Heavenly belated birthday wishes Paul Laurence Dunbar! Born June 27, 1872, Paul Laurence Dunbar was an African American poet, novelist, and short story writer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born in Dayton, Ohio, to parents who had been enslaved in Kentucky before the American Civil War, Dunbar began writing stories and verse when he was a child. He died in 1906.
Read some of his poems here:
Heavenly belated birthday wishes Lucille Clifton! Born June 27, 1936, Lucille Clifton was a poet, author, and educator. From 1979 to 1985 she was Poet Laureate of Maryland. Clifton was a finalist twice for the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. She died in 2010.
Heavenly belated birthday wishes Gerald Barrax! Born June 21, 1933, Gerald William Barrax was an African American poet and the first African American professor at North Carolina State University. He was the author of five poetry collections. One of the poetry collections, Another Kind of Rain: Poems (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1970),was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the National Book Award. He died in 2019. Here are a few of his works:
Belated birthday wishes James Howard Meredith! Born June 25, 1933, James Howard Meredith is an African American civil rights activist, writer, political adviser, and United States Air Force veteran who became, in 1962, the first African-American student admitted to the racially segregated University of Mississippi after the intervention of the federal government. He wrote a memoir about his experience.
Belated birthday wishes W. Ralph Eubanks! Born June 25, Warren Ralph Eubanks Jr. is an African American author, essayist, journalist, professor, and public speaker. His work focuses on race, identity, and the culture and literature of the American South. From 1995 until May 2013 he was the Director of Publishing of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Here are just a few of his notable works, including his memoir.
Heavenly birthday wishes Beatrice M. Murphy! Born June 25, 1908, Beatrice M. Murphy Campbell was an African American poet and editor known for being the founder of the Negro Bibliographic and Research Center as well as the editor of its journal, Bibliographic Survey: The Negro in Print. All of her published works are under the name Beatrice M. Murphy. She died in 1992.
You can read some of her poetry.
Belated happy birthday Danyel Smith! Born June 23, Danyel Smith is an African American magazine editor, journalist, and novelist. Smith is the former and first African-American editor of Billboard and Vibe magazine, respectively. She is author of two novels and a history of African-American women in pop music. Here are her works:
Heavenly belated birthday wishes Octavia E. Butler! Born June 22, 1947, Octavia E. Butler was a pioneer and an award winning author of speculative and science fiction. er work is known for its social commentary, strong female characters, and economical prose, spanning settings from the distant past to the far future. Butler’s Afrofuturist and feminist novels explore the intersections of race, identity, and science fiction. She died in 2006. Here are just a few of her amazing works:
Heavenly belated birthday wishes E. Lynn Harris! Born June 20, 1955, E. Lynn Harris was an African American author. Openly gay, he was best known for his depictions of African-American men who were on the down-low and closeted. He authored ten consecutive books that made The New York Times Best Seller list. He passed away in 2009. Here are just a few of his award-winning books:
Heavenly belated birthday wishes Charles W. Chestnutt! Born June 20, 1858, Charles Waddell Chesnutt was an African-American author, essayist, political activist, and lawyer, best known for his novels and short stories exploring complex issues of racial and social identity in the post-Civil War South. He died in 1932. Here are just a few of his notable works:
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