African-American History

Born on February 22, 1938, Ishmael Reed began writing his own jazz column for Empire State, a weekly African American newspaper in Buffalo, NY in 192. Reed is one of America's most distinguished and innovative poets, novelists and editors. 

Largely establishing himself as the spokesperson for black experimental fiction, Reed wrote his first novel anthology, 19 Necromancers From Now, giving many black writers an opportunity to be heard when most standard collections of African American Literature rarely published their works. Reed was, for some time, president of the Before Columbus Foundation, which promotes the work of unknown ethnic writers and is very critical of how television networks report black crime. 

In general, Reed has devoted himself to exploring alternative black aesthetic, the trickster tradition, or Neo-Hoodooism as he calls it. Since 1968, Reed has been guest lecturer at the University of California Berkeley. 

Reed has won numerous awards including the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Award for Fiction (1974), the National Institute of Arts and Letters Award (1975), the American Civil Liberties Award (1978), and the Pushcart Prize in 1979 for his essay "American Poetry: Is There a Center?"