The Autobiography of Malcolm X, by Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley (1964), is a stunning record of one man's ability to educate himself and fight for the rights of African Americans. It continues the tradition of African-American autobiography and the relationship of African-American protest literature to literacy issues.

The Oxford Frederick Douglass Reader, edited by William Andrews and published in 1996, provides a wide variety of later writings by Douglass that include impassioned speeches, excerpts from his later autobiographies, letters, and his novella The Lessons of the Hour.

Toni Morrison's novel Beloved, published in 1987 and winner of the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, depicts the horrors of slavery and its traumatic aftermath even for those who think they have escaped its dehumanizing effects.

In her book Black Looks: Race and Representation, published in 1992, African-American scholar and writer Bell Hooks looks at...