In Wheatley's book called Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral that was published in 1773, she attacks many issues including her slavery, independence, and religion. In 1789, Olaudah Equiano a freed slave wrote about the horrible realism of slavery (a autobiography) and his African Heritage by writing The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa the African, which was his attempt to abolish slavery and continue the Abolitionist Movement. All of this was only the beginning. .
By the 1800's African American authors, poets and playwrights started emerging out of every direction. Frederick Douglass followed in Equiano's shoes and wrote his own autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. This Narrative gave a vivid and disturbing description of his life as a slave and how he got away. Douglass" writings along with his noted positions as a reformer and orator made him the leading voice of African Americans during the 1800's. The first published African American fiction came along during the mid 1800's by William Wells Brown. Brown, an escaped slave, wrote such novels as Clotel (the first published novel by an African American) and The Presidents Daughter (1853) along with a play, travelogue, and a compilation of anti-slavery songs. All of these works by Brown gave his the reputation as the most prolific literary figure of the mid-19th century. Wells continued to write and lecture throughout his lifetime, and published his last book called My Southern Home: or The South and Its People, which dealt with slavery, religion and industrialization in 1880. Another well known African American author and intellectual W.E.B. Dubois first book published was called the Philadelphia Negro in 1896 and began a whole new outlook for African Americans, slavery and the Civil War. Dubois 1903 publication of The Souls of Black Folk tried to give America the answer to the problem as well as highlight the problem itself, the color line.