Featuring poetry, fiction, autobiography and literary criticism, this is a comprehensive and vital collection featuring the work of the major black voices of a century. An unparalleled important classic anthology with timeless appeal...
Introduction
I. Fiction
Charles W. Chestnutt
Baxter's Procrustes
Jean Toomer
Karintha Blood-Burning Moon
Rudolph Fisher
Common Meter
Arna Bontemps
A Summer Tragedy
Langston Hughes
Tales of Simple:
Foreword: Who Is Simple?
Feet Live Their Own Life Temptation Bop Census Coffee Break Cracker Prayer Promulgations
Richard Wright
The Man Who Lived Underground
Ann Petry
In Darkness and Confusion
Ralph Ellison
Invisible Man (Prologue
Frank London Brown
McDougal
Paule Marshall
To Da-duh, In Memoriam
Diane Oliver
Neighbors
II. Autobiography
Frederick Douglass
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (Chapters 1, 6, 7, and 10)
James Weldon Johnson
Along This Way (Selected Episodes)
Richard Wright
The Ethics of Living Jim Crow
J. Saunders Redding
No Day of Triumph (Chapter 1: Sections 1, 5, and 7)
James Baldwin
Autobiographical Notes
Arna Bontemps
Why I Returned
Malcolm X
The Autobiography of Malcolm X (Chapter 1)
Stnaley Sanders
"I'll Never Escape the Ghetto"
III. Poetry
Paul Laurence Dunbar
We Wear the Mask A Death Song Sympathy A Negro Love Song
W. E. B. Du Bois
The Song of the Smoke A Litany at Atlanta
James Weldon Johnson
The Creation
Fenton Johnson
The Daily Grind The World Is a Mighty Ogre A Negro Peddler's Song The Old Repair Man Rulers The Scarlet Woman Tired Aunt Jane Allen
Claude McKay
Baptism If We Must Die Outcast The Negro's Tragedy America The White City The White House
Jean Toomer
Harvest Song Song of the Son Cotton Song Brown River, Smile
Countee Cullen
Yet Do I Marvel A Song of Praise A Brown Girl Dead From the Dark Tower Incident Scottsboro, Too, Is Worth Its Song Three Epitaphs:
For My Grandmother For Paul Laurence Dunbar For a Lady I Know
Melvin B. Tolson
An Ex-Judge at the Bar Dark Symphony Psi
Frank Horne
Kid Stuff Nigger: A Chant for Children
Sterling A. Brown
Sister Lou Memphis Blues Slim in Hell Remembering Nat Turner Southern Road Southern Cop The Young Ones The Ballad of Joe Meek Strong Men
Arna Bontemps
A Note of Humility Gethsemane Southern Mansion My Heart Has Known Its Winter Nocturne at Bethesda A Black Man Talks of Reaping The Day-Breakers
Langston Hughes
Afro-American Fragment As I Grew Older Dream Variations Daybreak in Alabama Dream Boogie Children's Rhymes Theme for English B Harlem Same in Blues Ballad of the Landlord
Frank Marshall Davis
Four Glimpses of Night I Sing No New Songs Robert Whitmore Flowers of Darkness
Richard Wright
Between the World and Me
Robert Hayden
Tour 5
On the Coast of Maine Figure In Light Half Nightmare and Half Vision Market Homage to the Empress of the Blues Mourning Poem for the Queen of Sunday Middle Passage Frederick Douglass
Owen Dodson
Guitar Black Mother Praying Drunken Lover The Reunion Jonathan's Song Yardbird's Skull Sailors on Leave
Margaret Walker
For My People
Gwendolyn Brooks
The Artist's and Models' Ball The Mother The Preacher: Ruminates Behind the Sermon The Children of the Poor We Real Cool The Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock
Dudley Randall
The Southern Road Legacy: My South Booker T. and W. E. B.
The Idiot
Lerone Bennett, Jr.
Blues and Bitterness
Lance Jeffers
The Night Rains Hot Tar On Listening to the Spirituals Grief Streams Down My Chest The Unknown
Naomi Long Madgett
Native Her Story Race Question
Mari Evans
Coventry Status Symbol The Emancipation of George-Hector (a colored turtle)
My Man Let Me Pull Your Coat Black Jam for Dr. Negro
Leroi Jones
Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note The Invention of Comics Look for You Yesterday, Here You Come Today The Death of Nick Charles The Bridge
IV. Literary Criticism
W. E. B. Du Bois
The Souls of Black Folk (Chapters 1 and 14)
Alain Locke
The New Negro The Negro in American Culture
Richard Wright
How "Bigger" Was Born
Sterling A. Brown
A Century of Negro Portraiture in American Literature
James Baldwin
Many Thousands Gone
Three Papers from the First Conference of Negro Writers (March, 1959)
1. Arthur P. Davis: Integration and Race Literature
2. J. Saunders Redding: The Negro Writer and His Relationship to His Roots
3. Langston Hughes: Writers: Black and White
Blyden Jackson
The Negro's Image of the Universe as Reflected in His Fiction
John Henrik Clarke
The Origin and Growth of Afro-American Literature
Richard G. Stern
That Same Pain, That Same Pleasure: An Interview with Ralph Ellison
Dan Georgakas
James Baldwin...in Conversation
Sterling Stuckey
Frank London Brown
Darwin T. Turner
The Negro Dramatist's Image of the Universe, 1920-1960
George E. Kent
Ethnic Impact in American Literature
Clarence Major
Black Criterion
Bibliography
Overview
Featuring poetry, fiction, autobiography and literary criticism, this is a comprehensive and vital collection featuring the work of the major black voices of a century. An unparalleled important classic anthology with timeless appeal...