To the contemporary investigator of African centered pedagogies, merely looking within the broad background of educational research would miss a substantial portion of the entire ethnographic range of investigations. An integral body of literature reposes in two other significant areas: first, within the indigenous voices of African American writers, pioneer ethnographers and scholars; and secondly, within the ethnographic investigations of the field of sociolinguistics. This literature review focuses upon the sociolinguistic foundations of the ethnographies that have formed a substantial part, both in conceptual and applied contexts, of the discussion and development of African centered pedagogies in more recent years. The core issue in the relationship between sociolinguistics and African centered pedagogies is the study of the culture-specific behavior of the African American speech community; the pedagogical corollary of that relationship is the applied strategies of using those patterned and valued ways of speaking for teaching and learning effectiveness in formal classroom settings. The scope of the review of this body of literature is delineated in the following historically based outline: (1) Period I: Indigenous Voices; (2) Period II: Colonization of the Literature of African American Language Behaviors; and (3) Period III: Post-colonial Studies--Toward an Ethnography of African American Language Behaviors.