Nella Larsen, 1928

The Plagiarism Scandal That Ended Nella Larsen’s Career

Larsen's 1930 story "Sanctuary" had a similar plot to an earlier British story. So what? Perhaps the tale never really belonged to either writer.
Mary Rose Allen mid-leap

Teaching Black Women’s Self-Care during Jim Crow

Maryrose Reeves Allen founded a wellness program at Howard University in 1925 that emphasized the physical, mental, and spiritual health of Black women.
Richard Wright sits in an armchair with his hand to his chin, 1950s.

The Haiku of Richard Wright

As he lay bedridden with dysentery, the author wrote an astonishing number of haiku. What inspired him?
Clockwise: Nicole Sealey, Ishion Hutchinson, Marilyn Nelson, How Nguyen, Cathy Park Hong, WS Merwin

Sonnets by 11 Contemporary Poets

The name of this fourteen-line poetic form comes from the Italian sonetto, meaning "a little sound or song."
Collage of contemporary Black Poets

Poems by 10 Contemporary Black Poets

Poems by Black poets, including Morgan Parker, Hanif Abdurraqib, Simone White, Terrance Hayes, and more.
Claude McKay, 1920

Black Caribbeans in the Harlem Renaissance

The "Capital of Black America" was also a world capital, thanks to the influence of West Indian–born artists and writers like Claude McKay.
Photograph: Bahamian-American actor and civil rights activist Sidney Poitier (centre) suporting the Poor People's Campaign at Resurrection City, a shantytown set up by protestors in Washington, DC, May 1968. 

Source: Chester Sheard/Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

How Civil Rights Groups Used Photography for Change

As one activist said, “If our story is to be told, we will have to write it and photograph it and disseminate it ourselves.”
The cover of a music book for the musical "He's Up Against The Real Thing Now," starring Bert Williams and George Walker, 1898

When Black Celebrities Wore Blackface

A Black Bohemia flourished in New York before the Harlem Renaissance and with it a new type of self-determined, contradictory Black celebrity.
Abyssinian officers

The Defense of Ethiopia from Fascism

For black activists in the 1930s, defending Ethiopia from Mussolini’s invasion created unprecedented unity.
Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan in The Great Gatsby, 2013

What The Great Gatsby Reveals About The Jazz Age

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel embraced jazz, while also falling prey to the racist caricatures associated with it.