Major Periods, Figures, and Themes in African American Literature: A summary chart

Periods	Context and Themes	Figures
Literature of slavery and freedom: 1746-1865	Middle Passage Enlightenment and American Revolution Slavery Christianization Abolitionism Civil War	Wheatley Walker Jacobs Douglas Harper Wilson
Literature of the Reconstruction: 1865-1919	Jim Crow Segregation Ku Klux Klan Lynching Industrialization Great Migration Women’s Suffrage/First Wave feminism World War I	B.T. Washington Du Bois Chesnutt Dunbar J.W. Johnson Cooper
Harlem Renaissance: 1919-1940	Great Migration New Negro Garveyism The Jazz Age Great Depression Labor Movements and the Communist Party Pan-Africanism	DuBois Locke GD Johnson Garvey Hurston Toomer Hughes Cullen Wright
Realism, Naturalism, Modernism: 1940-1960	World War II Civil Rights Movement Post-colonialism in Africa Pan-Africanism and Negritude Second Wave Feminism	Wright Petry Hayden Ellison Walker Brooks Baldwin
Black Arts: 1960-1970	Vietnam Black Nationalism Nation of Islam Counter-cultural movements Assasinations	Knight Baraka Sanchez Giovanni
Contemporary literature: 1970 to the present	Black Studies Globalization: Economic and Cultural Affirmative Action Conservative resurgence Third Wave feminism Womanism Sexual liberation Post black/new black aesthetics Post-racial identities	Morrison Reed Walker Wilson Komunyakaa Johnson Dove