LibGuides: Heritage &amp; Awareness Celebrations: Black History Month

About Black History Month

"Black History Month, or National African American History Month, is an annual celebration of achievements by black Americans and a time for recognizing the central role of African Americans in U.S. history. The event grew out of “Negro History Week,” the brainchild of noted historian Carter G. Woodson and other prominent African Americans. Since 1976, every U.S. president has officially designated the month of February as Black History Month. Other countries around the world, including Canada and the United Kingdom, also devote a month to celebrating black history." (Source: History.com)

Read more about the Origins of Black History Month from the Association for the Study of African American Life & History.

Inspired by Lori L. Tharps' blog post "BLACK HISTORY MONTH BELONGS TO BLACK AUTHORS" we are celebrating the works of black authors born in February.

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHTS

Langston Hughes

Birthday: February 1, 1901

"One of the most active, most published, and most beloved poets of the Harlem Renaissance. In addition to his collections of poems, short stories, and novels, Hughes was a journalist, historian, essayist, translator, playwright, lyricist, founder of a theater group, and editor. He published frequently in the leading literary and race journals of his time. Identified in 1934 as one of America's most intriguing socially conscious individuals, Hughes also won prestigious prizes, such as the Guggenheim Fellowship and the Spingarn Medal. He was a literary and cultural ambassador whose travels and lectures heightened awareness of the diversity, talent, and depth of the African-American literary tradition." (Source: Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance)

BOOKS BY LANGSTON HUGHES

BOOKS ABOUT LANGSTON HUGHES

FEATURED RESOURCES

Harlem - Poetry in America episode (PBS)
“What happens to a dream deferred?” Langston Hughes’s question calls President Bill Clinton, pianist and composer Herbie Hancock, poet Sonia Sanchez, and students from the Harlem Children’s Zone to interpret Hughes’s most iconic poem,“Harlem.” Together with host Elisa New, the President and other guests, explore the poem’s rhythms and rhymes, interpret its images, and discuss its enduring call for justice.
Dreamer: A Portrait of Langston Hughes (EMusic)
A selection of Hughes' poems set to music. Available from Naxos.

Alice Walker

Birthday: February 9, 1944

"A prominent figure of contemporary African-American literature and an avid civil rights activist and feminist, Alice Walker is a versatile and prolific writer who won the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award for her best-selling, best-known novel, The Color Purple." (Source: American Women Writers)

BOOKS BY ALICE WALKER

BOOKS ABOUT ALICE WALKER

In Black and White: Alice Walker (Video)
Episode 4 in series titled: In Black and White -Six Profiles of African American Authors.
Perhaps best known for The Color Purple, which won both the National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize, Alice Walker has a varied body of work that includes novels, short stories, poetry, essays, and nonfiction-much of it informed by her experience of growing up under Jim Crow laws in Georgia, where her parents fought for the right to teach Alice to read. In this program, Walker explains what she calls the "womanist" perspective of The Color Purple and other novels.

Jacqueline Woodson

Birthday: February 12, 1963

Jacqueline Woodson has written over 30 books for children, teens and adults. "She is a four-time Newbery Honor winner, a four-time National Book Award finalist, and a three-time Coretta Scott King Award winner." Her memoir Brown Girl Dreaming won the 2014 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, the Coretta Scott King Award, a Newbery Honor Award, an NAACP Image Award, and the Sibert Medal Award. She has also received accolades for her adult fiction; Another Brooklyn was a 2016 National Book Award Finalist and Red At the Bone was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Woodson is the recipient of a 2020 MacArthur Fellowship, and the 2020 Hans Christian Andersen Award. She has previously served as the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. (Source: JaquelineWoodson.com and LibLearnX; Photo Credit: Fuzheado)

BOOKS BY JAQUELINE WOODSON

Viola Davis

Birthday: August 11, 1965 (HALF BIRTHDAY: February 11th)

Viola Davis is an actress, producer and author. Davis recently received EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony) status with her 2023 Grammy win for her audiobook recording for her memoir, Finding Me. Davis was awarded two Tony Awards, the first in 2001 for King Hedley II and then again in 2010 for Fences. In 2015 she was awarded an Emmy for Lead Actress on the television series How to Get Away With Murder. In 2017, she received an Oscar for Best Support Actress in the film adaption of Fences. According to NPR, "She's only the third Black woman to claim EGOT status, and the 18th person to receive the honor overall." (Bio Source: NPR; Image Source: Gage Skidmore)

FEATURED RESOURCES

Finding Me by Viola Davis
Call Number: AUDIOBOOK
Fences (Motion Picture on DVD)
A screen adaptation of August Wilson's play Fences starring Viola Davis and Denzel Washington.

AUDRE LORDE

Birthday: February 18, 1934

"Audre Lorde, a self-described 'black lesbian feminist warrior poet,' was best known for her poetry decrying racism, sexism, and homophobia in America." (Source: American Women Writers, History Database Center)

BOOKS BY AUDRE LORDE

BOOKS ABOUT AUDREY LORDE

FEATURED RESOURCES

The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde by Audre Lorde
"These are poems which blaze and pulse on the page."—Adrienne Rich "The first declaration of a black, lesbian feminist identity took place in these poems, and set the terms—beautifully, forcefully—for contemporary multicultural and pluralist debate."—Publishers Weekly "This is an amazing collection of poetry by . . . one of our best contemporary poets. . . . Her poems are powerful, often political, always lyrical and profoundly moving."—Chuckanut Reader Magazine "What a deep pleasure to encounter Audre Lorde's most potent genius . . . you will welcome the sheer accessibility and the force and beauty of this volume."—Out Magazine

Audre Lorde (PBS, 7 minutes)
Examine the life and influence of Audre Lorde, a Black feminist lesbian poet who believed that naming our full identities was an essential part of radical social change.
Writer Roxane Gay on the Significance of Audre Lorde (podcast)
Hosted by Mina Kim, KQED, Sept. 2020.

Toni Morrison

Birthday: February 18, 1931

"Toni Morrison is one of the most celebrated authors in the world. In addition to writing plays, and children’s books, her novels have earned her countless prestigious awards including the Pulitzer Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama. As the first African-American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, Morrison’s work has inspired a generation of writers to follow in her footsteps." (Source: National Women's History Museum)

BOOKS BY TONI MORRISON

BOOKS ABOUT TONI MORRISON

FEATURED RESOURCES

Recitatif by Toni Morrison; Zadie Smith (Introduction by)
Publication Date: 2022
NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER * A beautiful, arresting story about race and the relationships that shape us through life by the legendary Nobel Prize winner--for the first time in a beautifully produced stand-alone edition, with an introduction by Zadie Smith "A puzzle of a story, then--a game.... When [Morrison] called Recitatif an 'experiment' she meant it. The subject of the experiment is the reader." --Zadie Smith, award-winning, best-selling author of White Teeth In this 1983 short story--the only short story Morrison ever wrote--we meet Twyla and Roberta, who have known each other since they were eight years old and spent four months together as roommates in St. Bonaventure shelter. Inseparable then, they lose touch as they grow older, only later to find each other again at a diner, a grocery store, and again at a protest. Seemingly at opposite ends of every problem, and at each other's throats each time they meet, the two women still cannot deny the deep bond their shared experience has forged between them. Another work of genius by this masterly writer, Recitatif keeps Twyla's and Roberta's races ambiguous throughout the story. Morrison herself described Recitatif, a story which will keep readers thinking and discussing for years to come, as "an experiment in the removal of all racial codes from a narrative about two characters of different races for whom racial identity is crucial." We know that one is white and one is Black, but which is which? And who is right about the race of the woman the girls tormented at the orphanage? A remarkable look into what keeps us together and what keeps us apart, and how perceptions are made tangible by reality, Recitatif is a gift to readers in these changing times.
Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am (DVD)
Publication Date: 2019
An artful and intimate meditation on the life and works of the acclaimed novelist. From her childhood in the steel town of Lorain, Ohio to '70s-era book tours with Muhammad Ali, from the front lines with Angela Davis to her own riverfront writing room, Toni Morrison leads an assembly of her peers, critics, and colleagues on an exploration of race, America, history and the human condition as seen through the prism of her own literature.
Note: Digital Copy Available through SWANK

Heritage & Awareness Celebrations

Selected BHM Resources

About Black History Month