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The complex and multi-leveled struggle of African Americans in the post civil-war era is addressed by both Zora Neale Hurston in her novel, Their Eyes were Watching God and by Paul Laurence Dunbar in his novel, The Sport of the Gods. Both Hurston and Dunbar develop the life events of the characters in their novels to express the inequalities of race, class, gender, politics and economics that African Americans faced during these times. Dunbar’s story details the experience of migration of Blacks from the South to the North and he deals with the functioning of the Black family in a white dominated setting. In Contrast, Hurston details the life of a woman and her experiences as a black female individual in a predominantly Black populated setting influenced by white dominated society. In this paper I will examine the similarities and differences between the authors approaches to dealing with the issue of social protest during these times in U.S. history. While Dunbar tends to offer a more realistic explanation of the experiences and plight of African Americans, Hurston offers what Dunbar does not-solutions to the problems of the African American community in dealing with their historically subordinate place in white society.