This 1892 work was among the first novels published by an African-American woman. Its striking portrait of life during the Civil War and Reconstruction recounts a mixed-race woman's devotion to uplifting the black community.

First published in the year 1912, 'The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man' by James Weldon Johnson is the fictional account of a young biracial man, referred to as the "Ex-Colored Man", living in post-Reconstruction era America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

"Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825-1911) was the most important and the most popular black feminist abolitionist writer and activist of the nineteenth century. A Brighter Day Coming, the most comprehensive collection of her works, includes all the poems from Harper's extant original volumes, plus many that have never been collected and one that was discovered in manuscript; speeches; and a selection of prose, including excerpts from the novel Iola Leroy and the serialized novel Fancy Etchings, and a generous group of letters ..."--Back cover.

In this important study, poet Melba Joyce Boyd analyzes Harper not simply as a feminist and an activist, but as a writer.

Considered the first novel by a female African-American, Our Nig was ignored upon first publication in 1859 and lost for more than 100 years. The novel achieved national attention when it was rediscovered and reprinted in 1983. Our Nig tells the story of Frado growing up as an indentured servant in the antebellum northern United States. Like Our Nig number of novels and other works of fiction of the period were in some part based on real-life events, including Fanny Fern's Ruth Hall; Louisa May Alcott's Little Women; or even Hannah Webster Foster's The Coquette.