Before Columbus Foundation

The Before Columbus Foundation is a nonprofit organization founded in 1976 by Ishmael Reed, "dedicated to the promotion and dissemination of contemporary American multicultural literature".

Next to become directors were Shawn Wong, novelist and former chair of the English Department at the University of Washington in Seattle, and Presidential medal recipient Rudolfo Anaya.

The foundation, named after Ivan van Sertima's book They Came before Columbus (1976), began as a multi-cultural distribution project, but evolved into a service organization devoted to the recognition of Hispanic, African-American, and Native American authors whose literature of quality might be neglected by the literary mainstream, which, according to the directors, continues to be segregated and fifty years behind the south in terms of diversity—a mainstream that limits its inclusion of minorities to tokenism.

In 1980, a recording of a reading presented by the Foundation at the Oakland Museum, featuring 14 poets led by Ishmael Reed (with Amiri Baraka, Jayne Cortez, Joy Harjo, David Henderson, Victor Hernández Cruz, David Meltzer, and others), was released on the Smithsonian Folkways label.

Awards are given annually for books published in the US during the previous year that make contributions to American multicultural literature.