In African American poetry, folkloric memory often carries ancestral wisdom, coded resistance, moral lessons, humour, and cultural identity beyond formal historical archives. Because many Black histories were transmitted orally under conditions of exclusion, folklore became a crucial memory system. The term helps interpret poetry that draws upon inherited stories, archetypes, oral forms, and communal symbolic knowledge as living historical resources.

Folkloric memory in African American poetry represents a form of cultural preservation that operated precisely where official archives were inaccessible or hostile: in the grandmother's kitchen, the preacher's sermon, the front-porch storytelling session, the blues song. Zora Neale Hurston's anthropological and literary work is essential context for understanding how folkloric memory was collected, valued, and contested as a legitimate form of historical knowledge. Students should consider the politics of who gets to collect and represent folk memory: Hurston's insider status was both an asset and a source of critical controversy. Related terms include Black folk tradition, countermemory, trickster tradition, Brer Rabbit tradition, and Southern memory.