Century Spotlight: Margaret Walker (1915–1998)

The Harlem Renaissance is well-known—a period of great creative output from a group of Black artists living in New York City in the 1920s. It was a pivotal historical moment for a group of creative people long overdue for recognition. But Harlem wasn't the only place where African-American artists gathered and flourished in the first half of the 20 th century. Something similar took place in Chicago during the 1930s and '40s, led by the likes of Richard Wright and . That Midwestern renaissance yielded the writing of Margaret Walker .

Zora Neale Hurston: Genius of the South

In the summer of 1973, a young writer made a pilgrimage south to Fort Pierce, Florida, to visit the final resting place of an artist whose novels, plays and essays had inspired so much of her own writing. She arrived at the Garden of Heavenly Rest to find the segregated cemetery abandoned, weed-choked and overgrown with brambles, and it took her some time to locate the unmarked grave she sought. But find it she did, and before leaving she placed the stone she and a fellow scholar had paid for with their own money. The marker was modest, but its message was not.