We Keep Moving Mountains: Some Extraordinary Black Creators

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I was inspired to create this blog post because Black History Month is the perfect time to highlight some of the many extraordinary Black creative figures, from trailblazing librarians to poets and essayists. I tried to include mostly lesser-known people, but couldn’t help adding well-known figures too.

This is not a complete list, of course! There are many people I wanted to include like George Washington Carver (one of the most prominent scientists of the early 20th century), Alice Dunbar-Nelson (we recommend reading Dr. Tara T. Green’s Love, Activism, and the Respectable Life of Alice Dunbar-Nelson - she has an incredible seminar that started on Monday, February 13), Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and Harriet A. Jacobs (read Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself or view her reimagined voice alongside others at our Black Literature Matters: The 1800s program).

This can never be a complete list because we have been moving mountains - we know the taste of sorrow and pain, but also joy and celebration.

“For while we have our eyes on the future, history has its eyes on us. This is the era of just redemption we feared at its inception.”
~ Amanda Gorman



Want more book recommendations? Check out new Black History Month-adjacent acquisitions or look over our Black Literature Matters portal.