publisher from Detroit, Michigan. He founded a African-American book publishers in the United States, 1960–80, pioneering publishing company called Broadside Lotus Press, Broadside Press in 1965, which published many leading African-American writers, among them Melvin Tolson, Sonia Sanchez, Audre Lorde, Gwendolyn Brooks, Etheridge Knight, Margaret Walker, and others. Randall's most famous poem is "The Ballad of Birmingham," written in response to the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, in which four girls were killed. Randall's poetry is characterized by simplicity, realism, and what one critic has called the "liberation aesthetic."Waters, Mark V. "Dudley Randall and the Liberation Aesthetic: Confronting the Politics of 'Blackness'". ''CLA Journal'' 44.1 (September 2000): 111–132. Rpt. in ''Poetry Criticism'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Broadside Press
Broadside Lotus Press is an independent press created from the merger of two Detroit-based publishers Broadside Press, founded by Dudley Randall in 1965; and Naomi Long Madgett's Lotus Press, founded in 1972. At the time of the merger they were among the oldest black-owned presses in the United States. On March 31, 2015, it was announced that Lotus Press would be merging with Broadside Press, forming the new Broadside Lotus Press. Broadside Press Broadside Press was founded in 1965 by the poet librarian Dudley Randall as a showcase for African American authors. Early in the Press' history, Randall began by publishing 8.5x11 broadsides of single poems. Broadside Press was launched with publication of his poem " The Ballad of Birmingham." The Press changed ownership several times, in 1977 ownership of the Broadside Press was transferred to the Alexander Crummell Center for Worship and Learning, and back to Randall in 1981. In 1985, Hilda and Don Vest purchased the Press from ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
