A Timeline on Black Public Intellectuals, 1981 - 1994

What follows is a glimpse of notable works, activities, and achievements among figures regularly cited as popular "black public intellectuals." 
  
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1981 – bell hooks's Ain’t I a Woman?: Black Women and Feminism is published.

1981 – Henry Louis Gates, Jr. awarded MacArthur Fellowship.

1984 – Houston A. Baker's Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature: A Vernacular Theory is published.

1986 – Arnold Rampersad's The Life of Langston Hughes: Volume I: 1902-1941: I, Too, Sing America is published.

1987 – William Julius Wilson is awarded a MacArthur Fellowship; Wilson's book The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy is published.

1988 – 48 black writers and critics publish a letter in The New York Times highlighting the idea that novelist Toni Morrison had not received adequate recognition for her artistic works.

1988 – Toni Morrison is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Beloved. 

1988 – Arnold Rampersad's The Life of Langston Hughes: Volume II: 1941-1967: I Dream a World is published.

1988 – Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism is published.

1990 – Harvard Law School professor Derrick Bell takes unpaid leave to protest absence of tenured woman of color on the faculty. 

1990  – William Julius Wilson serves as president of the American Sociological Association.

1991 – Henry Louis Gates, Jr. assumes chair of African American Studies Program at Harvard University.

1991 – bell hooks' and Cornel West's Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life is published.

1991 – Patricia Hill Collins's Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment is published.

1991 – Arnold Rampersad awarded MacArthur Fellowship.

1992 – Houston A. Baker serves as president of the Modern Language Association.

1992 – Derrick Bell publishes Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism.

1993 – Cornel West publishes Race Matters.

1993 – Paul Gilroy publishes The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness.

1993 – Lani Guinier is nominated for Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights by President Bill Clinton. The nomination was eventually withdrawn because of pressure from conservative groups.

1993 – Toni Morrison is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

1993 – Stanley Crouch awarded MacArthur Fellowship.

1994 – Cornel West joins faculty at Harvard, becomes key member of Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s "dream team."  

1994 -- Michael Eric Dyson's book Making Malcolm: The Myth and Meaning of Malcolm X is selected as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.

1994 – Tricia Rose published Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. 

1994 – David Levering Lewis's W. E. B. Du Bois, 1868-1919: Biography of a Race is published.

Related: 
• Black Intellectual Histories