9 groundbreaking black poets who revolutionized the written word — mashable.com

If we're to believe Plato, poetry is nearer to truth than history. That saying certainly holds for groundbreaking black poets like Langston Hughes, who wrote unapologetically about the world through the eyes of a black artist. Numerous black poets have made waves in the literary world, from Gwendolyn Brooks, who in 1950 became the first black writer to win a Pulitzer Prize, to Maya Angelou, one of the foremost poets of the 20th century. Writers like Gil Scott-Heron and Amiri Baraka electrified the written word with their sociopolitical statements, while Audre Lorde and Nikki Giovanni wrote radical lines that addressed sexism and racism.

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