Black American literature, as defined by many contemporary literary critics, in the literature produced in the United States by blacks about blacks, and is most often associated with works having a string didactic flavor. Because of this distinctive characteristic, author Toni Morrison "believes that the impact of Africans, and later African Americans, on the literature of this country has been so pervasive that it needs to be recognized as a continuous history unto its own, a history which she labels an 'African American presence' or, more frequently, an 'Africanist presence.' Morrison arguess that American literature...has been shaped significantly by the dynamics of this coexistence" (Klein 659).

During the Civil Rights time period there were many new approaches taken to literature. Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man is the odyssey of a Southern youth's search for self and acceptance. Incorporating the folk, the classical, and the mythic, the book is considered a landmark in literature. Gwendolyn Brooks and Lorraine Hansberry reflected the American black urban experience in hightly regarded poetry and plays in a more traditional setting. James Baldwin's works, such as Giovanni's Room and The Fire Next Time, served as transitions to the sixties when both Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. brought new dimensions to speaking and writing politically; because of this, Baldwin became one of the most distinguished literary figures of the 1950s and 1960s. Eldridge Cleaver, a major figure in the Black Panthers organization, wrote poetry and an autobiography (Soul On Ice) that interpreted the radicalizing black prison experience.

The growing number of plays by black writers, especially August Wilson, whose plays have all been major productions, have interpreted various aspects of Black American life for a broader audience. Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou as novelists, and Nikki Giovanni as a poet, have used autobiographical material in much of thier work. Other important novelists and poets include Ernest J. Gaines, Ishmael Reed, Gloria aylor, LeRoi Jones, Frank Yerby, Langston Hughes, and Alex Haley, who was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1977 for his fictionalized family history, Roots (Roots was mad into television movies in both 1977 and 1979).

The black press is another area of black writing that developed during the Civil Rights era. The major black newspapers, magazines, and radio stations exist because of the racial concentration in urban areas that began in the 1950s and 1960s. This concentration made them both necessary and profitable activities. Some of the more famous newspapers and magazines are The Chicago Daily Defender, The Atlanta Daily World, Jet, and Ebony. Carl T. Rowan is a very famous African American journalist today. Ethyl L. Payne was a very adamant journalist during the height of the Civil Rights Movement. According to Payne, "there were very few rebels [in journalism during the Civil Rights Movement]. The privilege of being a White House correspondant -- wasn't that enough? Why couldn't I be quiet and not stir up things? Well, I didn't think that was my purpose. If you have lived through the black experience in this country, you feel that every day you're assaulted by the system. You are either acquiescent, which I think is wrong, or else you just rebel, and you kick against it. I wanted to constantly, constantly, constantly hammer away, raise the questions that needed to be raised" (Streitmatter 119).

In all aspects of literature during the Civil Rights Movement, a new theme was being expressed -- a theme of justice and equality. Political activities during this time period had a dramatic effect on everything that was being written and published by African Americans.