African-American male writers

Samuel Lloyd Haynes (September 19, 1934 – January 1, 1987) was an American actor, best known for his starring role in the Emmy Award-winning series Room 222.

Damon Kyle Wayans Jr. (born November 18, 1982) is an American actor and comedian. He starred as Brad Williams in the ABC sitcom Happy Endings, for which he was nominated for the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series in 2012, and as Coach in the Fox sitcom New Girl. In 2014, he starred in the comedy film Let's Be Cops, and provided the voice of Wasabi in Big Hero 6.
He is the eldest son of actor and comedian Damon Wayans, and nephew of Keenen Ivory Wayans, Shawn Wayans, Kim Wayans, and Marlon Wayans.

Robert Chrisman (May 28, 1937 – March 10, 2013) was a poet, scholar, and founding editor and publisher of The Black Scholar (TBS). Chrisman and the internationally acclaimed TBS "occupied the vanguard of the struggle for recognition of Black Studies as a serious academic endeavor."

Reginald Shepherd (April 10, 1963 – September 10, 2008) was an American poet, born in New York City and raised in the Bronx. He died of cancer in Pensacola, Florida, in 2008.