Black Women in Art and Literature

Amid the harsh repression of slavery, Americans of African descent, and particularly black women, managed–sometimes at their own peril–to preserve the culture of their ancestry and articulate both their struggles and hopes in their own words and images. A growing number of black female artists and writers emerged throughout the Civil War and Reconstruction eras before finally bursting into the mainstream of American culture in the 1920s, with the dawn of the Harlem Renaissance. After playing a significant role in both the civil rights movement and the women’s movement of the 1960s, the rich body of creative work produced by black women has found even wider audiences in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

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