Rashidah Ismaili

Rashidah Ismaili, poet, playwright and community activist, was born in Dahomey (now Benin) in 1940 and came to New York in 1957. She has taught or presented about African and African American literature and culture at Rutgers University, Hunter College and Wilkes University. She retired from formal academic life in 1999 after 15 years as a director of the Higher Education Opportunity Program at Pratt Institute.

Supporting African and African American arts and artists, Ismaili was active in the African Literature Association, African Heritage Studies Association, and Caribbean Studies Association, a board member of WBAI, and a member of Freedom to Write, an advocacy committee of PEN. She is a leader in Pen & Brush, an all women’s artists organization, and served for years as chair of the New York W.E.B DuBois Foundation. She organized annual celebrations of Dr. DuBois’ birthday and worked closely under the guidance of her mentor, the late Esther Cooper Jackson.

She continues a decades long tradition of conducting Salon d’Afrique from her Harlem apartment, gathering African and African diasporic artists and writers. Her book Autobiography of the Lower East Side is the first of a projected trilogy An African Woman in New York.