The black voices in God's ear

From the beginning, the published poet took a backseat in the daily lives of black people to the oral poet as represented by those "black and unknown bards" who composed the Negro spirituals and folksongs so eloquently praised by W.E.B. Du Bois in his classic 1903 study of African American culture, The Souls of Black Folk. Of course, Phillis Wheatley was the first African American to publish a book when Poems on Various Subjects came out in London in 1773, but it wasn't until more …