This is a timeline of African American Children's literature milestones in the United States from 1600 – present. The timeline also includes selected events in Black history and children's book publishing broadly.
1761
1773
1776–1783 The American Revolution
1847
1852
1853
1859
1861
1865
1868
- Elizabeth Keckly publishes Behind the Scenes (or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House).
1884
1887
1892
- Ida B. Wells publishes her pamphlet Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases.
1899
The Story of Little Black Sambo, written and illustrated by Scottish author Helen Bannerman, is published. The book, which would become popular around the world, presents a negative and stereotypical image of Black people.[2]
1900–1949
1901
1903
1909
1913
- Mary White Ovington, a white co-founder of the NAACP, publishes Hazel[3], a novel about a middle-class Black child.
1919
- Children's Book Week is established in the United States.[4]
- Louise Seaman Bechtel is hired by Macmillan as the first children's book editor in the first US department devoted solely to publishing children's books.
1920
- W.E.B. DuBois publishes The Brownies’ Books, a monthly magazine for African American children that includes fiction, poetry, and world events. Author and teacher Jessie Redmon Fauset is the editor.
1926
1927
- Charlemae Hill Rollins is hired by the Chicago Public Library as a children's librarian.[5] She would later write We Build Together: A Reader's Guide to Negro Life and Literature for Elementary and High School Use, a bibliography of books with positive representations of African Americans.
1928
1928
1936
1937
1938
1940
1945
- Jesse C. Jackson's Call Me Charley is the first contemporary children's novel with a Black protagonist.[5]
- Two is a Team, an interracial friendship story, by Lorraine and Jerrold Beim, is illustrated by Ernest Crichlow. This is the first picture book illustrated by an African American artist.[5]
1947
1950–1999
1951
1952
1953
1954
1955
1956
- Arna W. Bontemps receives the Jane Addams Children's Book Award for Story of the Negro. He is the first African American to receive the award.
1958
1959
1960
1962
- The picture book The Snowy Day, written and illustrated by Ezra Jack Keats is published. It is regarded as the first picture book to portray an African American child as a protagonist.
1963
1964
- Whitney Young, Jr., National Urban League executive director, criticizes American book publishers in an August 22 syndicated article titled “NYC's ‘Segregated Zoo’” for omitting African Americans from children's books.
- The Council on Interracial Books for Children is founded in response to the lack of ethnically diverse books available to Mississippi's Freedom Schools.[5]
1965
- Nancy Larrick, former president of the International Reading Association, publishes “The All-White World of Children's Books” in the Saturday Review. Larrick is critical of publishers for their lack of African American characters in children's books. As evidence, Larrick analyzed more than 5,000 children's books published between 1962 and 1964 and identifies only 40 with illustrations or text related to contemporary African Americans.
- The Council on Interracial Books for Children is founded to promote nonwhite authors through book reviews, awards, and other tactics.[6]
1966
1967
1969
1971
1972
- Tom Feelings is the first African American to win a Caldecott Honor Award for illustrating Moja Means One: A Swahili Counting Book.
1973
- Ebony Jr.!, a monthly children's magazine, is launched by the Johnson Publishing Company with John H. Johnson as publisher and Constance Van Brunt Johnson as editor.[7]
1974
- African American illustrator Tom Feelings and author Muriel Feelings win the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award for picture books Jambo Means Hello: Swahili Alphabet Book.
- The Carter G. Woodson Book Award is established to honor exemplary books written for ethnic minority children and young people in the United States. The award is given by the National Council Social Studies Annual Conference.[8]
1975
1976
1977
1980
- The Council on Interracial Books for Children[9] publishes a checklist of Ten Quick Ways to Analyze Children's Books for Sexism and Racism.
1982
- Michael Jackson releases Thriller, which becomes the best-selling album of all time.
- Rudine Sims Bishop publishes in Shadow and Substance: Afro-American Experience in Contemporary Children's Fiction the findings from a survey of images and representations in Black children's literature published between 1965 and 1980.[10]
1985
- The Cooperative Children's Book Center, School of Education at the University of Wisconsin – Madison begins annual documentation of the number of books published in the United States for children which are written and/or illustrated by African Americans.
1986
- Established by legislation in 1983, Martin Luther King Jr. Day on January 20 is first celebrated as a national holiday in the United States.
- Valerie Flournoy, author of The Patchwork Quilt, illustrated by Jerry Pinkney, wins the Ezra Jack Keats New Writer Award.
1988
- Just Us Books, a publishing house focused on African American children and young adult books, is founded by Wade and Cheryl Hudson.
1991
- Tom Low and Philip Lee co-found Lee & Low Books, a multicultural children's book publisher in the United States.
1992
- The African American Children's Book Fair started in Philadelphia by Vanesse Lloyd-Sgambati.[11]
1995
1996
2000–the Present
2006
- The Cybils Awards are founded by children's book and young adult literature bloggers to honor books with literary merit and kid appeal.
2007
- The Brown Bookshelf blog, to promote African American picture books, Middle Grade and Young Adult novels written and illustrated by African Americans. Each year the blog hosts 28 Days Later, a daily feature during Black History Month featuring Black authors and illustrators.[12][13]
2008
- Barack Obama is elected 44th President of the United States of America, the first African-American to become president.
2009
2010
2014
- Author Walter Dean Myers writes in a March 16 New York Times an opinion piece titled “Where are the People of Color in Children's Books.”[15] His son Christopher Myers writes a companion piece titled “The Apartheid of Children's Literature."[16]
- A panel titled “Blockbuster Reads: Meet the Kids Authors That Dazzle” featuring only white men at the inaugural BookCon conference in New York City ignites widespread criticism and outcry for more diversity in children's book publishing.[17]
- The social media hashtag #WeNeedDiverseBooks is launched.[18]
2015
- Publisher Lee & Low Books partner with St. Catherine University (St. Paul, MN) to initiate The Diversity Baseline Survey, an industry study to uncover publishing and reviewer employment statistics in the areas of gender, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, and disability.[19]
2022
- Social Entrepreneur and Children's Book Author Veronica N. Chapman launches Black Children's Book Week, a week dedicated to celebrating Black children and the people who make sure they are represented in children's books.[20]
Ovington, Mary White. "Hazel". NYPL Digital Collections. Retrieved 1 November 2020. Horning, Kathleen T. (Fall 2015). "Milestones for Diversity in Children's Literature and Library Services". Children and Libraries: 8.
Hughes-Hassell, Sandra; Cox, Ernie J. (2010). "Inside Board Books: Representation of People of Color". The Library Quarterly. 80 (3): 211–230. doi:10.1086/652873. S2CID 145283765.