10 Moments of Importance in African American Poetry, 1945-1966

1945 – A version of Robert Hayden’s “Middle Passage” is published in the journal Phylon (Vol. 6, No. 3 3rd Qtr., 1945).

1945 – Another version of Hayden’s “Middle Passage” is published in Cross Section 1945: A collection of New American Writing.

1947 - Melvin B. Tolson named poet laureate of Liberia.

1947 – Présence Africaine is founded by Alioune Diop, along with various writers, including Aimé Césaire, Léopold Sédar Senghor, Richard Wright, and Albert Camus.

1953 – Langston Hughes renounces his Communist sympathies in a testimony before the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Government Operations and the Subcommittee on Investigations chaired by Joseph McCarthy.

1956 – The “1st International Congress of Black Writers and Artists,” organized by the journal Présence Africaine, convenes in Paris on September 19.

1961 – The Wretched of the Earth by Franz Fanon is published. The book becomes an influential work among black poets and various other artists and intellectuals.

1962 – Third published version of Hayden’s “Middle Passage” is published in his volume A Ballad of Remembrance.

1963 – Blues People: Negro Music in White America by Amiri Baraka (then LeRoi Jones) is published.

1965 – Broadside Press, an African American publisher dedicated to primarily publishing poetry by black poets, is founded by Dudley Randall.

1966 – A fourth published version of Hayden’s “Middle Passage” appears in his Selected Poems.

 Related: Notes on Blogging a Chronology of African American Poetry