•  1987: By writing about what conditions they believe need changing, African American women continue the tradition of such protest writers as Harriet Beecher Stowe, Zora Neale Hurston, and Gwendolyn Brooks. Prominent African American women whose writing calls for change, justice, and freedom include Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, Nikki Giovanni, and Alice Walker (whose The Color Purple won a Pulitzer Prize in 1983), and Gloria Naylor (whose The Women of Brewster Place won the National Book Award in 1983).

•  Today: African American women’s voices are still heard through the works of writers with vision for the betterment of society and for black women, in particular. Toni Morrison (who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993) and Maya Angelou are still important voices, along with newer voices, such as Edwidge Danticat and Pearl Cleage.

•  1987: Apartheid (the official segregation...