The Architects of AFROFuturism

 

Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins (1859 – August 13, 1930) was a prominent African-American novelist, journalist, playwright, historian, and editor. She is considered a pioneer in her use of the romantic novel to explore social and racial themes. Of One Blood: Or, The Hidden Self tells the story of Reuel Briggs, a medical student who does not care about being black or appreciating African history but finds himself in Ethiopia on an archaeological trip.

Thomas Mokopu Mofolo (22 December 1876 – 8 September 1948) is considered to be the greatest Basotho author. He wrote mostly in the Sesotho language, but his most popular book, Chaka, has been translated into English and other languages.

Martin Robison Delany (May 6, 1812 – January 24, 1885) was an African-American abolitionist, journalist, physician, and writer, arguably the first proponent of American black nationalism. He was one of the first three blacks admitted to Harvard Medical School. He became the first African-American field officer in the United States Army during the American Civil War. Trained as an assistant and a physician, he treated patients during the cholera epidemics of 1833 and 1854 in Pittsburgh, when many doctors and residents fled the city.

Sutton Elbert Griggs (June 19, 1872 - January 2, 1933) was an African-American author, Baptist minister, and social activist. He is best known for his novel Imperium in Imperio, a utopian work that envisions a separate African-American state within the United States.

Charles Waddell Chesnutt (June 20, 1858 – November 15, 1932) was an Afrcan-American author, essayist, political activist and lawyer, best known for his novels and short stories exploring complex issues of racial and social identity in the post-Civil War South.

George Samuel Schuyler (February 25, 1895 – August 31, 1977) was an African-American author, journalist and social commentator known for his conservative views. Between 1936 and 1938 he published in the Pittsburgh Courier a weekly serial, which he later collected and published as a novel entitled Black Empire. Schuyler also published the highly controversial book Slaves Today: A Story of Liberia, a novel about the slave trade created by freed American slaves who settled Liberia in the 1820s.

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