What are the characteristics of African American literature from the period 1865-1912? What was this period's concerns?

The voices
that emerged after emancipation in 1863 and the end of the Civil War in 1865 concerned
themselves more specifically with capturing and developing a black aesthetic
tradition.

Initially, the poetry that develops is specific to the folk
traditions that were shared among black people during slavery (this genre is best captured in
the poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar and Fenton Johnson).

The short stories,
particularly those of Charles Chestnutt and Pauline Hopkins, used the domesticconventions of
nineteenth-century Victorian novelsthat is, they relied on sentimentalismto discuss the
difficulties of black people (usually, black people of mixed race who were light enough to pass)
in transitioning from the slave system to a post-Reconstruction society that would soon lead to
a system of segregation.

The themes of African American literature during
this period dealt with issues of identity and how to belong to a society that routinely
dehumanized and rejected black people....