Children's Literature, African American

By: Lisa Clayton Robinson

Source:

 Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Second Edition

Children's Literature, African American

In 1919 African American intellectual W. E. B. Du Bois announced his plans to coedit a new magazine, The Brownies' Book, intended especially for black children. In his announcement, Du Bois outlined three main purposes for the new publication: (1)To help black children realize that being Negro is both normal and beautiful;(2)To familiarize them with the history and achievements of the Negro race; and(3)To help them know that other black children have become important and famous people.

Du Bois understood that black children needed literature of their own that would offer these lessons, which were not to be found in mainstream children's literature. The Brownies' Book was rare for its time, but in the decades of its publication, more and more black authors—including some of the best-known writers of African American literature—penned books that express the same three messages to black children and young adult readers.

There had been a few earlier attempts at publishing books and magazines specifically for black children. In 1887 black writer Amelia Etta Johnson briefly edited the magazine Joy. Eight years later Paul Laurence Dunbar, the most famous black poet of his time, published Little Brown Baby, a volume of children's verse. Several other books followed, including Silas X. Floyd's Floyd's Flowers, or Duty and Beauty for Colored Children (1905) and the anthology The Upward Path (1920). But the success of the 1928 white-authored Little Black Sambo showed just how pervasive stereotypical racist images of blacks were in mainstream children's literature, and how much work there was for black authors who hoped to counter those portrayals.

Langston Hughes and Arna Bontemps were among the next famous authors to write books expressly for black children. In 1932 they cowrote the novel Popo and Fifina, and Hughes published The Dream Keepers, a collection of poetry. Bontemps wrote several more children's stories and published the poetry anthology Golden Slippers (1941). Hughes and Bontemps also wrote nonfiction books for children documenting black achievements, and noted historian Carter G. Woodson wrote several history books for children.

By the 1940s several other prominent black authors were writing fiction and poetry for children and young adults. Jesse Jackson's novel Call Me Charley (1945) and Lorenz Graham's South Town-North Town series (1958–1976) dealt with racial problems. The poetry collection Bronzeville Boys and Girls (1956), by Gwendolyn Brooks, featured black children living in urban settings. White authors in the 1950s and 1960s also began to write books that portrayed African Americans more positively—and a few, such as Ezra Jack Keats, featured black characters almost exclusively. But the numbers of children's books by black or white authors that included black characters remained very small until the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, when a new generation of authors emerged, who were ready to communicate the message to their children that “black is beautiful.”

In fiction, Walter Dean Myers, Louise Meriwether, June Jordan, and Rosa Guy were among the many authors who wrote young adult novels set against a contemporary urban background. A different approach was taken by several other celebrated writers of young-adult novels, such as Mildred Taylor, whose award-winning books begin with Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (1976), set in a rural community in Mississippi in the 1930s; Julius Lester, who retold slave narratives and folktales in his novels; and Virginia Hamilton, who has used black folktales, nineteenth-century history, and futuristic science fiction throughout her imaginative career.

Nikki Giovanni, one of the most successful writers to emerge from the Black Arts Movement, has written several books of children's poetry. Other well-known contemporary children's poets include Eloise Greenfield and Lucille Clifton; and Tom Feelings, Jerry Pinkney, John Steptoe, and Ashley Bryan are among the successful black illustrators of contemporary children's books. In the 1980s, when the interest of mainstream publishers in black children's books declined, independent African American publishers, such as Black Butterfly Press, Just Us Books, and the Third World Press, stepped in to bridge the gap. But in the 1990s, an increased interest in multiculturalism in American classrooms led to a renewed demand for these books—this time, to be read by children of all races. Novelist Alice Walker, poet Maya Angelou, and activist Rosa Parks have joined the ranks of African American children's book authors in the last decade.

In 1969 the Coretta Scott King Book Award was established to honor African American authors and illustrators for outstanding contributions to children's literature. The award provides long-overdue recognition to the black writers and artists who have worked for decades to ensure that African American children and young adults will find positive, realistic depictions of themselves, their families, and their histories in the books that they read.

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