Booklet containing a biography of Phillis Wheatley and reprinted correspondence between her and George Washington, including a poem she sent him, "His Excellency General Washington."

In 2023, the museum acquired the largest private collection of items to bring new context and perspective to the life and literary impact of poet Phillis Wheatley Peters (c.1753–1784).

In 1946, Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000) became a Guggenheim Fellow in poetry, and in 1950, she was the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize, for her collection of poetry Annie Allen. The volume chronicled the life of a young Black girl growing up in the Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago. Brooks was appointed the Illinois Poet Laureate in 1968, inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1976, and by 1985, she had become Poet Laureate of the United States. In this photograph from 1963, the poet holds a copy of Maud Martha, the only book of adult fiction she authored.

Amanda Gorman was named the first Youth Poet Laureate of the United States in 2017. Gorman has served as the Youth Poet Laureate of Los Angeles. She has performed at the Library of Congress and spoken at the United Nations. She is the founder and executive director of One Pen One Page, an organization providing free creative writing programs for underserved youth. 

Before Amanda Gorman made history as the youngest poet to speak at a presidential inauguration, the National Museum of African American History and Culture featured her in our third annual Women’s E3 Summit in September 2020.

Langston Hughes (1901-1967) was a poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, columnist, and a significant figure of the Harlem Renaissance. He was a graduate of Lincoln University, a historically black college in Pennsylvania.

Born in Joplin, Missouri, in 1902, it was the writer's many years in Harlem that would come to characterize his work. There he focused squarely on the lives of working-class black Americans, delicately dismantling clichés and, in doing so, arriving at a genuine portrayal of the people he knew best.

Author, journalist and activist Ta-Nehisi Coates attends a panel at The Apollo Theater on February 27, 2018 in New York City. His writings include Between the World and Me, winner of the 2015 National Book Award for Nonfiction, and We Were Eight Years In Power: An American Tragedy, an annotated collection of new and previously published essays on the Obama era.

Mathematician, astronomer and almanac author Benjamin Banneker (1731-1806) as portrayed on a stamp released in 1980 as part of a Black Heritage series. Collection of National Postal Museum.

Photographer Jamel Shabazz poses for a photo at Rockefeller Center’s public art initiative celebrating photography with a lightbox exhibition featuring works by NYC street and subway photographer Jamel Shabazz at Rockefeller Plaza on March 27, 2021 in New York City.  Shabazz is known for his photographs of New York City during the 1980s. He has authored monographs, and contributed to many photography-related books. His photographs have been exhibited around the world. Selections are housed within permanent collections at museums including the Smithsonian's National Museum of History and Culture, the Studio Museum in Harkem and the Whitney Museum.

Chester Higgins, Jr. during the Clodagh Design Hosts The Thorn Tree Project's Evening of Art on November 2, 2017 in New York City. Higgins is photojournalist whose career has spanned five decades. He was a staff photographer at The New York Times for more than 40 years until 2014. His work has been featured in exhibitions worldwide and in books, including Feeling the Spirit: Searching the World for the People of Africa and Echo of the Spirit, his biography. He's written several books including Black Woman, Ancient Nubia: African Kingdoms on the Nile, and It’s Been Beautiful: Soul! And Black Power Television. Some of his photography is part of permanent collections of New York's Museum of Modern Art. 

Gordon Parks (1912-2006) smokes a pipe at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Boston. Parks was a celebrated photographer whose career spanned six decades. He used his camera to chronicle culture and life in America as well as to shine a light on inequalities he witnessed. He was the first African American staff photographer for Life magazine. His work is in the permanent collections of major museums including the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, and Smithsonian National Museum of American History. Parks was also an activist, author, composer, poet, and a filmmaker. He was the first African American to write and direct a major Hollywood studio feature film, The Learning Tree. He directed Shaft starring Richard Roundtree (1942-2023), whose portrayal as private detective John  Shaft helped redefine and reshape the roles of Black men in film and television.

Amy Sherald attends New York Academy of Art Tribeca Ball Honors Amy Sherald at New York Academy of Art on April 4, 2023 in New York City. Sherald is a painter who documents the contemporary African American experience through portraits. She is best known for her portrait of former First Lady Michelle Obama featured in the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. Another portrait by Sherald, Grand Dame Queenie, is on display in the museum’s art gallery. Her painting of Breonna Taylor was also on display in the museum.

Betye Saar attends the 10th Annual LACMA ART+FILM GALA honoring Amy Sherald, Kehinde Wiley, and Steven Spielberg presented by Gucci at Los Angeles County Museum of Art on November 6, 2021 in Los Angeles. The visuak storyteller is known for creating assemblage art. Saar was a part of the Black Arts Movement, which began in 1965 and ended in 1975. The movement featured politically motivated artists, poets, playwrights, musicians, and writers. Saar's work confronts racist stereotypes and explores Black identity. Her works include Black Girl's Window (1969), Mojotech (1987), and We Was Mostly 'Bout Survival (2017)

Portrait of sculptor Elizabeth Catlett (1915 - 2012) attending a gallery opening for an exhibition of her work in New York in 2009. Catlett's legacy is one of cultural belonging and activism that provokes conversations about the role of art among continental American neighbors: the U.S. and Mexico. Several of her works iconize well-known African American heroines including Harriet Tubman, Phillis Wheatley, and Sojourner Truth to memorialize their activist legacies. Honors she's received include a Lifetime Achievement Award in contemporary sculpture from the International Sculpture Center, the Art Institute of Chicago Legends and Legacy Award, and honorary doctorates from Carnegie Mellon (the same school that denied her undergraduate admittance) and Pace University.