Abstract: The purpose of this article is to review theories of racial and gender representation in African American literature by highlighting several black intellectuals such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, Audre Lorde and Maya Angelou. This endeavor aims to understand the links and differences between black intellectuals’ lines of thought, such as those formulated by W.E.B. Du Bois or Franz Fanon, by comparison to or in addition to the contemporary views displayed by Maya Angelou or Alice Walker. The emergence of black intellectuals was highly problematic, rising from the South’s fields and finding new economic opportunities in Harlem. After the two World Wars, the young generation of African American intellectuals succeeded to create a new cultural movement inspired from folk traditions simultaneously adapted to urban realities, claiming a new identity and defying old stereotypes. This article brings forward a discussion of the ideas that link the aforementioned intellectuals and could be the starting point for further investigation on the black intellectual history that necessitates a more extensive study than the present paper.