Children's Literature

By: Violet J. Harris

Source:

 Black Women in America, Second Edition

Children's Literature

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the achievements of black women authors who create children books have been nothing short of remarkable. Virginia Hamilton and Angela Johnson received the MacArthur Foundation's Genius Award, and Mildred Taylor continued to win Newbery Honor Medals for her historical fiction series, The Land. A dozen new writers were routinely published. Two authors, Connie Porter and Deborah Gregory, entered the lucrative world of television movies and sidelines—products based on a literary character, such as dolls, CD-ROMS, and clothing—with series fiction, Meet Addy, an American Girl product, and The Cheetah Girls, a Disney Corporation creation. Comparable achievements are apparent on the editorial and production side of publishing. Burnette Ford and Andrea Davis Pinkney assumed major editorial positions in mainstream companies, while Cheryl Willis-Hudson left a career in publishing to found Just Us Books with her husband. Librarians, critical advocates of black children's literature, fared relatively well also. Carla Hayden, for example, was elected president of the American Library Association (ALA). Unquestionably, black women are primarily responsible for the literary representations of blacks and their cultures in children's literature.

Greater numbers of women are attracted to writing for children, and it is a culturally sanctioned occupation for women, one not viewed as threatening to other categories of literature, particularly canonical literature. Many of the occupations allied with children's literature—nursery and elementary teachers, children's librarians, and editors in the children's division of publishing houses—have traditionally been dominated by women.

Virginia Hamilton, author of Zeely and numerous other works for children.

Photograph by Barbara Goldberg, courtesy of Antioch College

view larger image

Children's literature written by blacks tended to flower during certain periods of cultural or political change and upheaval: the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts movement of the 1960s, and the 1990s when ideas about multiculturalism garnered attention. Publishers seemed to produce greater amounts of children's literature when debates about inclusion and equality captured the national imagination.

Tradition

Amelia E. Johnson, the first notable African American woman to create literature for children, edited a magazine, The Joy, and wrote books published by the American Baptist Publication Society. Her novels were rediscovered, reclaimed, and institutionalized as a part of the Schomburg Collection of nineteenth-century black women writers published by Oxford University Press. Ironically, her novels, Clarence and Corinne or God's Way (1890, 1988) and The Hazeley Family (1894, 1988), depicted racially ambiguous characters whose upward mobility, moral rectitude, and refinement parallel the problems confronted by characters in many nineteenth-century novels for children written by white authors. Johnson's novels were intended to inspire and shape the behavior of black readers as well as to inform white readers. Christianity and Christian doctrine suffuse the novels with a melodramatic air, exemplified in their depiction of the battle against slovenly behavior, alcoholism, and inadequate parenting. The books also present a feminine ideal for girls; women are mostly, or should be, virtuous, thrifty, intelligent, paragons of moral rectitude, and dedicated to home and hearth. They were to exemplify the ideals articulated in the ideology known as the “cult of true womanhood,” albeit for black women.

Angela Johnson, whose works for children include Heaven and Toning the Sweep.

Photograph by Sam Jackson, courtesy of Simon and Schuster Children's Publishing

view larger image

Literature produced for the entertainment, education, enlightenment, and uplift of black children first began to appear in the 1920s. The major innovators, Carter G. Woodson and his Associated Publishers, along with Jessie R. Fauset, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Augustus Dill through the Du Bois and Dill Publishing Company, sought to engender a body of literature that would adhere to aesthetic ideals while imbuing readers with a sense of cultural and political consciousness.

The Associated Publishers, under the direction of Carter G. Woodson, published several women writers. Among them were Effie Lee Newsome, Helen Adele Whiting, and Gertrude Parthenia McBroom, all of whom authored texts that were sometimes self-conscious in their desire to uplift, educate, and entertain black children while maintaining an awareness of the “white gaze.”

The world-renowned artist, Lois Mailou Jones, illustrated many of the works published by Woodson, and the quality, such as the drawings of Africans in African Folk Tales (1929), is exceptional. Jones was a harbinger of later women illustrators. Beginning the 1970s, Pat Cummins, Jan Spivey Gilchrist, Dolores Johnson, Faith Ringgold, and Melodye Benson Rosales created illustrations for children's books that were notable for their technical quality and artistic styles, which ranged from realism to a modified cubism.

Woodson also created the Negro History Bulletin, which was composed of educational materials for parents and teachers to use with children of all ages. The historical content sought to challenge commonly held ideas about the contributions of blacks to the ongoing social and historical processes that influenced much of life in the United States.

Similarly, Fauset, Du Bois, and Dill offered a magazine, The Brownies' Book (1920–1921), and a collection of biographies, Unsung Heroes (1921), that were directed at the “children of the sun” throughout the world. Some scholars argued that Fauset, the magazine's literary editor, was primarily responsible for the majority of its contents. The Brownies' Book had its origins as the Children's Issue of Crisis magazine, the official publication of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), one that Du Bois described as one of the most popular yearly issues of the journal. The contents of The Brownies' Book suggested that its readership was primarily educated and middle class, comparable to the readers of children's magazines directed chiefly to whites. The race-conscious nature of The Brownies' Book separated it from its mainstream peers. The magazine served as an outlet for many writers, such as the young Langston Hughes, and its contents included a variety of literary genres, history, biography, and five columns that sought to inculcate black children with the characteristics of race men and women while entertaining and educating them.

Equally important, the magazine's illustrations and photographs were notable for the variation among the characters and subjects. Among the favorite photographic subjects were portraits of high school or college graduates and children dressed in their Sunday best. The photographs featuring young children conveyed beauty, middle-class status, and innocence not yet toughened by encounters with bigotry or racism. Comparable judgments were possible about the photographs of graduates who seemed prepared to face uncertain futures with boldness and determination. Other photographs captured children and young people protesting against racial strictures, thus refuting any notion that blacks were satisfied with the racism that restricted their lives. Up-and-coming artists such as Hilda Rue Wilkerson and Laura Waring Wheeler crafted images both whimsical and realistic for the magazine.

The works published by Associated Publishers, Du Bois, and Dill Publishers were somewhat paradoxical. The actual existence of the publishing companies and the books produced contradicted prevailing ideas about the alleged inferiority of blacks found in most cultural, educational, political, religious, and economic entities in the United States. Fauset, Dill, Du Bois, and Woodson presented an insider's perspective of the black middle and upper classes unknown by the majority of citizens. The images of the black working class and poor were equally complex, although some aspects of color and class bias appeared occasionally. The books conveyed standard notions about appropriate gender behavior. Despite these limitations, the literature generated by this group was revolutionary since its publishers developed the intellectual basis for its creation and continuation in addition to the nascent rationale for the perspective that its creators should be black.

This literary foundation expanded from the 1930s through the 1960s with much of the literature created by Arna Bontemps, Langston Hughes, Lorenzo Graham, Jesse Jackson, and several women such as Ellen Tarry and Gwendolyn Brooks. The 1930s through the 1960s represented the last historic period when black men would dominate the ranks of creators of black children's literature.

Expansion and Early Attempts to Institutionalize

The period from the 1930s until the mid-1960s was not particularly conducive to the creation of children's literature by blacks, despite the elevated value of children's literature generally among the public. Nonetheless, Bontemps, Hughes, Graham, Jackson, and Tarry labored to produce a respectable body of literature. Tarry's work was the least known among the aforementioned group. She was an elementary teacher in Alabama prior to moving to New York City and attending the Bank Street School. Lucy Sprague Mitchell and Margaret Wise Brown, an author, influenced Tarry's ideas about children, how they learn, and what constituted appropriate literature for them. Generally considered cultural and educational progressives, Mitchell and Brown, along with Claude McKay, encouraged Tarry to write books reflecting her ideas about the students and her conceptions about their place in the world. Tarry described her stories as depicting the “here and now,” albeit a here and now that sought to appeal to blacks as well as to whites. Consequently, the books were within the traditions of racial awareness, cultural pluralism, integration, and assimilation.

Between 1940 and 1981, Tarry authored four picture books, Janie Belle, Hezekiah Horton, The Runaway Elephant, My Dog Rinty; four biographies, Katherine Drexel: Friend of the Neglected, Martin de Porres: Saint of the New World, Young Jim: The Early Years of James Weldon Johnson, and The Other Toussaint: A Post-Revolutionary Black; and one autobiography, The Third Door: The Autobiography of an American Negro Woman. Tarry's books were not rediscovered and reprinted in the way that Bontemps's, Hughes's, and Graham's books were. Nonetheless, they are important because of her status as one of the few black women writing for children during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s.

Gwendolyn Brooks, too, retained a lifelong interest in the lives of black children. Many of her poetry collections are often considered more appropriate for adolescents and adults than for children; however, poems such as “We Real Cool” were routinely included in literary anthologies for youth. In Bronzeville Boys and Girls (1959), Brooks created a collection of poetry that presented the lives of urban children.

The period from the 1890s to 1965 represented an era of conception, development, contestation, and limited institutionalization of children's literature written by blacks. Visionaries conceived of the need for the literature during an era when many blacks were illiterate, had limited access to schools and libraries, and lacked the discretionary income to purchase children's books. Authors, including Johnson, Fauset, and Jackson, sought to produce a literature that went beyond the provision of aesthetic pleasure. They wanted to challenge ideas about blacks, their contributions to human history, and their role in society. The books provided a protective shield for readers against the onslaught of publications that portrayed blacks as laughingstocks at best and subhuman at worst.

For black children's literature to become a part of children's lives, it was first necessary to reduce or eliminate barriers in the publishing world. Some editors possessed a sense that changing social and cultural conditions, along with demands for social justice and equality, necessitated comparable changes in publishing. Toward this end, some editors sought to include books written by blacks to offer readers stories about, in their parlance, “Coloreds” or “Negroes” written from their perspectives. For example, the editors at Viking sought an author from Harlem to write a book for children and found Ellen Tarry through a writers' group at a branch library. Beyond the need for writers, editors, and publishers, there existed the necessity for librarians, teachers, and booksellers to provide readers with the texts that offered alternative literary images of blacks.

The more powerful and sustained development of a cadre of women writers would appear during the turbulent 1960s, as would an ambitious novel, Zeely (1967), written by Virginia Hamilton. Her work signaled the unabashed creation of literature that emanated from the “black gaze,” a viewpoint that was at once introspective, celebratory, critical, and complex. Hamilton espoused a radical aesthetic philosophy, rejected notions of minority culture, and argued for the idea of parallel cultures. Her writings articulated the “hopescape” of African Americans through literary depictions of the “known, the remembered, and the imagined.” Consequently, Hamilton's novels ushered in a new era in black children's literature. Artists and illustrators demanded their right to create a literature for and about black children that was not primarily for the entertainment or education of white children. Further, many argued that their works were more historically, linguistically, and culturally accurate than those created by non-blacks. The poet Lucille Clifton articulated these beliefs and more in her 1981 essay in The Advocate: one would gain an understanding of black children only by seeking answers from those who birthed and reared them; in short, black folks.

A New Tradition: Black Children's Literature

Zeely, a radical novel in many ways, heralded the beginnings of a literature that emerged from a writer, Virginia Hamilton, steeped in all aspects of black culture. She was comfortable with her racial and national identities, and took immense pleasure in language and creating stories about black, Native American, biracial, and multiracial people. Zeely's main character, Elizabeth Perry, aka Geeder, is a member of a healthy, intact black family and extended family. Her family members are loving, kind, gentle, and supportive. She lives in a safe midwestern community and is connected to relatives who remain on the farm. Racism does not shape her identity or destiny.

Geeder's life is altered irrevocably when she sees a photograph of a Watusi woman in a magazine. She is mesmerized by the dark beauty, height, and regal aura surrounding the woman, Zeely. Geeder is inspired by Zeely and acquires a sense of empowerment and pride beyond that provided by her family. Critical reviews of Zeely uniformly acknowledged Hamilton's skillful writing. Later analyses of the work reinforced its status as one of the first feminist novels for children.

Hamilton earned pioneering status when her M. C. Higgins, the Great, a novel, became the first children's book by a black author to receive the Newbery Medal, the highest honor given to a children's book published in the United States. Hamilton subsequently won nearly every major award in children's literature, including the Hans Christian Andersen Award, considered the Nobel Prize of Children's literature. Hamilton was also the first children's author to receive the MacArthur Genius Award.

June Jordan, another pioneering author, deserves special attention for her attempt to create a literary space for the voices of black youth. The novel, His Own Where, engendered both critical praise and scorn for its narrative structure, black vernacular English, and the decision of its protagonists to have a baby. Jordan argued forcefully that black vernacular English was an acceptable language for literature, one that is as complex as any other form of language, and that its inclusion served to validate the lives of the marginalized and silenced. In similar ways, Kristin Hunter voiced the dreams and ambitions of black teens as they sought careers in show business in the Soul Brothers and Sister Lou and its sequel.

A number of epic novels by black women tell the history of blacks by focusing on the experiences of a single family. A case in point is Mildred Taylor's Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (1976), the second novel written by a black woman to receive the Newbery Medal. The novel appears in literature anthologies available in schools throughout the United States and is one of the few books written by a black author that has sold more than 100,000 paperback copies annually for nearly a decade.

The novel's protagonist, Cassie Logan, is articulate, intelligent, and brave, though her bravery has the potential for tragic results. Cassie's father, David, a strong patriarch, along with two strong women, Cassie's mother, Mary, and grandmother, Big Ma or Caroline, guide her extended family. They alternately challenge and acquiesce to the racism rampant in Mississippi during the Great Depression as they attempt to retain the family's land, pride, and dignity. Taylor does not avoid chronicling the violence—lynching, for example—that was a central element of southern life. The violence is realistically portrayed and serves to introduce children to the realities of life while offering them a model of resistance that allows for an honorable life as opposed to sacrificial death. The book was later banned from some school and local libraries and has been the target of censorship from blacks as well as well as whites. Undeterred by the opposition, Taylor continued the saga of the Logan family in eight novels and novellas, including The Land (2001), a Newbery Honor book.

Other works for children by women authors published before 1965 became classics. Lucille Clifton, Eloise Greenfield, Sharon Bell Mathis, Muriel Feelings, Rosa Guy, Mildred Pitts Walter, Patricia McKissack, and Brenda Wilkinson constructed literature that appealed to new generations. Their multifaceted and complex works displayed an intimate knowledge of the worldviews, languages, habits, customs, and beliefs of their characters. A character's skin was not simply described as brown or dark. Instead, that skin was ebony, mocha, or almond. Common endearments such as “baby-girl,” “honey child,” and “M'dear” are peppered throughout the texts in natural ways.

Clifton's Everett Anderson books helped to overturn the image of the black boy as a bumbling idiot or comic foil. Her deliberate use of black vernacular English in the Everett Anderson picture books was criticized, but Clifton countered that the texts reflected a specific poetic structure, iambic pentameter, consciously chosen to present more accurate renderings of the black voice and cadence.

Greenfield's Honey, I Love offered poems that delighted in the everyday experiences of black children. The revered role of grandmothers as culture bearers is poignantly presented in Mathis's Hundred Penny Box. Muriel Feelings made history with the illustrator Tom Feelings for Jambo Means Hello and Mojo Means One, recipients of the Caldecott Honor Medal for illustrations.

Simultaneously, Rosa Guy, author of Ruby, offered a more global or diasporic stance that captured the experiences of Caribbean immigrants seeking a new home in the United States. Mildred Pitts Walter also shifted the sites for stories to settings in Louisiana, Texas, and Oklahoma such as in Trouble's Child.

Impoverished children are often portrayed as downtrodden, but Brenda Wilkinson acknowledged their poverty and humanity along with the highs and lows in novels such as Ludell, that captured southern black vernacular English in exquisite detail. Similarly, Patricia McKissack excelled in a range of genres, as evidenced in her history of the Tuskegee Airmen, Red Tail Angels, and series fiction, Color Me Brown.

Acceptance and Criticism of the New Black Aesthetic

The literary quality of the early books varied, and critics were likely to highlight average and extraordinary works. Many authors, however, were willing to take artistic risks and experiment with new genres, linguistic forms, andnarrative structures. These literary leaders—Clifton, Greenfield, Hamilton, and later, Angela Johnson and Jacqueline Woodson—resisted artistic constraints. In interviews and essays, they asserted their power and authority to define blackness and what constituted black children's literature. The interviews and essays provoked the ire of white, and a few black, writers, editors, and critics who asserted the right of the artist to write about any group he or she wished without direct or intimate knowledge of the group. Debates about authorship continued as cries of political correctness, racial essentialism, or censorship were leveled against those who critiqued books written by whites that cover some aspect of black life.

A canon of black children's literature, arguably, emerged in the 1970s, as a significant group of black women writers continued to practice their craft and take artistic risks that enhanced the quality of the literature.

The gains made in the 1960s and 1970s stagnated in the 1980s despite the general expansion of children's literature, which was becoming a billion dollar industry coveted by multinational corporations seeking profitable publishing companies to expand their media divisions. Several consequences of mergers and acquisitions were apparent. The number of companies devoted solely to children's literature decreased. Individuals with significant experience in children's publishing sometimes found themselves with less influence because marketing executives focused on increasing profits. A tendency toward homogenization in genres, topics and themes, and authors resulted in fewer publications by and about blacks, perhaps a reflection of the conservative political tide sweeping the country in the 1970s and 1980s. Rudine Sims Bishop documented the decline and virtual disappearance of black children's literature; fewer than one hundred books were published in the early 1980s. By the 1990s, however, things were beginning to change. Editors suddenly found themselves scrambling to publish children's books written by blacks.

An Emerging Renaissance

The conservative tide dominating the arts, education, politics, and the economy lessened somewhat as oppositional ideologies, such as multiculturalism and antiracism, emerged. Children's book publishing shifted as well, and attempts to broaden its racial and ethnic diversity resulted in a renaissance in black children's literature. New voices, mainly female, emerged and expanded the black gaze in unprecedented ways. Among the notable authors were Sandra Belton, Candy Dawson Boyd, Debra Newton Chocolate, Sharon Draper, Nikki Grimes, Elizabeth Fitzgerald Howard, Dolores Johnson, Angela Johnson, Angela Shelf Medearis, Jerdine Nolen, Connie Porter, Faith Ringgold, Irene Smalls, and Rita Williams-Garcia.

One of the more intriguing shifts in the literature deconstructed notions of blackness, black cultures, and black identity. The various ways of being female were explored in picture books and novels. Movement also became a more important thematic trope as writers of West Indian ancestry published picture books, folktales, and novels such as those written by Lynn Joseph and Joanne Hippolyte. The inclusion of gays and lesbians, pioneered by Rosa Guy, was expanded in novels written by Jacqueline Woodson. Biracial characters, not mulattoes, tragic or otherwise, appeared in books for young children and adolescents in the works of Tiyomi Igus, Sandra Dennis Wyeth, and Virginia Hamilton. Perennial themes about slavery and the civil rights movement, while not supplanted, competed with themes about the West, immigrants, and black cowboys. Adventurous pioneers such as Bessie Coleman, and the role of blacks in the military and various wars were also popular. Humorous stories and series fiction, noticeably limited in earlier periods, appeared in greater numbers, a welcome shift in the canon.

Several authors highlight a few of the aforementioned trends. Sandra Belton (the Amanda and Ernestine series; picture books, May'naise Sandwiches and Sunshine Tea; and the novel, McKendree) and Elizabeth Fitzgerald Howard (Aunt Flossie's Hat and Crabcakes, Too, and Papa Tells Chita a Story) focus on middle-class families, a fairly neglected group. Deborah Newton Chocolate, Connie Porter, and Deborah Gregory created groundbreaking series fiction. Chocolate depicted an interracial group of teenagers with the NEATE series, and Porter hit publishing gold with the Addy books. Gregory wrote a series, The Cheetah Girls, a harbinger of the emergence of multiracial and biracial identities coupled with youth culture and consumerism in children's fiction. Sharon Draper experimented with narrative structure and format with novels such as Tears of a Tiger, a pastiche of journal entries, poems, and newspaper articles. Similarly, Angela Johnson experimented with structure, genre, and language in ways reminiscent of Virginia Hamilton in picture books and novels as varied as Heaven and Toning the Sweep.

With different lenses, Eleanora Tate (Thank You, Dr.Martin Luther King Jr.!), Rita Williams-Garcia (Blue Tights), and Brenda Wilkinson (Ludell) tackled themes that were often the subject of conversation but rarely developed in books for children, like intra-groups prejudice. Dolores Johnson wrote and illustrated a number of picture books that presented families engaged in everyday acts and struggles in positive fashion (Papa's Stories).

Abortion and lesbianism are provocative and controversial topics examined sensitively and poignantly in novels written by Rita Williams-Garcia (Like Sisters on the Homefront) and Jacqueline Woodson (From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun).

A host of celebrity authors, including Whoopi Goldberg and Debbie Allen, entered the field with mixed results. They opted to retell folktales from a black perspective. Adult authors, Toni Morrison (The Big Box) and bell hooks (Happy to Be Nappy), like their celebrity counterparts, drafted texts whose didacticism sometimes overshadowed the entertainment value of the literature.

Lucille Clifton and Eloise Greenfield were primarily responsible for poetry in the 1970s through the mid-1980s. Their ranks were augmented in the 1990s as Joyce Carol Thomas (Brown Honey in Broomwheat Tea), Nikki Giovanni (Spin a Soft Black Song), Nikki Grimes (Meet Danitra Brown), and Angela Johnson (The Other Side: Shorter Poems) crafted poems that were not sentimental nor romanticized but realistic, lyrical, and linguistically appealing. Most of the poets created narrative or lyric poetry using limited experimentation in free verse or other forms. Thomas, Grimes, and Johnson were particularly appealing to children.

Faith Ringgold generated significant praise through her mixed media art in picture books that appeal to children and adults. Ringgold's artistic training paralleled that of an earlier artist, Lois Mailou Jones. Both were educated in the fine arts in the United States but advanced with studies in Europe and through an exploration of the visual and folk art created by blacks. Ringgold's Tar Beach elevated black folk art in children's book publishing. A superficial viewing of the picture book would suggest a “primitive” artistic style, but a more critical perspective of Tar Beach and Ringgold's other books suggests a knowledgeable artist attempting to advance a black aesthetic that melded women's art with a black imaginative spirit, history, and vernacular.

The burgeoning golden age of publishing or renaissance became more likely by a small but noticeable black presence. Review journals and periodicals published by blacks apprised readers of books' existence. Librarians, public and school, purchased the books and ensured consistent demand and readership. A group of scholars dedicated their research agendas to establishing a presence for the literature in canons, curriculum, and journals devoted to reviews and criticism. Awards like the Newbery and Caldecott bestowed the imprimatur of merit needed to place the books in literary canons.

The continued existence of black children's literature resulted from the convergence of the aforementioned factors along with an awareness that the past should not be repeated. Vigilance has been a necessary element and nowhere has this been more apparent than in the efforts of a group of women editors that includes Burnette Ford, Cheryl Willis-Hudson, and Andrea Davis-Pinkney, who mentored, edited, and published authors such as Toni Cade Bambara. Ford excelled in creating imprints for young children at Scholastic Publishing. Willis-Hudson's company, Just Us Books, had a limited but varied list with picture books, series fiction, poetry, and information books. Willis-Hudson was instrumental in founding the Multicultural Publishers Exchange with Asian American, Native American, and Latino Publishers.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Andrea Davis-Pinkney was the highest-ranking black woman in publishing. Her career began with a stint at Essence and the New York Times and advanced to children's book publishing as an author and editor. Davis-Pinkney quickly moved through the ranks to create an imprint, Jump At the Sun (Hyperion, a division of Disney Publishing), developed to publish black children's literature. Later, Davis-Pinkney became a vice president and children's publisher at HoughtonMifflin. She promoted the careers of many black women writers, including Veronica Chambers, Sharon Flake, and Deborah Gregory.

Members of the black press also played pivotal roles in the existence of black children's literature. Ebony and Essence regularly published reviews of children's books and occasionally included interviews with authors and illustrators. The importance of these publications was undeniable, but the formation of black review journals was critical. Max Rodriguez, a publisher, founded QBR: The Black Book Review to present “our lives, our words, our stories.” In addition to reviews, the journal published articles about the industry, trends in publishing, and literary events such as the Harlem Book Fair. The journal's tone was inviting and its reviews provided a balance between technical jargon and criticism. Another important review source was Black Issues Book Review. Its production values were excellent with full color, quality paper, consistent departments, and lengthy articles and interviews. Aside from an editor responsible for children's books, another feature of the journal was the reader survey that provided feedback to editors about readers' purchasing and reading habits. This data was essential to efforts to contradict beliefs that blacks do not read or purchase books.

The importance of librarians for the existence of black children's literature cannot be underestimated. The serendipitous meeting between Mabel McKissick and Glyndon Greer at the 1969 ALA conference served as the catalyst for recognition of children's books written by blacks through the Coretta Scott King (CSK) Award. It grew out of the frustration of seeing black children's literature routinely ignored. The CSK was given for picture books, novels, information books, new talent, and illustrations. The award remained a coveted prize despite some opposition to its existence. Dr. Carla Hayden, president of the ALA in 2003, used her presidential platform to promote a more inclusive, global perspective about libraries and their role in an increasingly technical society. As director of the Enoch Pratt Library in Baltimore, Hayden established a model library that met the needs of a racially and economically diverse population.

A pivotal shift in the institutionalization of the literature has been the work of scholars in colleges and universities across the country. Their research moved beyond exhortations to publish the literature to the formation of a body of criticism that paralleled and diverged from traditional literary criticism. Rudine Sims Bishop's Shadow and Substance: Afro American (1982) heralded a shift in this criticism. She argued that most literature about blacks fell in three categories: melting pot, social conscience, and culturally conscious. Other writers expanded her ideas as they attempted to extend their historical and critical studies. Violet J. Harris, Rudine Sims Bishop, and Linda Spears Bunton published articles in a 1990 issue of the Journal of Negro Education that provided the philosophical, historical, and reader response validation for the literature. In a slight shift, Diane Johnson's Telling Tales: The Power and Pedagogy of African American Literature for Children placed the literature within the context of critical literary and cultural studies. The role of literature within multicultural and international literature was firmly ensconced in Daphne Muse's Multicultural Literature Handbook.

Finally, a group of literary scholars was intent on expanding black literary criticism in familiar and different ways. Among them were Toni Walters, Nancy Tolson, Michelle Martin, and Jonda McNair. Each scholar taught in a major university and was active in a range of organizations devoted to children's literature such as the ALA, the International Reading Association, Modern Language Association, National Council of Teachers of English, and the United States Board on Books for Youth.

The history of black children's literature has been characterized by struggle, and black women have been in the forefront. Their activism in many fields, publishing and librarianship, have been essential. They have mentored and nurtured other women and helped ensure that the literature would survive the vicissitudes of changing economies, ideologies, and interests. The literature's future is not as uncertain as in the past, yet one major task remains: the expansion of the literature among consumers. Librarians and teachers were the primary purchasers. Other segments of the book-buying public, parents and children, will need to recognize and purchase the literature if it is to survive.

See also Clifton, Lucille; Fauset Jessie Redmon; Hamilton, Virginia Esther; and Taylor, Mildred.

processed xml | source xml