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This illustrated book introduces readers to African American literature by telling the story of the men and women who contributed to this body of work. The book begins by recounting the Africans' journey into slavery and how they kept their stories alive by telling them to one another, and by handing them down from generation to generation. Although African slaves were forbidden to read and write by their masters, some slaves learned to read, and they then wrote about their lives. One early writer was Phillis Wheatley, who wrote the first book of poetry ever published by an African American. The book profiles Frederick Douglass, discusses the "Jim Crow" laws, and proceeds to consider the works of modern African American writers, such as Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Countee Cullen, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Lorraine Hansberry, Gwendolyn Brooks (the first African American author to win the Pulitzer Prize), James Baldwin, Nikki Giovanni, Toni Morrison, and Maya Angelou. Although focused on the literary figures and authors, the book also examines the historical and cultural background of African Americans in today's United States, and shows the influence of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. The book concludes with a glossary which explains terms such as abolition, places such as the Cotton Club, and groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the Black Panthers. A list of selected reading materials about the authors and artists is attached. (NKA)